sustainability Article Drinking-Related Metacognitive Guidance Contributes to Students’ Expression of Healthy Drinking Principles as Part of Biology Teaching Michal Zion * and Hagit Cohen   Citation: Zion, M.; Cohen, H. Drinking-Related Metacognitive Guidance Contributes to Students’ Expression of Healthy Drinking Principles as Part of Biology Teaching. Sustainability 2021, 13, 1939. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041939 Academic Editor: José Carmelo Adsuar Received: 23 January 2021 Accepted: 8 February 2021 Published: 11 February 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). School of Education, Bar-IIan University, Ramat-Gan 5290002, Israel; hagitc10@gmail.com * Correspondence: michal.zion@biu.ac.il Abstract: Biology education has adopted the goal of educating future generations about sustainable, healthy habits. The current paper focuses on drinking-related nutritional literacy—the characteristic of health education that refers to aspects of healthy drinking: drinking enough water and fewer sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). The study aims to foster school students’ critical thinking about the quality and the quantity of what they drink in everyday life. Facilitating students’ metacognitive awareness was achieved, as they were engaged in a biology learning activity centered on the importance of healthy drinking in everyday life. The study focused on two research questions: 1. What is the contribution of drinking-related metacognitive guidance to the development of metacognitive awareness concerning healthy drinking among students? 2. What is the contribution of drinking-related metacognitive guidance to the way students express the principles and importance of healthy drinking as part of their metacognitive awareness thinking process? The findings indicate a quantitative and qualitative improvement in drinking-related metacognitive awareness among those students who received metacognitive guidance as part of biology teaching. This paper suggests that metacognitive guidance has a significant pedagogical potential to improve sustainable healthy habits among children. Keywords: healthy drinking; metacognition; metacognitive guidance; sugar-sweetened beverages 1. Introduction Overabundance and growing consumerism accompany the rising quality of life in the developed world. One aspect of this is the excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) [1]. Obesity, dental caries, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver, and metabolic syndrome are just some of the harms associated with consuming SSBs [2–4]. In this regard, obesity is considered one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century [5]. People should, therefore, be nutritionally literate about their drinking in order to maintain proper health in the modern world [6]. Biology educators have a vital role in developing the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that enable people to stay healthy [7]. Biology education can relate to health education in two broad aims. The first aim is the learning of those aspects of biology that are essential to one’s well-being. The second is the opportunity for discussion, reflection, and evaluation of one’s understandings of the importance of those aspects of biology that are essential to one’s well-being [8]. The current paper focuses on one aspect of health education—drinking-related nu- tritional literacy, which refers to aspects of healthy drinking: drinking enough water and consuming fewer SSBs. It presents a study in education that aims to foster school students’ critical thinking about the quality and the quantity of what they drink in everyday life to help them lead a healthier lifestyle. Development of critical thinking was achieved by arousing students’ metacognitive awareness, as they were participating in a biology learning activity centered on the importance of healthier drinking in everyday life, an activity that was part of their biology class. The study focused on two research questions: Sustainability 2021, 13, 1939. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041939 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability