Running Head: NOS AS A METACOGNTIVE TOOL
Proposal
The Effect of Nature of Science Metacognitive Prompts on Science Students’ Content and Nature of Science Knowledge, Metacognition, and Self-Regulatory Efficacy
Erin E. Peters
EDEP 654: Learning, Motivation, and Self-Regulation
Dr. Anastasia Kitsantas
Spring 2006
The Effect of Nature of Science Metacognitive Prompts on Science Students’ Content and Nature of Science Knowledge, Metacognition, and Self-Regulatory Efficacy
One of the most prominent reforms in science education in the past ten years is inquiry science (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993). Educators who teach inquiry science are striving to improve student understandings and explanations about the real world. In other words, inquiry science is the enactment of the nature of science. Too often, inquiry science is taught as either the scientific method or as “hands-on,” disconnected activities (Bybee, 2004). Science is usually transmitted in the classroom as a rigid body of facts to be accumulated, instead of a way of knowing (vanDriel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001). National documents such as the National Science Education Standards (1996) or The Benchmarks for Science Literacy (1993), written for the audience of science teachers, tend to give ambiguous guidelines for teaching science inquiry. In the current environment of standards-based education, it is easy for science teachers to slip into the mode of disseminating information rather than teaching the ways of knowing that categorize the discipline of science (Duschl, 1990). McComas, Almazroa, and Clough (1998) call for a more prominent role of the nature of science in curriculum to be explicitly taught for maximum effectiveness, although specific suggestions for implementations in the classroom have not been offered.
Research
Problem
Authentic inquiry in a classroom requires the teacher to understand how science operates as a discipline (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; National Research Council, 1996). If the teacher does not understand how knowledge is obtained and verified as scientific knowledge, then inquiry in the classroom is limited to teaching process skills rather than knowledge about science. If a teacher understands the nature of science, he or she is better able to pose questions to students about why they are doing process skills as well as establishing an environment that allows students to construct meaningful scientific knowledge.
The nature of science can be understood as the culture of science. Scientists have inherent, agreed upon processes and assumptions (Lederman, 1999) that help them to construct meaningful knowledge. For example, workbench scientists use their creativity and inquire to expand the current scientific body of knowledge. Workbench scientists present their findings to professional scientists for verification (Magnusson, Palinscar, & Templin, 2004). In this way scientists work as a community to uphold the processes and assumptions that comprise the nature of science.
Many
teachers have only a surface understanding of how science operates as a
discipline (Abd-El-Khalick & Akerson, 2004; Akerson, Abd-El-Khalick &
Lederman, 2000; Bianchini & Colburn, 2000; Chin & Brown, 2000). Allow
me to use the metaphor of travel to illustrate the implications of teachers’
practical knowledge about the discipline of science. If someone from
.
Purpose
of the Study
The attempt to teach the nature of science didactically is a futile one. Students need to think deeply about the nature of science in order to have more that a rote understanding of the discipline of science. Teaching the nature of science out of the context of scientific knowledge and inquiry does not give students access to the important connection between scientific knowledge and knowledge about science. Research shows that teaching teachers about the nature of science by didactic, disconnected or implicit means has limited success (Abd-El-Khalick & Akerson, 2004). Even teachers with an elaborate understanding of the nature of science and who are motivated to teach their students about the nature of science have unproductive outcomes when trying to explicitly identify aspect of the nature of science during inquiry activities (Akerson, Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000). Abd-El-Khalick and Akerson (2006) have done preliminary work on developing metacognitive strategies to elicit pre-service elementary teachers’ conceptions of the nature of science through concept maps, interviews, and scenarios. Their preliminary work has shown to have some promise in getting teachers to explain their views on the nature of science. The purpose of this study is to better understand if students can be trained to think about their scientific thinking processes through a series of developmental steps leading to independent student metacognition about aspects of the nature of science.
Students who are self-regulated are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning process (Zimmerman, 1989). Metacognition is the ability to think about and evaluate your own thinking processes (Brown, 1987) and is a part of being a self-regulated learner (Zimmerman, 1989). In order to accomplish the goal of learning about the nature of science, students can perform an inquiry activity and think about why they are conducting certain processes and evaluate their thinking in terms of the way a scientist might think about the processes and outcomes. Most research in the field of metacognition and science has been focused on allowing students to conduct scientific activities and listening to group conversations or asking students to talk aloud about their thinking. These are passive activities and do not give the students the modeling they may need to understand the aspects of the nature of science. A typical student is not exposed to the culture of science, so the teacher needs to provide the scaffolding that will illustrate how scientists think and operate. Metacognitive prompts built from the identified aspects of the nature of science (McComas, Almazroa & Clough, 1998) will give teachers a vehicle to scaffold scientific thinking to students who are underexposed to this type of thinking. Actively prompting students to evaluate their scientific thinking brings them closer to authentic scientific inquiry.
