Metacognitive Skills as a Central Focus of Initial Teacher Education: A Narrative Review of Self-Regulated Learning, Pedagogical Reflection, and Professional Practice (2020–2026)

Abstract

This narrative review examines the scientific literature published between 2020 and 2026 on the development of metacognitive skills in undergraduate teacher education. Teaching requires not only learning but also regulating one’s own learning and passing on that regulation to future students. This requirement has driven a line of research focused on two central areas: self-regulation of learning and pedagogical reflection, complemented by the strengthening of professional practice. The objective was to systematize this evidence and characterize the state of knowledge in the field. An iterative search process was employed, initiated from a seed article (Vosniadou et al., 2021) and explored using Connected Papers. Bibliographic management was conducted in Zotero based on six indexed databases (Scopus, Web of Science, Scielo, ScienceDirect, EBSCO, and ERIC) and search terms adapted to five languages. The final corpus comprised 44 references, including 10 considered foundational and 34 empirical. The results revealed a well-established axis of self-regulation centered on validated psychometric instruments; a second axis of pedagogical reflection that is methodologically diverse and grounded in written work by pre-service teachers; and, finally, an axis of professional development that remains in its exploratory phase and exhibits geographic dispersion. It is concluded that development across the three pillars is uneven, and gaps were identified related to the scarcity of longitudinal designs, the presence of instrumental heterogeneity, and a notable lack of monitoring of metacognition once teachers graduate from their training program.