Collaborative Meta-reasoning in Creative Contexts: Advancing an Understanding of Collaborative Monitoring and Control in Creative Teams

Meta-reasoning refers to the metacognitive processes that monitor and control ongoing thinking, reasoning and problem-solving. These monitoring processes are usually experienced as feelings of “certainty” or “uncertainty” regarding how well a process is unfolding. The “meta-reasoning framework” advanced by Ackerman and Thompson (2017) captures many existing findings relating to meta-reasoning at an individual level, which raises questions about how the framework can be expanded to reflect collaborative meta-reasoning. This development is important given the multitude of real-world domains that involve collaborative thinking and reasoning, including those involving team-based creativity (eg, design, innovation, entrepreneurship, advertising and scientific discovery). In such collaborative situations, monitoring processes need to be attuned to shifting uncertainty in team activities and communications, whereas control processes need to ensure coordinated and negotiated strategy selection. In this chapter we aim to progress the development of a collaborative meta-reasoning framework of relevance to creative contexts by drawing upon the limited existing research, which is primarily focused on meta-reasoning in design teams. We conclude our discussion by delineating a series of key questions to motivate future research.