**1. Introduction**

Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) are recognised as influential attributes for the quality of teaching and learning in higher education institutions around the world [1]. HOTS are defined as a set of neurocognitive abilities required to involve goal-oriented thoughts, actions and emotions control [2–4]. HOTS involve cognitive flexibility (thinking about something in various ways), working memory (taking information into account and, usually, manipulating it in some way) and inhibitory control (deliberately suppressing attention process to provide a response to something [5,6]). These skills not only allow students to learn more e ffectively but also help them to transfer the previously acquired knowledge to real situations in their daily lives. Thinking skills are essential for analysing situations or problems, making predictions, identifying patterns and representing conclusions. During the teaching and learning process, facilitating students' HOTS helps them become more aware of their own thinking processes. Though self-awareness implies metacognitive and reflective thinking skills, it also encourages in students the development of other intellectual skills, making it possible for them to transfer the previously acquired scientific knowledge and apply it to new situations, favouring learning acquisition [7–9].

Reflective thinking is a type of higher-order thinking (HOT) defined as a form of thinking aimed at determining the factors affecting the level of learning and the methods of solving problems by students [10]. Reflective thinking presupposes a state of perplexity, hesitation or doubt, and mental difficulty. It is also an act of inquiry—a sophisticated search for the finding of solutions and decision making [11]. Metacognition is a high-order thinking ability defined as the awareness and control of self-thinking. It is an executive control system of the human mind that oversees a person's thoughts, knowledge and thinking actions [12,13]. It comprises two components concerning knowledge and regulation. The knowledge component is referred to as the cognitive self-knowledge process. Constituents of this component are the knowledge of oneself as a thinker, the characteristics of a given task and the strategies required to carry out a compelling performance. The regulatory component refers to the actual strategies that are applied to control cognitive processes. Constituents of this component are as follows: planning on how to approach a task, monitoring understanding, evaluating progress, performance [14,15].

The link between the above-mentioned cognitive skills—knowledge and regulatory components—is explained by Halper [16]. This author states that when both critical and reflexive thinking is involved, students need to monitor their thinking process to verify if the goal is being achieved with precision—required functions for the activation of metacognitive skills. Consequently, metacognition is an undoubtedly central component in various forms of high-order thinking providing the understanding on how cognition works, and allows humans to develop intrapersonal skills related to understanding, argumentation, reasoning, self-reflection and other forms of higher-order thinking [17].

The culture of every educational organisation has a profound effect on the development of the aforementioned skills, as well as on its trainers and trainees, since it shapes the identity of both entities and groups and determines the dispositions, decisions and responses of individuals to circumstantial challenges [18,19]. Consequently, through classroom environment cultures, practical strategies display themselves as meaningful for the connection with learning purposes. This factor leads to the importance of creating a culture of thought that helps students recognise the social and environmental contexts in which both individual and collective thought are fostered and valued, focuses the attention on and access to resources and routine practices and promotes the cognitive processes during the construction of learning [20,21]. Such enculturation of thought makes reference to shared social practices in classrooms, which create thought dispositions, mental inclinations and habits that benefit students' productive thinking such as being reflective, seeking and evaluating reasons, exploring strategic solutions, constructing explanations, assuming risks and having dispositions to be metacognitive [18,22–24].

Considering the above-mentioned, Ritchhart [22] proposes the promotion of eight cultural forces to promote thought among those who learn and are present in any educational context. The cultural forces as the foundations on which the acquisition and development of students' critical and reflective thinking dispositions and skills are promoted. The promotion of the eight cultural forces is also shaped by the expectations about thinking and learning, the time to think, the interactions and the supportive relationships for the fostering of thinking, the modelling of thinking dispositions, the created opportunities for thinking, the thinking on language, the thinking routines and structures and the environment—factors encouraging expectations.

