Creativity and Metacognition in Education

Creative thinking skills are essential key competencies for the twenty-first century. They enable flexibility and help us navigate the opportunities and challenges of our complex, rapidly changing world. The growing emphasis on innovation, alongside reports of declining creative performance, highlights the importance of cultivating these skills in education. In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on nurturing and teaching creativity early in schools. While creativity is an integral part of arts education, it is less frequently emphasized in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects. Ultimately, what truly matters is the manner in which these subjects are being taught. Implementing creativity training could enhance creative thinking and hold significant benefits for educational institutions. Similar cognitive techniques that can be employed for this purpose are, i.e, metacognitive strategies that involve self-reflective thinking. Metacognition plays a central role in many areas of education and learning, such as reading, writing, language acquisition, attention, memory, and problem-solving, among others. In this study, we explore the mental functions of metacognition and creativity and the different ways they can be used to improve students’ academic performance, with a particular focus on mathematical performance. Overall, the current review study may have theoretical and practical implications for educational institutions.