Despite impressive initiatives by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to develop higher-order thinking skills among students, HEIs are facing a concerning decline in higher-order skills particularly analytical skills among university students. One of the reasons for this deficiency is that students have historically always excelled at reproducing subject content. Past literature asserts that this skill is less valuable in today’s everchanging economy. Hence, this places a huge pressure on the HEIs to create students with analytical minds. While researchers accentuate that metacognitive competence can improve analytical thinking, the evidence for and discussion of this concept is still scant. This study seeks to propose a conceptual framework to inculcate analytical thinking among university students through a structured self-regulated metacognitive approach. Through this framework driven by metacognitive theory and metacognition cyclic phases model, HEIs can guide students to master metacognitive practices to improve their analytical skills. This paper highlights new knowledge on breaking the cycle of rote-learning to develop analytical thinkers through metacognitive practices.

Keywords: Analytical skills, learning society, lifelong learning, metacognition, thinking skills