Developing metacognitive skills should also be an explicit activity in the science classroom and should focus on personal, behavioral and environmental influences on learning understood through social cognitive theory (Zimmerman, 2000). Research shows that self-regulated skills can be developed through four stages: observation, emulation, self-control and self-regulation (Zimmerman, 2000). Observation entails vicarious induction from a proficient model. In the case of an inquiry unit exploring electricity and magnetism, a teacher can ask students to observe by placing a sample observation in the laboratory worksheet. For example, when asked to rub objects together to make static electricity, this statement should be included in the laboratory worksheet as a proficient model. “Observation: Rubbing the silk on the glass 50 times produces more sparks when pulled the silk was pulled from the glass than silk rubbed on glass only 10 times. This is a sample of what a scientist might write about this exploration.” Emulation is an imitation of the general pattern of the model. Students can be prompted to emulate the observation the scientist made. “Now use the silk and glass to create static electricity and write an observation using the scientist’s as a pattern.” Self-control shows a guided practice of the mental skill. Students should practice writing an observation and compare it to a similar observation made by a scientist. “Rub the wool and plastic to produce static electricity and write an observation of your findings.” After the student writes an observation, they can be presented with a checklist of the factors a scientist would consider in making the observation: 1) The observation can be reproduced by another person, 2) there is no judgment in my observation (this is good, bad, ugly), 3) my observation has qualities that are measurable (such a standard measuring system, not relative such as big or small), 4) my observation is descriptive (no pronouns such as it), 5) I would be able to understand my observation months or years from now. Self-regulation is the adaptive use of the mental skill. Students at this stage should be able to explain their thinking in terms of a scientific way of knowing. An example of a metacognitive prompt at this level would be “Are your observations relevant to the purpose of the investigation?” A student at this level should be able to think about and evaluate their ideas according to a scientific way of knowing. Since metacognition is a part of self-regulation, the four stages can be adopted to help students think like scientists. Instead of just asking questions that prompt metacognition and hoping students will think deeply, students should be gradually scaffolded to the ultimate goal of metacognition using observation, emulation, self-control and self-regulation.
Significance
of the Study
The culture of science is passed down from generation to generation through science classes. If each generation receives the idea that science is a body of knowledge and has no access to the nature of science, knowledge about how science generates and verifies knowledge will no longer be part of the public’s understanding of science. Education has a responsibility to teach students how to think like a scientist in order to continue to be progressive, critical thinkers in our technological future.
To date, few specific, measurably successful suggestions for pedagogy resulting in a deeper understanding of science have been proposed (Akerson & Abd-El-Khalick, 2003; Beeth & Hewson, 1999; Davis, 2003). This study attempts to draw from the understandings found in the literature regarding the nature of science, metacognitive processes and self-regulatory processes. Recently there has been convergence in the literature about the important aspects of the nature of science, and this study attempts to implement the seven identified aspects of the nature of science in learning modules to guide student thinking processes to become more scientific. This study also incorporates findings from recent literature that metacognitive prompts often do not aid student thinking if the student does not have the skills to think metacognitively (Davis, 2003), and operationalizes Zimmerman’s ideas that four stages can be used to train self-regulation. This study extends Zimmerman’s ideas into the realm of metacognition. The results of this study could illustrate processes and interactions that will help scaffold metacognitive thinking to naïve scientific thinkers.
The field of the
nature of science still requires a great deal of exploration. In order to fully
understand how people learn such as esoteric subject as the nature of science
there needs to be more dialogue between the scientific community and science
teachers (Glason & Bentley, 2000), more understanding of student views of
the nature of science (Zeidler, Walker, Ackett & Simmons, 2002), and more
understanding of how teachers who have a sophisticated view of the nature of
science can incorporate these ideas into classroom practice. Several
researchers have begun to take a non-traditional view of the nature of science
in order to expose some of the mechanisms to understanding. Wong (2002)
suggests that science educators and science education researchers abandon the
search for commonalities in the nature of science and begin to embrace the
diversity of the nature of science in order to translate ideas to the
classroom.
Conceptual
Framework
Defining the Nature of Science.
The nature of science has been defined by Lederman (1992) as the values and beliefs inherent to the development of scientific knowledge. In the past, there was not a consensus on what elements of the nature of science were important to teach, but in the past ten years researchers have converged on aspects of the nature of science, and more recently there has been an agreement on the elements of the nature of science (McComas et al., 1998). The literature converges on seven aspects of the nature of science that defines science as a discipline: a) scientific knowledge is durable, yet tentative, b) empirical evidence is used to support ideas in science, c) social and historical factors play a role in the construction of scientific knowledge, d) laws and theories play a central role in developing scientific knowledge, yet they have different functions, e) accurate record keeping, peer review and replication of experiments help to validate scientific ideas, f) science is a creative endeavor, and g) science and technology are not the same, but they impact each other (McComas, 2004). The majority of the educational research dealing with the nature of science is in agreement with the aspects, but disagrees with what constitutes knowledge of the nature of science Some researchers envision student knowledge of the nature of science as explicit description of the aspects, while others judge student knowledge to be more implicit in their reasoning (Bybee, 2004; Deboer, 2004). Evidence of these aspects of the nature of science as the foundation for how science operates as a discipline can be found in science education research journals, books about the philosophy and epistemology of science, and practitioner handbooks.
Preservice Teachers’ Concepts of the
Nature of Science.
The majority of the recent research in the nature of science lies in examining teacher conceptions regarding the nature of science and how this translates to students through inquiry activities. This research attempts to provide guidance to further the development of successful teacher training programs designed to move the scientific education community to more of an understanding of science as both factual knowledge and how the factual knowledge is built and away from an understanding of science as solely a body of factual knowledge.
Much
of the focus of research projects is on pre-service teachers, and many of these
studies have shown to be only moderately, if at all, effective. In a study
focusing on preservice science teachers who had naïve views of the nature of
science, researchers provided an intervention that consisted of explicit
reflective instruction on the nature of science that showed to be somewhat
effective. The main influences on success were motivation, cognition and
worldview of the preservice teacher (Abd-El-Khalick & Akerson, 2004). In a
similar study, elementary preservice teachers who held naïve views on the nature
of science gained substantially in targeted nature of science concepts except
subjective and social aspects of the nature of science (Akerson &
Abd-El-Khalick, 2000). Some success in learning aspects of the nature of
science was found in a study where preservice teachers learned first about the
nature of science and then separately learned how to teach the elements of the
nature of science in their instruction (
Explicit Instruction of the Nature
of Science.
