Metacognitive Involvement and Critical Thinking in Technical Students in Information Environment

Metacognitive involvement in activities and critical thinking are the soft skills students require as a basic adaptation resource in information environment at university, in life, and at work. This research explored the correlation between metacognitive involvement and critical thinking which university students of technical specialties used to navigate information environment. The study involved 58 male and 12 female fourth-year students (21.26 ± 0.47 y.o.) of the Penza State University, Penza, Russia. The list of methods employed included scientific review, survey, testing, and Spearman’s correlation analysis. The survey involved the following questionnaires: Metacognitive Involvement in Activity (G. Schraw, R. Dennison, 1994; eight-factor version by E. I. Perikova, V. M. Byzova, 2022); Critical Thinking Test (J. Kincher, 1990); author’s own questionnaire of Students and Information Environment (N. N. Krylova, 2024). The correlation analysis revealed strong relationships between nine indicators of metacognitive involvement in activities and critical thinking (p ≤ 0.001 and p ≤ 0.01). The Structure of Error Correction factor of metacognitive involvement depended on such a parameter of information environment as the input intensity. The metacognitive involvement in activities correlated with the students’ assessment of mental and information load in the curriculum, e.g., the Metacognitive Knowledge factor correlated with the mental and information load in Physics and Mathematics while the Error Correction Structure factor was associated with the load assessment in technical disciplines. In addition, some individual parameters of information environment correlated with the students’ assessment of mental and information load. In this study, metacognitive involvement in activities correlated with critical thinking in university students as they interacted with information environment because these phenomena are not isolated psychologically from each other.