Aside the pure typical content like geography or history knowledge, a complete education should also take care of the metacognition aspect, that is the knowledge about the knowledge. It is still under scientific research, but we can already assume the following thinking processes are at work: critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, understanding, decision process, discourse generation, memory, information gathering, concept organization and hierarchy, integration-analysis, enlarging-narrowing focus.

All those metacognitive skills play a role, the academic content is not sufficient. The student has to be aware of and control her/his own thinking, to a certain extent at least.

The first metacognitive skills to learn are communication related. The student has to be able to understand and express in a common language like English for example. This is a tool to gather information and express feelings and thoughts. The memory determines how much is remembered in the brain. Those basic metacognitive skills allows expression and action in order to accomplish an objective. The second level is to be able to analyze, compare, classify, sort chunks of information, using criteria and tests.

Those information aggregate into higher levels like concepts. Integrating consists in condensing information efficiently into a cohesive statement or by connecting existing and prior knowledge into a new understanding (see constructivism).

The mastery of the language is a key for any higher level, because it is the medium on which the meaning is carried.

Through handling the pieces and relationships of information, the student clarifies and improves her/his knowledge, and in particular the awareness about all that is not known. The learning process involves deducing, inferring, predicting and elaborating new chunks of information, concepts and ideas.