Development of an Instrument Designed to Investigate Elements of Science Students’ Metacognition,Self‐Efficacy and Learning Processes: The SEMLI‐S

The development and evaluation of science students’ metacognition, learning processes and self‐efficacy are important for improving science education. This paper reports on the development of an empirical self‐report instrument for providing a measure of students’ metacognition, self‐efficacy and constructivist science learning processes. A review of the range of literature related to metacognition, self‐regulation and constructivist learning processes resulted in the development of an initial bilingual (English and traditional Chinese) instrument composed of 72 items. This instrument was completed by 465 Hong Kong high school students. The data collected were subjected to exploratory factor analysis and Rasch analysis. The subsequent refinement process resulted in a final version of the Self‐Efficacy and Metacognition Learning Inventory—Science (SEMLI‐S) consisting of 30 items that can be used for either analysing and focusing on any or all of its dimensions or for assigning scores to individuals that enable comparison between them in relation to their metacognitive science learning orientations.     

Students' metacognition during an engineering design project

This study evaluated metacognitive changes of three groups of 160 engineering students working on 60 different design projects. Two metacognitive features, cognitive self‐appraisal and cognitive self‐management, were used to indicate students' metacognitive level. The Engineering Design Project Inventory was used to assess students' metacognition. Students were asked to complete the instrument at the early and final stages of the project. Statistical results revealed a significant change in mechanical engineering students' metacognition while engaged in the project. Eighteen themes of responses that described the influencing factors for the change in students' self‐appraisal and 23 themes of responses that described the influencing factors for their self‐management change were identified from two open‐ended questions.     

Thinking Aloud Together: A Test of an Intervention to Foster Students' Collaborative Scientific Reasoning

This study addressed the question of how to increase students' competencies for regulating their co‐construction of knowledge when tackling complex collaborative learning tasks which are increasingly emphasized as a dimension of educational reform. An intervention stressing the metacognitive, regulatory, and strategic aspects of knowledge co‐construction, called Thinking Aloud Together, was embedded within a 12‐week science unit on building mental models of the nature of matter. Four classes of eighth graders received the intervention, and four served as control groups for quantitative analyses. In addition, the interactions of 24 students in eight focal groups were profiled qualitatively, and 12 of those students were interviewed twice. Students who received the intervention gained in metacognitive knowledge about collaborative reasoning and ability to articulate their collaborative reasoning processes in comparison to students in control classrooms, as hypothesized. However, the treatment and control students did not differ either in their abilities to apply their conceptual knowledge or in their on‐line collaborative reasoning behaviors in ways that were attributable to the intervention. Thus, there was a gap between students' metacognitive knowledge about collaborative cognition and their use of collaborative reasoning skills. Several reasons for this result are explored, as are patterns relating students' outcomes to their perspectives on learning science. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 1085–1109, 1999.     

Changing the Metacognitive Orientation of a Classroom Environment to Stimulate Metacognitive Reflection Regarding the Nature of Physics Learning

Problems persist with physics learning in relation to students' understanding and use of representations for making sense of physics concepts. Further, students' views of physics learning and their physics learning processes have been predominantly found to reflect a ‘surface’ approach to learning that focuses on mathematical aspects of physics learning that are often passed on via textbooks and lecture-style teaching. This paper reports on a teacher's effort to stimulate students' metacognitive reflection regarding their views of physics learning and their physics learning processes via a pedagogical change that incorporated the use of a representational framework and metaphors. As a consequence of the teacher's pedagogical change, students metacognitively reflected on their views of physics and their learning processes and some reported changes in their views of what it meant to understand physics and how they might learn and understand physics concepts. The findings provide a basis for further explicit teaching of representational frameworks to students in physics education as a potential means of addressing issues with their physics learning.     

Using metaphor to probe students' conceptions of chemistry learning

Changing students' views of themselves as learners and the learning strategies they use requires methods to make their views regarding teaching, learning and their roles as learners explicit to themselves and to teachers. This was an interpretive study that investigated students' metaphors for themselves as learners within a Year 11 chemistry classroom. Students' metaphors were found to be congruent with their views of learning and their learning processes as evidenced from multiple data sources. In making students' views explicit, metaphors can provide valuable information for practicing teachers and researchers who aim to investigate and enhance students' learning processes and encourage metacognition.     