Many of the studies regarding the nature of science reported gains in teacher understanding through interventions involving explicit instruction. In an action research study, an experienced teacher worked with an experienced researcher to identify aspects of the nature of science taught in an inquiry activity. The study found that it was difficult to present cogent and coherent instruction on the nature of science through inquiry and illustrated the teacher’s pivotal role in designing class discussions in what science is and how scientists work (Bianchini & Colburn, 2000). Some success in teaching preservice elementary teachers was found in an intervention that involved explicit instruction in the nature of science. Participants of the study views changed from science as primarily a body of knowledge to a more appropriate blended view of science as a body of knowledge generated through active application of science inquiry (Gess-Newsome, 2002). In a comparative study, researchers taught the same science content to two groups of inservice teachers. The control group received only implicit instruction of the nature of science via the content, and the experimental group received explicit instruction of the nature of science. The control group showed no gains in knowledge of the nature of science, but the experimental group showed significant gains (Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002). Although it is intuitive to think that just by conducting inquiry that students will understand how scientists operate, there is a body of research that demonstrates explicit instruction in the nature of science has been found to be more effective.
Comparing Scientists’ Thinking with Student
Thinking.
A purpose of inquiry is to provide opportunities for students to reason scientifically in a way that is authentic to the practice of science. Hogan and Maglienti (2001) examine the criteria that middle school students, non-scientist adults, and scientists use to rate the validity of conclusions drawn by hypothetical students. The 45 volunteer participants in this study were 24 eighth graders, 21 non-scientist adults drawn from one workplace, and 16 science professionals. Students’ achievement level was assessed using a five-level scale and the adults’ achievement level was inferred from their credentials which were documented on a questionnaire. Each participant evaluated 10 conclusions that hypothetical students made based on a given body of evidence. The participants were interviewed, probing for their criteria for determining a valid conclusion. Analyses focused primarily on how participants explained and justified their ratings of each conclusion, from which a coding scheme was developed. The responses of students and non-scientists differed from the responses of scientists because the scientists emphasized criteria of empirical consistency or plausibility in the conclusions. The study found gaps in the processes of reasoning that scientists and non-scientists, including students, used to build new knowledge and that the levels of rigor and specificity were lower with the non-scientists. New ways of teaching students how to think conceptually like scientists are needed for progress to be made in this area (Hogan and Maglienti, 2001).
Translating Knowledge of the Nature
of Science into Classroom Practice.
Even
with modest gains in understanding of the nature of science, teachers still
fail in translating this knowledge into classroom practice. A study of a group
of preservice teachers with adequate knowledge of the nature of science showed
that there was not much instruction involving the nature of science due to a
preoccupation with classroom management and the mandated curriculum
(Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Lederman, 1998). In a study involving preservice
teachers in
Teacher Competence in the Nature of Science.
There is consensus about the more important features of the nature of science, and there is insight to some of the factors that contribute to developing an understanding of the nature of science in teachers. These include experience in science teaching, an active role in translating nature of science knowledge into classroom practice, and explicit instruction of the concepts of the nature of science. Beginning science teachers do not have the experience to develop a set of knowledge and beliefs, which is usually consistent with how teachers act in practice (van Driel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001).
The next step is to examine the research that looks for ways to develop teacher competence in the nature of science. One study examined inservice teacher for factors involved in competence in teaching the nature of science (Bartholomew & Osborne, 2004). They found five critical domains necessary for competence 1) ) teachers knowledge and understanding of the nature of science , 2) teachers conceptions of their own role in the classroom, 3) teachers’ use of discourse, 4) teachers’ conceptions of learning goals, and 5) the nature of classroom activities. Bartholomew and Osborne developed a continuum that helps to identify the amount of competence teachers have in each of the domains. Teachers continue to develop their views of the nature of science through their professional experiences (Nott & Wellington, 1998), so continuous, quality professional development may be key in emergent competence in teacher knowledge of the nature of science. A professional development activity involving the communication of recent developments in the field of biotechnology by scientists to teachers showed that scientists demonstrated a strong commitment to empiricism and experimental design, but not necessarily the nature of science (Glason & Bentley, 2000). Developing a competence in teaching the nature of science is indeed a complicated endeavor when the scientific community itself has difficulty in expressing the nature of science comprehensively.
Self-regulated learning can be used as an instructional tool to relate the aspects of the nature of science to students. Zimmerman (1998) has identified three socially mediated levels that contribute to a person’s self-regulatory strategies: behavior, person, and environment. A person behaves within an environment and reacts (self) based on the consequences of his or her behavior. Several measures of academic success have shown improvement using self-regulated learning strategies (Zimmerman, 1989). Among these measures are strategy use (Pressley, Borkowski & Schneider, 1987; Weinstein & Underwood, 1985), intrinsic motivation (Ryan, Connell & Deci, 1984), the self-system (McCombs, 1986), academic studying (Thomas & Rohwer, 1986), classroom interaction (Rohrkember, 1989; Wang & Peverly, 1986), use of instructional media (Henderson, 1986), metacognitive engagement (Corno & Mandinach, 1983), and self-monitoring learning (Ghatala, 1986; Paris, Cross & Lipson, 1984). One reason that teachers as well as students have difficulty understanding the nature of science is their lack of exposure to the same inherent ways of knowing as a scientist (Hogan, 2000). Self-regulated learning strategies could provide a framework that can scaffold naïve views of the nature of science to more developed views of the nature of science.
