How can teachers teach students to think metacognitively and direct their own learning?
They can encourage students to diagram their own knowledge schemas with concept maps. Given the categories that students slot their knowledge into teachers can clarify how they frame course goals in order to clarify potential misconceptions about facts and their relationships which students may have as they go through the course. They can share the organizational structure of the course and details about its components (lectures labs discussions) bridging students' construction of knowledge and meaning to the course's objectives and organization. For students with little knowledge about the course's subjects students can be directed toward relationships between the pieces of knowledge the course presents.
Teachers can tell students to assess each task given to them evaluate their own abilities apply strategies to achieve the task and calibrate their approach as they progress. This metacognitive feedback loop enables students to match the expectations of the course with their efforts and teachers can further metacognitive abilities by teaching students how to feed their learning moving forward - that is develop their own plans for academic success - that will generalize to other courses and areas of life.