Metacognition and
Science
Part 2
Erin E. Peters
As I continued looking at the
research on the intersection of metacognition and science instruction, the
reports often commented on the lack of complete metacognitive theory currently developed.
Papers often called for more research to be done in this field so that a more
inclusive picture of the role of metacognition could be established. Keselman found that well-developed instructional lessons
developed by researchers and teachers not only helped students learn content,
but also helped students take more responsibility for their learning by
teaching metacognitive tools within the lesson. Many of the researchers found
that having the opportunity for students to socially construct knowledge was
not only more authentic to the inquiry experience, but it was also a valid way
to gather data about metacognition, since students needed to provide rationale
to their partner for their claims. Kathleen Hogan appeared in the majority of
work that I found. She investigated how groups of students formed conclusions
in inquiry investigations and documented their conversations about their
pathways of reasoning. She also used a protocol called “Thinking Aloud
Together” to elicit conversations between student dyads in order to get a
better idea of how students thought during a science investigation. Dr. Hogan
also looked at how students’ personal metacognitive processes interacted with
the social construction of knowledge and found that students all thought they
constructed their own knowledge, but had different ways of achieving the
construction. In this study, there were twelve participating students and the
number of possible interactions of personal processes with social processes was
more than thirty. The conclusion of her investigation was that the interactions
were so complex that continued research was necessary in order to parse out the
overall interactions. Gijlers and deJong
looked at a more general process of collaboration with middle school students
and found that the students who had more developed metacognitive processes
learned more science content in the time period studied. Most of the other
researchers looked at students in sixth through eight grades, Beeth, Hewson, and Driver looked
at younger students and found that when teachers modeled metacognitive
processes that students were better equipped for independent learning in the
form of inquiry investigations.