ABSTRACT
The thoughts experienced by this 11-year-old student as she attempts to discern the status of her conceptions about a topic in physics can be described as
metacognitive and her approach to learning may be described as intentional. What makes her thoughts metacognitive? What makes her approach to learning intentional? Descriptions of what constitutes metacognition and intentional learning are, at best, difficult to explicate. Flavell (1981) referred to metacognition as a “fuzzy concept.” Descriptions of what constitutes intentionality in learning are, likewise, fuzzy. The general purpose of this chapter, however, is to cut through that fuzziness by describing characteristics of metacognition and intentionality that have emerged within the research community since Bereiter and Scardamalia (1989) argued that intentional learning should be a major goal of instruction.