Developmental patterns of school students' motivational‐ and cognitive‐metacognitive competencies

This study examined the metacognitive developmental patterns of Hong Kong school students. Students rated their own metacognitive competencies by responding to an inventory of six motivational‐ and cognitive‐metacognitive subscales. Results showed that students' metacognitive competencies decreased with age—from primary 4 (age 9) to secondary 5 (age 17)—with a sharp decline noticeable at the primary/secondary school transition. Age had a more powerful effect than gender on students' perception of their metacognitive competencies. This decreasing pattern of Hong Kong students' metacognitive competencies is contrary to the developmental trends found in Western countries. However, the comparatively high academic performance of Hong Kong students also suggests some different recommendations about student learning.     

Changing the metacognitive orientation of a classroom environment to enhance students’ metacognition regarding chemistry learning

Concerns persist regarding science classroom learning environments and the lack of development of students’ metacognition and reasoning processes within such environments. Means of shaping learning environments so that students are encouraged to develop their metacognition are required in order to enhance students’ reasoning and learning. Interventions should account for the nature of the subject material to be learned. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to investigate the efforts of university researchers and a classroom teacher to change the learning environment of a year 11 chemistry classroom. Changes in participants’ perceptions of their learning environment and corresponding changes in their metacognition and associated reasoning are documented. The teacher’s use of language that explicitly targeted students’ metacognitive knowledge altered their metacognition. Students reported changes in their learning environment and an increased awareness of how they considered chemistry might be learned. Classroom environment instruments can act as reliable indicators for monitoring changes in psychosocial dimensions of classroom environments that can be directly related to students’ metacognition.     

Self-Regulating Informational Text Reading Comprehension: Perceptions of Low-Achieving Students

Students who struggle with learning may not have the metacognition needed to support the multiple processes required to understand what is read in informational text. Instruction for these students, therefore, should include methodologies that promote self-regulation of critical thinking processes. Fifty-eight low-achieving students were provided Self-Regulated Strategy Development instruction for the TWA (Think before reading, think While reading, think After reading) strategy approach. Students were explicitly taught to establish goals, self-monitor performance, use positive self-instructions, and self-reinforce. We examined these students' perceptions in regard to application of the self-regulation procedures. Students' worksheets and comments as well as perceptions documented in post-instruction interviews were used to gain insight into students' metacognitive awareness of the self-regulation procedures taught and learned.     

Context-based learning and metacognitive prompts for enhancing scientific text comprehension

ABSTRACT

Context-based learning (CBL), promoting students' scientific text comprehension, and fostering metacognitive skills, plays an important role in science education. Our study involves CBL through comprehension and analysis of adapted scientific articles. We developed a module which integrates metacognitive prompts for guiding students to monitor their understanding and improve their scientific text comprehension. We investigated the effect of these metacognitive prompts on scientific text comprehension as part of CBL in chemistry. About 670 high school chemistry students were randomly divided into three groups exposed to high- and low-intensity CBL. One of the high-intensity groups was also exposed to metacognitive prompts. Research tools included pre- and post-questionnaires aimed at measuring students' conceptual chemistry understanding and metacognitive knowledge in the context of reading strategies, before and after exposure to the CBL. Chemistry understanding was reflected by students' ability to identify the main subject of the adapted article and by explaining concepts both textually and visually. We found that high-intensity CBL combined with metacognitive prompts improved students' chemistry understanding of the adapted scientific articles and the ability to regulate their learning. Our study establishes that reading context-based adapted scientific articles advances students' conceptual chemistry understanding. These gains are strongly amplified by domain-specific metacognitive prompts.     

Improving Design Understandings and Skills through Enhanced Metacognition: Reflective Design Journals

The main aim of this study was to investigate and discover whether going through the process of reflection by keeping reflective design journals (RDJ) enhances architecture students’ metacognition and whether this enhanced metacognition improves their design understandings and skills. The study was a mixed‐methods design and utilised content analysis method to identify the metacognitive actions of the participants. The study also investigated participants’ attitudes towards RDJs and their views regarding the effect of enhanced metacognition on their design understandings and skills. Twenty college students registered to an undergraduate course offered by the department of Architecture participated in the research. The findings of the study revealed that by writing in their RDJs, participants were able to progressively enhance their metacognitive skills and performed several metacognitive actions by using the four main metacognitive strategies: awareness, organisation and planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The results also disclosed that participants found RDJ keeping exceptionally effective and stated that their enhanced metacognition improved their design understanding and abilities.     