Student Understanding of the Nature
of Science.
Investigations into student understanding of the nature of science originate in different realms, but tend to converge on the same finding, that students need to experience cognitive dissonance in order to eliminate archaic conceptions of the nature of science. When students were presented with discrepant events in a long-term setting, their notions of the nature of science began to conform to professional scientists’ understanding of the nature of science (Clough, 1997). Students in another classroom instructed in canonical understanding of science did not show maturity in their understanding of the nature of science, but after incorporating student ideas, including exploration of misconceptions, into instruction the students showed gains in their understanding of the nature of science (Akerson, Flick, & Lederman, 2000). Hogan (2000) suggests that science education researchers can gain a better understanding of how students operationalize the nature of science by dividing up their knowledge into two categories: distal knowledge, how students understand formal scientific knowledge, and proximal knowledge, how students understand their own personal beliefs and commitments in terms of science. Hogan believes that by seeing how the two categories of knowledge intersect, researchers can gain access into how to better develop student understanding of the nature of science.
Information about how students acquire knowledge during discovery learning processes is important to examine due to the social nature of science inquiry and use of the nature of science. Giljers and de Jong (2005) conducted a study investigating the relationship between prior knowledge and students’ collaborative discovery learning processes. In this study, 15 pairs or dyads of students 15 and 16 years old worked on a discovery learning task in the field of physics. The students took pretests probing their generic and definitional knowledge of physics. Students then worked in pairs on a computer assisted unit where they were instructed to talk with their partner. The face-to-face discussions were recorded and analyzed first for utterances, a distinct message from one student to another, then categorized as on-task or off-task. The off-task utterances were not considered in the study, and the on-task communication was categorized as technical, regulative, or transformative. All transformative communication was further analyzed. Interrater reliability was found at 95%. The analysis was discussed in terms of learner hypothesis, contains all propositions, variables and relations the learner can use, and learner domain space, which represents what the learner thinks is true or possibly true. The findings show if both students assume the proposition was true and it was not, it is more difficult to resolve the misconception. If the zone of proximal knowledge was ideal within the dyad, then the pair was more successful in the discovery task, but if high ability students are paired with low ability students, the zone is too distant, and the low ability student does not benefit from the dyad communication. The implication for teachers from this study is that the teacher must observe group processes and intervene when frustrating situations occur.
In another study of student understanding of the nature of science, it was found that students views depended greatly on moral and ethical issues, rather than in newly presented material (Zeidler, Walker, Ackett, & Simmons, 2002). Instead of changing their archaic notions of the nature of science, students tended to hang on to their prior understandings even when presented with conflicting information. Undergraduate science majors were found to change their conceptions of the nature of science during a long-term project that offered many opportunities to discover conflicting information (Ryer, Leach, & Driver, 1999). It appears from the research that students will change their conceptions of the nature of science to more sophisticated through long-term exposure to discrepant information, but before that can be accomplished more information about student processes in learning the nature of science is needed.
Self-regulated learning strategies play an important role in improving students’ understandings through active developmental phases: observation, emulation, self-control, and self-regulation. Observation occurs when a student notes the process of a model throughout a specific task. The emulation phase occurs when a student attempts to try to be like the model and receives support. The self control-phase occurs when the student independently uses the strategy in similar contexts and the self-regulation phase occurs when the student can adapt the use of the strategy across changing conditions (Zimmerman, 2000). It has been shown that student understanding cannot occur passively (Akerson, Flick, & Lederman, 2000; Ryer, Leach, & Driver, 1999), so an intervention is suited to evoke student cognitive change regarding conceptions of the nature of science. The developmental nature of self-regulated learning can aid in progressing naïve student views of the nature of science.
Attempts to Measure Understanding of
the Nature of Science.
Many of the instruments used in the studies regarding the nature of science tend to be objective, pencil and paper assessments which subsequently changed into more descriptive instruments. Toward the end of the 1990’s several researchers make arguments that traditional paper and pencil assessments would not be adequate in fully explaining what needs to be known about teacher and student conceptions of the nature of science (Lederman, Wade, & Bell, 1998). Researchers responded to this argument by conducting interviews along with surveys or by including several open-ended questions on surveys in order to get more descriptive data. Several versions of an instrument originally developed by Lederman, the Views of Nature of Science (VNOS), have been used mostly by the researchers who focus on preservice teachers. Items in this instrument ask teachers to explain scientific activities in their classroom. Researchers then use a rubric to identify when teachers explicitly mention one of the seven identified aspects of the nature of science. Other instruments have been developed to be more descriptive in explaining student achievement in the nature of science such as Scientific Inquiry Capabilities and Scientific Discovery (Zachos, Hick, Doane, & Seargent, 2000). Although the objective, pencil and paper assessments have been altered to include more description of mechanisms, there is still a need for improved assessments regarding both the teacher and student understandings of the nature of science.
Influences of Epistemology of
Science on Instruction.
