A primary goal of education is to assist students to become independent learners and thinkers. The importance of assisting students to develop as independent learners has become more apparent in recent times as the nature, availability and quantity of knowledge has changed. In one vision of the future, Toffler (1970) suggested that what counted for today's knowledge would be tomorrow's misinformation and that in times of rapid information expansion and social change an enormous premium would be placed on people's learnng efficiency. A key variable in people's learning efficiency is their metacognition, that is, their knowledge, awareness and control of their learning processes. This paper uses existing theoretical perspectives in addition to completed and ongoing research into students' metacognition and the psychosocial orientations of classrooms in which interventions have taken place and identifies eight attributes of classroom learning environments that influence the development and enhancement of metacognition. Initial findings from an instrument constructed from expressions of these attributes has provided insights into the metacognitive orientation of science classrooms that are consistent with what is already known from available research.