“Thinking About Thinking: It's not Just for Philosophers:” Using Metacognitive Journals to Teach and Learn About Constructivism

This article describes how Metacognitive Journals were used to teach prospective early childhood educators about constructivism. We emphasize the importance of modeling constructivist pedagogy and cultivating students' metacognitive potential. We share the effects on our students' learning and on our teaching. We also offer recommendations for teacher educators to incorporate Metacognitive Journals in their practice     

Understanding the Greenhouse Effect by Embodiment – Analysing and Using Students' and Scientists' Conceptual Resources

Over the last 20 years, science education studies have reported that there are very different understandings among students of science regarding the key aspects of climate change. We used the cognitive linguistic framework of experientialism to shed new light on this valuable pool of studies to identify the conceptual resources of understanding climate change. In our study, we interviewed 35 secondary school students on their understanding of the greenhouse effect and analysed the conceptions of climate scientists as drawn from textbooks and research reports. We analysed all data by metaphor analysis and qualitative content analysis to gain insight into students' and scientists' resources for understanding. In our analysis, we found that students and scientists refer to the same schemata to understand the greenhouse effect. We categorised their conceptions into three different principles the conceptions are based on: warming by more input, warming by less output, and warming by a new equilibrium. By interrelating students' and scientists' conceptions, we identified the students' learning demand: First, our students were afforded with experiences regarding the interactions of electromagnetic radiation and CO₂. Second, our students reflected about the experience-based schemata they use as source domains for metaphorical understanding of the greenhouse effect. By uncovering the—mostly unconscious—deployed schemata, we gave students access to their source domains. We implemented these teaching guidelines in interventions and evaluated them in teaching experiments to develop evidence-based and theory-guided learning activities on the greenhouse effect.     

The role of metacognition in the context of integrated strategy intervention

In the present study, the role of metacognition in the context of integrated strategy intervention was examined. The integrated strategy training in reading comprehension, mathematics, and metacognition was carried out over a period of seven months with young 9–10-years-old, 3rd grade elementary school students with learning problems. A pretest-post test design with matched intervention and control groups was applied. Before the intervention, these students and all their classmates had been followed up through 1st to 3rd grade, and tested with multiple cognitive and metacognitive tasks each year. The results showed that early, 1st grade, cognitive-metacognitive differences were strongly associated with later problem solving and reading comprehension proficiency, thus confirming the importance of reading comprehension strategies and metacognition in mathematical problem solving. Further, marked training effects were found. The growth of metacognitive awareness, experiences and self-regulation were observed on the basis of behaviour analyses during the intervention and of post-intervention interviews. However, despite significant training effects, students who were resistant and those who were responsive to training were identified. The results showed that early metacognitive proficiency is closely associated with the responsiveness to training efforts. The nature of metacognitive experiences and the early teaching of metacognitive awareness and self-regulation are emphasised in the conclusions.     

Enhanced monitoring accuracy and test performance: Incremental effects of judgment training over and above repeated testing

From a self-regulated learning perspective, adequate monitoring of own learning processes and outcomes is crucial to regulate one's own learning effectively. Research on metacognitive judgments, however, clearly indicates that students frequently overestimate their actual performance. Therefore, the present study with N = 209 undergraduate students aimed to support students in developing accurate judgments in order to improve learning processes and, eventually, performance. A quasi-experimental design with three conditions (metacognitive training, testing, and control) and five testing sessions was implemented. In addition to repeated testing plus individual feedback in the testing group, students in the metacognitive training group received psychoeducation, made item-specific judgments, and were given feedback. Over and above the positive effects of repeated testing, metacognitive training positively influenced several monitoring accuracy scores (bias, absolute accuracy, and specificity) and students' performance. Moreover, the metacognitive training group exhibited a nonlinear interindividual decrease in overconfidence. Overall, the study provided considerable evidence that monitoring accuracy and performance can be improved by means of judgment training.     

Cueing Metacognition to Improve Researching and Essay Writing in a Final Year High School Biology Class

This paper reports on degrees of awareness and use of specific metacognitive strategies by 16 students in a final-year high school biology class in New Zealand. The aims of the intervention were to broaden students' thinking about bioethical issues associated with cancer and to enhance students' use of metacognition. Cues and prompts were used in this unit of work to help students use metacognitive strategies since students did not generally use metacognitive strategies spontaneously. Scaffolding was mediated through the teacher modelling, questioning, cueing or prompting students to evaluate their learning. The research reported here illustrates how teachers can cue students to be more self-directed in their learning. Three case studies illustrate how learning strategies were used differentially. Most students were aware of strategies that could help them to learn more effectively. It was found that those students who were not only aware of but also used strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their work, produced essays of higher quality.     

