Nowadays, the metacognitive approach in education and in educational psychology is given much attention both in the theoretical and practical aspects. The topical relevance and modernity of metacognition are mainly seen to lie in the possibility to orientate better and more efficiently in the rapidly changing world and in the supply of new information and knowledge. The school is therefore rightfully required to make the pupil better prepared for the complex world of knowledge by means of this method. It is equally required to give the processes of knowledge acquisition and learning more sense thus facilitating understanding. Given the inadequate treatment of the problem of metacognition in our educational and educational- psychological researches, the task of this research study is to present the conception of metacognition, to focus on the approaches that have contributed to the definition of the concept and to outline some application possibilities of this method of knowledge in the context of instruction. This study also represents one of the theoretical contributions to the research project „Theoretical conception of metacognition and the possibilities of applying metacognitive approaches in the intellectual and personal development of the pupil“.