The thinking and metacognition capability includes five highly general skills that all involve the regulation of thinking. These skills are critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, computational thinking, and metacognition. The decision to focus on these five skills was driven by a confluence of factors. With the exception of computational thinking, each skill has an extensive and distinct empirical literature base and is a known predictor of success in various contexts. The closely interrelated cluster of critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making is strongly associated with job zone and salary in the O*NET database, and these are among the most in-demand skills cited by employers (Levy & Murnane, 2004; O*NET, 2014).

Instruction in general thinking skills, particularly metacognition and problem solving, has been associated with improvements in both academic and workplace performance. For example, a metaanalysis of thinking-skills interventions in the United Kingdom found an overall effect size of .62 on various curricular outcomes (Higgins, Hall, Baumfield, & Moseley, 2005). In addition, instruction in metacognition has been shown to have beneficial effects on grades in ELA (Haller, Child, & Walberg, 1988), mathematics (Mevarech, & Amrany, 2008; Oladunni, 1998), and science (Schweizer, Wüstenberg, & Greiff, 2013). Instruction in problem-solving techniques has been shown to increase creative productivity compared to controls (Wang & Horng, 2002), and Assessment Center measures of problem-solving ability have among the highest validities as predictors of job performance (r = .38).

Computational thinking helps individuals reconceptualize problems in ways that allow their solutions to be efficiently computed by an information-processing system (Wing, 2006). This is a relatively new construct, but it is actually an extension of traditional problem-solving skills to put a greater focus on the design of algorithmic solution processes. The ever-rising prevalence of automation in the workplace means that computational thinking is likely to be a key determinant of career success in the twenty-first century (Malyn-Smith & Sheldon, 2014). Managers believe it will likely increase in importance over the next twenty years (Institute for the Future, 2011), and already over 70% of the specialized skills most frequently listed by individuals hired in 2014 were directly related to computational thinking (Murthy, 2014).