This study aims to define the problems and potential theoretical solutions to the problems in an automotive vocational teacher department. This study is part of a comprehensive study about the potential benefits of using the metacognition concept. Metacognition as the concept of learning-how-to-learn is needed for prospective automotive vocational teachers to conduct sustainable learning. This study is a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews (SSI) and a focus group discussion (FGD) to collect the data. Firstly, the SSIs were conducted twice, before and after the FGD. The first SSI explores the problems, while the second SSI was conducted after the FGD to gain a possible contextual solution to the problems based on the result of FGD. Secondly, an FGD was conducted to explore the theoretical solutions to the problems. The findings of the first SSI stated that teaching communication skills and sustainable learning are necessary to be equipped since the automotive technologies in industries have been being developed rapidly from time to time. Those skills were not facilitated well in the teaching and learning activities in the department. The integration into courses of teaching communication and habit of sustainable learning could be the possible solution. The FGD findings stated that the metacognition concept could be brought into teaching and learning to deal with those problems. The second SSI findings said that automotive fault diagnosis learning was chosen as the subject since this is a problem-solving and higher-order thinking subject. Also, the learning tool kit for this subject is still conventional, so it needs to be improved with the metacognition concept.