The way a teacher understands science as a way of knowing greatly influences how the teacher implements instruction and how the students perceive the discipline of science (DeSautels & Larochelle, 2005). Teachers often set up discourse in science as a pattern of question asking, students answer questions and teacher evaluates the student answer (Lemke, 1990). When teachers establish such attitudes toward science, they evoke the idea that science is a collection of final facts and that learning science is the accumulation of these facts. Students learn that academic success depends upon finding the one correct answer that a teacher is expecting. When students are trained to believe that there is only one correct answer, they have difficulty conceptualizing that science is creative and open-ended. Even when the teacher assures students that there are a myriad of ways to answer science questions, they tend to revert back to the didactic model of learning (Peters, 2006). Students who are expected to conceptualize the nature of science need to experience the learning of science as open-ended (Duschl, 1990). Novice teachers tend to depend on the didactic model of teaching until they gain enough experience to teach students a more open way of learning. Meyer (2004) found novice teachers discussed knowledge as if it was a static object, and learning was an accumulation of more bits of information while expert teachers took a more complex view of scientific knowledge. Clearly teachers must actively work against a didactic model of teaching and learning so that knowledge about the nature of science is aligned to the underpinnings of the epistemology in the classroom.
Defining Metacognition.
Metacognition
can be defined as the executive functions that control actions or the ability
to recognize thinking patterns and evaluate them (Weinert, 1987). There has
been some evidence that developing metacognition can enhance the incorporation
of content knowledge in students. Students were better able to recognize the
importance of knowing a few key species in the study of ecology and to be able
to use the language of ecology to help them describe and discuss ecology
because metacognitive cues were incorporated into lessons (Magntorn &
Hellden, 2005). Question-based reflective verbalization, another form of
metacognitive prompting, requires students to describe, explain, and evaluate a
finished design solution to another person and leads to significant
improvements in the solution quality (Wetzstein & Hacker, 2004). Veenman,
Kok and Blote (2005) performed a study to establish to what extent
metacognitive skill is associated with intelligence and the impact that prompts
may have on developing metacognitive skills. The participants were 41 students
in the age of 12-13 years from a small middle-class town in the
Teachers who are asked to develop authentic science activities for students often interpret science instruction as a series of often disconnected hands-on lesson which in and of themselves do not guarantee student understanding. Using a process called Metacognitive Learning Cycle emphasizes formal opportunities for teachers and students to talk about their science ideas, forming a feedback loop that informs the development of scientific ideas. One study tested the effectiveness of the Metacognitive Learning Cycle by setting up a control group and an experimental group. There was no significance difference in ecological understanding across two treatment groups, but delayed post test mean scores were higher with Metacognitive Learning Cycle group than with control group (Blank, 2000).
Many
of the studies in the literature regarding metacognition depend on the
spontaneous production of metacognitive skills. Developmental prompts aiding
metacognitive skills will be used in the proposed study, so studies involving
the usefulness of prompts must inform the proposed study.
Self-regulation can help students monitor their learning progress accurately through frequent feedback. Self-regulated learners adopt learning orientation, whereas naïve learners adopt performance orientation (Zimmerman, 1998). By giving students metacognitive tools to check if they are thinking like scientists in an inquiry activity, students may be able to progress from performance orientation to learning orientation. Naïve self-regulators seldom verbalize and are unaware of imagery as a guide and tend to rely on the results from trial-and-error experiences to implement new methods of learning (Costa, Calderia, Gallastegui & Otero, 2000). Skillful self-regulators attribute negatively evaluated outcomes mainly to strategy use, learning method, or insufficient practice, where naïve learners tend to attribute them to ability limitations. Students can be taught positive self-regulations feedback loops by teachers who have access to metacognitive prompts that promote the nature of science.
Literature in metacognition emphasizes the lack of consensus on the mechanisms by which epistemological factors influence student learning (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000, Hogan, 2000, DeSautels & Larochelle, 2005). More research in developing a thinking strategy or ethic to evaluate the scientific merit of information can change how students develop their scientific way of knowing. Many instructors attempt to teach scientific thinking veiled as the scientific method, which is limiting the way students construct epistemologies regarding the nature of science. A large quantity of research cited earlier illustrates student and teacher tendency to cling to prior ideas regardless of contradiction by new data. Cognitive change can be invoked through deep processes such as metacognition. More research in this field will help to produce more fully informed ideas on how epistemological factors influence student learning.
Nature of Science as a Metacognitive Resource.
The aspects of the nature of science can be useful in helping students to think about their epistemology. Examining the nature of science can supply characteristics that distinguish science from other ways of knowing and explicitly help students scrutinize their rationale in forming ideas (Duschl, Hamilton, & Grandy, 1992). Teachers can utilize these characteristics in their lessons to help students to examine the information they know and think about how student knowledge is scientific. Educational researchers studying metacognition are in agreement that traditional methods of teaching do not allow students to demonstrate all of their knowledge about science (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000).
The field of the nature of science still requires a great deal of exploration. In order to fully understand how people learn such as esoteric subject as the nature of science there needs to be more dialogue between the scientific community and science teachers (Glasson & Bentley, 2000), more understanding of student views of the nature of science (Zeidler et al., 2002), and more understanding of how teachers who have a sophisticated view of the nature of science can incorporate these ideas into classroom practice. Bell and Lederman (2000) studied scientists who had sophisticated but different views on the nature of science to see how they made decisions based on their views. Their research showed no differences in decision making because the scientists made their professional decisions based on personal values, morals/ethics and social concerns.
Literature in metacognition emphasizes the lack of consensus on how epistemological factors influence student learning (Brown, 1987). More research in developing a thinking strategy or ethic to evaluate the scientific merit of information can change how students develop their scientific way of knowing. Many instructors attempt to teach scientific thinking veiled as the scientific method, which is limiting the way students construct epistemologies regarding the nature of science. Cognitive change can be invoked through deep processes such as metacognition (Flavell, 1987). More research in this field will help to produce more fully informed ideas on how epistemological factors influence student learning.
