Introduction: A metacognition bridge

John Dewey, a well-known education theorist and pragmatist, said the following: ‘‘Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary’’ (1897, p. 77). For a long time, the two disciplines, cognitive science and education, have worked hard to discover effective principles of learning with the goal of improving educational achievement. And although each has made significant advances, there has been a gap between the two disciplines, a gap that remains a reality today. In this introduction, I provide a brief synopsis of the historical paths towards the understanding of learning in both the cognitive field and educational realm, with the aim to show that there is a need, now more than ever, to throw a bridge between the two fields. In this special issue, Bridging Cognitive Science and Education: Learning, Memory, and Metacognition, we have organised and integrated some of the recent cognitive data that can provide some new insights on the complexities of learning in the classroom. The question of how people learn, be it inside or outside the classroom, has been a major theme in cognitive science. Although the cognitive revolution is thought to have arrived in the mid-1900s, cognitive science,

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