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serves to help students’ motivation in the teaching and learning processes. The concept of critical thinking arises from the practice of reflective thinking (Leung & Kember, 2003; Phan, 2007, 2008a), where this construct has been shown to relate positively to students’ academic success (Lee & Loughran, 2000). Critical thinking helps individuals to think and analyse critically about their own learning, and to strive and develop expertise in their areas of professionalism. In the area of teaching and learning, for example, the practice of critical thinking has provided pre-service student teachers with the skills to improve and develop their pedagogical teaching skills. More recently, considerable research interest has been directed towards understanding the process of critical thinking, and how this concept may fit into the main framework of self-regulated learning and motivation (e.g., Leung & Kember, 2003; Phan, 2007, 2009). Further to this research development, researchers in educational psychology have recently acknowledged that motivation and its related constructs may vary in terms of subject area and sociocultural context (Boekaerts, 2001; Heikkilä & Lonka, 2006; Walker, Pressick-Kilborn, Arnold, & Sainsbury, 2004). In view of the important theoretical and educational implications that arise from critical thinking, this article explores how this practice may fit in with the framework of self-regulation. In the first part of this article, I present a theoretical overview of self-regulated learning and the notion of self-regulated learners. This is followed by a discussion pertaining to critical thinking and the impact this practice has on students’ academic learning. In particular, I discuss my research involving critical thinking in the context of educational psychology and the teaching and learning processes. I conclude this article by proposing a conceptualisation that accentuates a possible dialectical relationship between the two theoretical orientations.