ABSTRACT
The intricate web of components, subcomponents, categories, super categories, subcategories and key elements of metacognition has been neatly disentangled by P. Tarricone in her taxonomy of metacognition. Gifted students, or at least talented students, are believed to have an enhanced capacity for metacognition and to be highly competent users of metacognitive skills. Like L. S. Vygotsky, A. Bandura argued that learning is mediated by the effect of social interaction on one's cognitive processes; however, Bandura further suggested that learning is the result of a continuous and reciprocal interplay between cognition, behaviour and the environment. The social constructivist approach aims to create a learning environment that provides the social setting for the "construction of knowledge". The conceptual framework for learning and teaching that tends to dominate the horizons in many educational contexts is termed either constructivism or social constructivism.
