Standards typically focus on subject-specific goals. However, as thinking and learning skills become increasingly important, these 21st century skills are beginning to appear more explicitly in standards.

Thinking and Learning Skills: What Do We Expect from Students, a study from the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, McREL, takes an important first step in identifying the thinking and learning skills that students should acquire as described in standards documents from state departments of education (within McREL's region), from national subject-area organizations, and from organizations concerned about adequate student preparation for post-secondary work.  

The report explores cognition (which thinking skills are expected of students), metacognition (what students are expected to know about how they learn), self-system (what students are expected to know about their attention to motivation to learn).

Sub-attributes of these categories break out as:

• Cognition: retrieval, comprehension, analysis and knowledge utilization
• Metacognition: specifying goals, monitoring process, monitoring clarity, and monitoring accuracy
• Self-system: examining importance, examining efficiency, examining emotional response, and examining motivation.

This taxonomy is then used to examine thinking skills in English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.

One can imagine a day in the future when students are expected to know the plasticity of synapses, the chemistry of test stress, and the neural process used in solving an equation. This is a beginning.

Source: McREL, Thinking and Learning Skills: What Do We Expect from Students