Changing conditions in the global market have necessitated that students be taught to adopt new knowledge by understanding it in depth and having it spontaneously available for use in the real world. All students, especially those in science and technology, must learn to construct new meanings and understandings independently by restructuring experience through reflection. A pedagogy promoting development of these abilities must be initiated in early childhood and continued throughout higher education. This pedagogy must be based on utilization of the following items: learners' knowledge about their own ways of thinking; learners' self-control and self-regulation; and learners' beliefs and intuitions. Students must be given opportunities to engage in reflective abstraction and construct new meanings for themselves by using the following metacognition skills: judgment (the ability to see particular cases or situations as parts of a greater whole and select relevant approaches to given problems); understanding of the relevance of their existing knowledge, skills, and experience; and analysis and synthesis (the ability to put experience into appropriate and meaningful mental categories). Learners must engage in "situated cognition" that draws on the culture of people actually working in the field (thus putting them in a position similar to that of apprentices). (Contains 18 references.) (MN)