Knowing and teaching science: the constructivist paradox

This paper addresses the parallel between the changes in students' and teachers' learning advocated by constructivist science educators. It begins with a summary of the epistemology of constructivism and uses a vignette drawn from a set of case studies to explore the impact of a constructivist science in‐service programme on an experienced and formal elementary science teacher. Judged by constructivist standards, the teacher described in the vignette makes very little progress. The irony of applying a constructivist critique to his work, however, is that it fails to treat the teachers' imperfect knowledge of teaching with the same respect as constructivists treat students' imperfect learning of science. The remainder of the paper explores this constructivist paradox, and suggests that‐like students' knowledge of science‐teachers' knowledge of constructivist science teaching is likely to grow through slow and gradual re‐formation of their established understanding of classroom theory and practice.     

The interplay of scientific epistemological views,learning strategies,and attitudes of college students

This paper focuses on research that illustrates the important interplay between students' scientific epistemological views and their learning strategies. We address the problem of facilitating meaningful science learning as contrasted to rote memorization, which is practiced by many students and encouraged by instructional and evaluation practices. We show that when metacognitive tools are used to facilitate meaningful learning, positive consequences in learning of subject matter, attitudes toward science, and epistemological views can emerge. Positivistic epistemology continues to be the subtle enemy to encouraging meaningful learning and constructivist views of the nature of science and knowing. If you're a scientist, you can say that all knowledge is scientific and everything can be based on fact and experiment. I've taken so many science classes that I've started to believe that.     

Primary school students' metacognitive beliefs about religious education

So far scholars have researched beliefs about knowledge, knowing, and learning mainly in the areas of science and mathematics and among secondary school students. In this article, we explore primary school students' metacognitive beliefs about religious education. The article reports on a study involving 656 fifth- and sixth-grade students. We investigated their metacognitive beliefs, how these beliefs interrelate, and which students agree with which beliefs. In the minds of young students 7 categories are discernible: realistic learning, the transformative power of religion, social learning, intrinsic task value motivation, learning satisfaction motivation, the teacher's empathic orientation to learning, and the teacher's respect for students' contributions. These categories and their interrelationships open up new perspectives for the construction of a metacognitive beliefs system and for an interconnected network of beliefs across domains. We also outline implications for religious education in schools.     

Parents’ Metacognitive Knowledge: Influences on Parent–Child Interactions in a Science Museum Setting

Despite science learning in settings such as science museums being recognized as important and given increasing attention in science education circles, the investigation of parents’ and their children’s metacognition in such settings is still in its infancy. This is despite an individual’s metacognition being acknowledged as an important influence on their learning within and across contexts. This research investigated parents’ metacognitive procedural and conditional knowledge, a key element of their metacognition, related to (a) what they knew about how they and their children thought and learned, and (b) whether this metacognitive knowledge influenced their interactions with their children during their interaction with a moderately complex simulation in a science museum. Parents reported metacognitive procedural and conditional knowledge regarding their own and their children’s thinking and learning processes. Further, parents were aware that this metacognitive knowledge influenced their interactions with their children, seeing this as appropriate pedagogical action for them within the context of the particular exhibit and its task requirements at the science museum, and for the child involved. These findings have implications for exhibit and activity development within science museum settings.     

Children's self‐regulated learning profile in language and mathematics: The role of task value beliefs

This study explored the self‐regulated learning (SRL) profile of upper elementary (fifth and sixth grade) school children who were differentiated in their task value beliefs (low and high) in language and mathematics. Students' SRL profile involved their teachers' ratings of achievement outcomes and SRL behaviors. The subscale of task value beliefs from the Motivational Self‐Regulated Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was administered to the children, and their teachers completed a battery of scales and measurements concerning students' achievement and SRL behaviors. The results confirm previous evidence indicating that SRL involves high levels of motivation, metacognition, and strategic action. Furthermore, the results support the domain‐specific character of task value beliefs. Differences in teachers' evaluations about the achievement outcomes and SRL behaviors regarding the two groups of students (low and high in task value beliefs) were found significant mostly in the domain of mathematics. Students with high value beliefs in mathematics were described as more cognitively, metacognitively, and motivationally competent learners as compared to students with lower value beliefs. The results suggest that future intervention studies should focus on strengthening task value beliefs in “threatening” school subjects, such as mathematics, from the elementary school years. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.