Expectations constitute a set of firm beliefs about future results or theories of action that influence humans' efforts concerning the achievement of established objectives and desired results [21]. In this particular case, expectations correspond to given demands from teachers towards students. Among the expectations that influence the required results are the orientation to the students in learning, the teaching for the understanding (instead of for mere rote knowledge), the promotion of deep learning, the promotion of the autonomy and independence of students upon the construction of learning and the promotion of thinking skills and cognitive flexibility [25]. In consequence, the language of thought refers to the language used by teachers. Apropos of the vocabulary of thought and the reflexive process stimulations, the language of thought does also refer to its impact on students [23].

The aforementioned lexical-reflexive processes encompass different terms of action that also describe the states and mental processes of each subject (analyse, justify, reason). In the same way, lexical-reflexive processes describe products, such as the formulation of hypotheses, questions or statements, that manifest epistemic attitudes that reflect, in turn, the position of the person towards an idea (I consider, I conclude, etc.) [25]. In this sense, language takes on transcendent importance in providing feedback to people. The reason is that it helps to make teaching and learning visible entities in the classroom. Likewise, language helps to recognise the dispositions of thought and the power of the students during the process of feedback of learning [26]. For the stimulation of lexical-reflexive processes, time is a relevant element, as a cultural force that constitutes a set of measurable periods to manage learning strategies. The sequence of events, discussions and reflections on the actions allow the scaffolding and the creation of a conductive thread through articulated learning opportunities to create uniformity. When students endure time to think, opportunities are encouraged at the same time for them to deepen their responses, to seek considerable evidence of their reasoning and to build deeper learning [26].

Modelling is a necessary condition for a reflective practice, where conscious imitation allows the student to acquire the skills necessary to learn. By considering the modelling procedure and reflecting on it, students can acquire a conceptual understanding grounded in practice [27]. Likewise, modelling offers subjects the opportunity to accept different perspectives, as well as new ways of acting and thinking. Modelling thinking, learning and independence skills require identifying the different models of thinking. It also requires reflection on the actions of such models, characteristics, attitudes and behaviours, to incorporate them routinely in the development of tasks [26]. Creating opportunities implies clarifying the expected learning, applying the criteria of the novel application, meaningful research, efficient communication and the perceived value of the task. The purpose is to favour collaborative, autonomous and self-regulated learning [22]. Posing a variety of instructional formats or potentially meaningful and constructive tasks helps to activate the different cognitive processes, in addition to deepening the reflection and deep learning of the students.

The use of structures and routines to anchor and support the thinking and deep learning of students consists in creating strategies that demand a series of cognitive behaviours, orient the thinking of the learners, structure group or individual discussions and operate with curricular content. Such facilitation invites teachers and students to observe, record, interpret and share ideas, thoughts and understanding of the contents and discussions addressed. Similarly, such routines become behavioural patterns to deepen understanding, reasoning and reflection on self-learning [28]. Considering that student learning in higher education occurs in an environment of academic learning, where language, space organisation, the transmission of values and key information converge, the teacher must know the specific strategies to support and motivate students. Instructors must also know how to provide learners with valid learning resources that arouse their interest and curiosity, generate an excellent emotional climate and become the scaffolding of learning [11].

In addition to being an individual process, interaction as a cultural force is supported by the theories considering that the development of critical and reflexive thinking is mediated by social discourse [27]. From the previous reflection emanates the importance of teachers generating teaching situations that, in turn, cause new opportunities for inquiries. The formulation of generative questions soaking through higher-level thinking skills might provide interpretations and connections between previous knowledge and new knowledge in a shared and distributed way among students and teachers. From all the referenced shapes, students' ways of thinking and learning encourage the adoption of positive values and habits of mind. These shapes do also encourage learners to be aware of and sensitive to the contexts in which they are located, as well as to broaden their perspective and to develop flexible metacognitive thinking skills.

Current research findings reveal this is not the case, and that some students still leave college having acquired rather limited cognitive skills to meet the challenges of the global community nowadays [29–31].

Therefore, due to the relevance of the inculturation of thinking for the teaching sta ff and the implications for the improvement of their educational action based on university training programmes, the paper provides evidence concerning a validation study of the Eight-Cultural-Forces Scale [22] in a sample of Spanish university students of education.