Socially Constructed Knowledge
through Thinking Aloud.
Methods of teaching that allow students to construct knowledge socially are helpful in developing deeper meaning because thought processes of students are exposed and are easier to understand (Gijlers & de Jong, 2005; Hogan 1999). Social construction of knowledge also aids students in recognizing the processes involved in developing scientific arguments such as cultural experience in scientific communities (Hogan, & Maglienti, 2001). Several studies revolve around an exemplary teacher who uses status words to help students evaluate the scientific merit of their knowledge (Beeth, 1998; Beeth & Hewson, 1999). Some of the techniques of the exemplary teacher are not transferable, but the method she uses to develop student ideas with status words is transferable to other teachers. Intelligibility is the primary criteria students use to determine if an idea makes sense to them. If students find the idea to be intelligible, then they are asked to see if the idea is plausible. To be plausible means that the idea correlates to students’ own experiences or experiences they have heard about. The last criteria, the most difficult to determine, is fruitfulness. If the idea can be transferred to different applications, then the idea is fruitful. Some of the research suggests that these strategies are useful for elementary students, but attempts to use them with middle school students were not as successful (Beeth, 1998; Beeth & Hewson, 1999). More sophisticated structures may be needed to elicit social construction of knowledge for middle school students. Four-Phase EMPNOS intervention attempts to develop a more refined, explicit structure to elicit social construction of knowledge through overt metacognitive processes.
Argumentation in the Construction of
Scientific Understanding.
Another camp of researchers sees the chief metacognitive tool as argumentation, as it is central to the presentation of scientific information. Research from this area has shown that written reports of scientific knowledge do not necessarily indicate the totality of student knowledge (Chin, 2000). Students who use written, visual and oral presentations of information are the methods that are most successful in showing the depth of student knowledge, but teachers do not have the pedagogical knowledge to conduct whole class evaluation of arguments that allow students to have a voice in the class (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000), so professional development is necessary for progress in this area. When students are allowed to experience the process of developing and defending arguments, students are better equipped to understanding science as a process of generating knowledge rather than a body of factual information in its final form. One weakness of student argumentation is that younger students have little experience in developing defendable logic structures. Perhaps self-examination of thinking processes could enlighten student into their own epistemologies and become a step toward developing rigorous student argumentation.
Need for Revised Reform.
Despite
the efforts of many reform movements, science is usually taught in the
classroom as a rigid body of knowledge to be acquired rather than a way of
knowing. Many of the reform efforts ignore teachers’ existing knowledge,
beliefs, and attitudes (van Driel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001). Science
teachers continue to exclusively teach scientific knowledge, ignoring the
inherent ideas that guide the attainment of the knowledge (Duschl, Hamilton & Grandy, 1992).
Research
Questions
Student understanding of the nature of science helps students to learn that science is more than a collection of facts. Learning and applying the aspects of the nature of science helps students to see and think about their world using a scientific way of knowing. Developing metacognitive skills should also be an explicit activity in the science classroom. Students using metacognitive skills can evaluate their thinking to determine if it aligns with the rigorous requirements of science. This study uses an intervention (4-Phase EMPNOS) to find out if students can be taught to think scientifically on a metacognitive level and seeks to answer the following questions: (a) What is the effect of 4-Phase EMPNOS on science students’ content knowledge, knowledge about the nature of science, metacognition, and self-regulatory efficacy? It is hypothesized that students exposed to the intervention would report a higher level of content and nature of science knowledge, metacognition and self-regulatory efficacy. (b) How are the specific constructs of science content knowledge, knowledge about the nature of science, metacognition, and self-regulatory efficacy related to each other when students complete activities with embedded metacognitive prompts? It is hypothesized that science content knowledge and knowledge about the nature of science are positively correlated and that knowledge about the nature of science, metacognition and self-regulatory efficacy are positively correlated. (c) What characterizes the shared experiences of students who use 4-Phase EMPNOS and students who do not use 4-Phase EMPNOS? and (d) In what ways do students approach activities with embedded metacognitive prompts and activities without metacognitive prompts?
Methods
Sample
Three
hundred and eight eighth-grade science students from an urban middle school in
the mid-Atlantic region of the
Four classes will be used for this quasi-experimental study. Two classes will use an intervention that has embedded metacognitive prompts based on the nature of science and will be called the experimental group. Two classes will use an intervention that does not include the metacognitive prompts and will be called the control group. The students are already formed into classes, so the members of the groups will not be randomly selected. However, the classes will be randomly selected as either experimental or control.
Measures
Quantitative
Measures
Metacognitive Orientiation Scale (MOLES-S).
The
Metacognitive Orientation Scale (Thomas, 2002b) is designed with a social
constructivist view in mind and considers that knowledge is not constructed in
a vacuum, but is developed through interactions with the learning environment.
Thomas (2002a) argues that most measures in the science classroom regarding
metacognition involved lengthy interviews and observations and that the
development of a large-scale measure of metacognition in the classroom would be
useful. Eight aspects of metacognition which were supported by the research
literature were measured on the MOLES-S: (1) metacognitive demands, (2) teacher
modeling and explanation, (3) student-student discourse, (4) student-teacher
discourse, (5) student voice, (6) distributed control, (7) teacher
encouragement and support, and (8) emotional support. The MOLES-S is a 67-item
instrument that includes the eight aforementioned dimensions based on a
Likert-scale. The initial instrument was administered to 1026 students within
the 14-17 year old age group. At the time the instrument was administered,
Metacognition of Nature of Science Scale
(MONOS).
The MONOS (Peters, in press) 16-item survey was designed to test five different student perceptions: a) attitude about the subject of science, b) use of metacognition in observation, c) use of metacognition in data collection, d) use of metacognition in measurement, e) ability to explain reasoning in making conclusions. Each of the topics was chosen because they exemplify skills that are valuable in teaching science as a way of knowing.
Students were asked to choose a number between 1 and 5 to show whether they agreed with the statement (5) or disagreed with the statement (1). Multiple questions were designed to test the same variable so that instrument subscale reliability could be verified. Questions 1, 3 and 8 tested student attitudes toward science. Questions 2, 4 and 11 tested student perception of ability to have metacognition about observations. Questions 7 and 16 tested student perception of metacognitive ability in measurement. Questions 5, 6, 9 and 15 measured student perception of metacognitive ability in data collection. Questions 10, 12, 13 and 14 measured student perceived ability to reason when making conclusions. A copy of the survey can be found in Appendix 2.
Field tests of the survey were conducted with three high achieving, three average achieving and three low achieving readers from the eighth grade. Feedback regarding comprehension and meaning of the questions provided during the field test interviews after the survey guided the revisions of the instrument. Changes in the statements were made based on the interviews of the students after the draft survey was administered. The students involved in the field test did not take the survey, since they had prior knowledge of the intention of the survey.
Reliability as measured by alpha test for the entire instrument is .89. Subscales were also tested for reliability using the alpha test. The subscale for observation items is .43. The subscale for measurement items is .60. Items that measure metacognition for data collection had a reliability of .62. Items that measure metacognition for attitude had a reliability of .62. The items that tested the ability to explain reasoning in concluding had an alpha test of .71
Self-efficacy for Learning Form (SELF).
The SELF scale (Zimmerman & Kitsantis, 2005) is a 19-item survey designed to test student self-efficacy for learning. The items ask students to determine their ability to complete self-regulated learning strategies on a percentage scale divided into increments of ten percent. It is designed to have students self-report on a variety of situations that require academic self-regulatory efficacy such as reading, note taking, test taking, writing, and studying. High scores on this scale represent a high ability to be self-regulatory in academic strategies. This scale has a reliability coefficient of .97 and was highly correlated to teacher reports on students.
Qualitative
Measures
Test of Electricity-Magnetism Knowledge (TEMK)
The science content taught during the intervention includes magnetism, static electricity, current electricity, and electromagnetism. The TEMK (Peters, unpublished) assesses each students’ attainment content goals at an eighth grade level: (a) behavior of static electrical charges, (b) behavior of electrical current, (c) behavior and internal mechanisms of magnets, and (d) behavior of electromagnetic interactions. The questions on this test are open-ended and assess each of the content goals using visual, logical and analytical forms of communication. Each test will be analyzed for strengths and weaknesses in particular content areas, themes in the way students answer questions, and themes in the way students design scientific products such as data tables or observations. The content test will be administered before and after the intervention.
The Views of the Nature of Science- Form B
(VNOS –B).
The
VNOS-B (Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Schwartz, 2002) assesses student
understanding of science as a way of knowing and consists of seven open-ended
questions corresponding to the seven identified aspects of the nature of
science: (a) scientific knowledge is durable, yet tentative, b) empirical
evidence is used to support ideas in science, c) social and historical factors
play a role in the construction of scientific knowledge, d) laws and theories
play a central role in developing scientific knowledge, yet they have different
functions, e) accurate record keeping, peer review and replication of
experiments help to validate scientific ideas, f) science is a creative
endeavor, and g) science and technology are not the same, but they impact each
other (McComas,
2004).
Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick,
Student products from inquiry units.
The control group and the experimental groups will have identical inquiry units that contain identical science content and science process skills to master. Within the inquiry unit, students will answer science content questions and use science process skills to make conclusions about the phenomena. The student products will be analyzed using the same protocol as the content test: strengths and weaknesses in particular content areas, themes in the way students answer questions, and themes in the way students design scientific products such as data tables or observations.
Teacher memos.
Memos are a versatile tool used to in many ways such as helping researchers reflect on events that are occurring during the research study or documenting confusing events for later analysis (Maxwell, 2005). Complications could arise during the interpretation phase of data analysis due to the dual role of teacher and researcher. Memos could help to reduce the confusion in interpretation because they will discuss implicit events during the research study. Memos will be written throughout the research study and then coded for emergent themes.
Think Aloud Protocol.
After the interventions six students will be randomly chosen from the control group and six students will be randomly chosen from the experimental group and videotaped separately while they perform an investigation from the intervention. Students will be asked to think aloud during the videotape in order to elicit their thinking processes during a scientific investigation. Since eighth grade students have little experience in expressing their “inner voices”, an established protocol to encourage three levels of verbal reports will be used, verbalization of covert encodings, explication of thought content, and explanations of thought processes (Ericsson & Simon, 1993). Students will be instructed to talk aloud about what they are thinking, and not to explain the answer to the problem. Students will be prompted at key points throughout the think aloud to continue their explanation of what they are thinking. The frequency of each level of verbal report will be reported as well as the themes that emerge from each level.
Focus Group Interviews.
After the intervention, six members will be randomly chosen from the experimental group and six members will be chosen from the control group to participate in a focus group. A focus group was chosen as a method of data collection rather than individual interviews because eighth grade students tend to minimize interactions with adults. A focus group will elicit more rich verbal data from the students because they will interact with each other and expand each others’ ideas. The questions are semi-structured because they focus the conversation without giving up the freedom that may be needed to explore phenomena that emerges. Sample questions are (a) What was the topic of your last science class? (b) How did you think like a scientist in that lesson? (c) How did you act like a scientist in that lesson? (d) How do you think science class is different from English, history or math class? (e) How can you think about your thinking? (f) What does it mean to you to think like a scientist? (g) Are there other ways of thinking? (h) Do scientists behave differently than other people? Focus group conversations will be audio-taped and transcribed using the software, Transana.
Intervention
The intervention, 4-Phase Embedded Metacognitive Prompts based on the Nature of Science (4-Phase EMPNOS), consists of seven modules that cover the content of electricity and magnetism at an eighth grade level. Each module is based on inquiry methods (NRC, 1996) and asks students to make observations and inferences about phenomena. Module one investigates behaviors of permanent, ceramic magnets. Module two investigates phenomena involved with static electricity. Module three investigates models that explain current electricity. Module four investigates series and parallel circuits. Module five investigates electric and magnetic interactions. Module six investigates the historical context of the discovery of motors. Module seven investigates the social implications of motors, generators and transformers. Each of the experimental modules includes nature of science metacognitive prompts for each of the seven aspects of the nature of science: a) scientific knowledge is durable, yet tentative, b) empirical evidence is used to support ideas in science, c) social and historical factors play a role in the construction of scientific knowledge, d) laws and theories play a central role in developing scientific knowledge, yet they have different functions, e) accurate record keeping, peer review and replication of experiments help to validate scientific ideas, f) science is a creative endeavor, and g) science and technology are not the same, but they impact each other (McComas, 2004). Metacognition is developed throughout the units based on Zimmerman’s (2000) model of the 4-phases of self regulation: observation, emulation, self-control and self-regulation. For example Module 1 for the experimental group would be based on magnetism content and have four sections of embedded developmental phases of metacognitive prompts throughout the unit.
Procedures
Students from all four classes will be given the MOLES-S, the MONOS, the SELF, the VNOS-B, and the content test before the intervention begins. Classes will then be chosen randomly to be in the control group or the experimental group. The inquiry unit on electricity and magnetism without the embedded metacognitive prompts will be given to the control group and the inquiry unit on electricity with the embedded metacognitive prompts (4-phase EMPNOS) will be given to the experimental group. Students will proceed with the four modules of the intervention (the inquiry unit) with the guidance of the teacher/researcher. Student groups of four will use the intervention packets to investigate the learning goals in electricity and magnetism. The teacher/researcher will act as a facilitator in their learning process and will write reflective researcher memos throughout the intervention. After the second module is complete, all students will take the SELF survey. After all four modules are complete, students will take the MOLES-S, the MONOS, the SELF survey, the VNOS-B, and the content test. When students are finished the modules, all of their work products will be collected. Six students from the control group and six students from the experimental group will be randomly selected to participate in a think aloud by performing one investigation from the intervention while being coached to think aloud. The control group will perform the think aloud separately from the experimental group. Six students from the control group and six students from the experimental group will be randomly selected to participate in a focus group which is designed to elicit their shared experiences in the two different types of inquiry units.
Design
This quasi-experimental study is designed to show differences in content knowledge, knowledge of the nature of science, metacognition and self-regulatory efficacy between the control and experimental group. The MOLES-S, the MONOS, the SELF survey, the VNOS-B and the content test will be given as a pre- and post-test so that variances between the control and experimental can be analyzed. The SELF survey will also be given at the midpoint of the intervention to determine the pattern of the level of self-regulatory efficacy the students experience before, during and after the intervention. Researcher memos that were written throughout the intervention and student work products will be used to back up any inferences made with the pre- and post-test analysis. Focus group results, think aloud results, researcher memos, and student work will be used to determine the processes students used to achieve the measured outcomes.
Proposed
Data Analysis
Quantitative data will be gathered using the MOLES-S, the MONOS, and the SELF survey. The MOLES-S and the MONOS are Likert-scales and the SELF is a percentage scale. Combined, the scales will measure the constructs of metacognition, knowledge of the nature of science, and self-regulatory efficacy. These data will be first analyzed using MANOVA and then compared to the results of a MANCOVA analysis so that any covariates can be eliminated from the analysis. The VNOS-B will be analyzed using a rubric that determines the frequency of knowledge of the nature of science as well as the comprehensiveness of the knowledge of the nature of science. The content test will be analyzed for student comprehensiveness of the content goals as well as their knowledge of the nature of science. The focus group results will be analyzed for common experiences within the groups using a phenomenological stance and the processes that emerge from the common experiences will be reported. The think aloud results will be analyzed for the frequency of each of the three levels of verbal report discussed in the instrument section of this paper as well as for the processes that students use to achieve metacognition related to the nature of science. The researcher memos and student work products will be analyzed for common themes and for processes that students use to achieve metacognition related to the nature of science. All data sources will be catalogued in a matrix so that all data can be triangulated.
Expected
Results
Since the 4-phase EMPNOS intervention utilizes a developmental self-regulatory strategy, I suspect that students’ self-regulatory efficacy will rise throughout the intervention compared to the control group. I also suspect that the student knowledge of the nature of science will increase for the experimental group due to student interaction with explicit questioning and checklists based on the nature of science. Based on prior research, often knowledge of the nature of science does not correlate with content knowledge, so I do not expect a rise in content knowledge. I am especially interested in the comparison of the experimental and control outcomes of the think aloud protocols because I think this protocol will be very helpful in explaining students’ cognition during the process of the scientific investigation.
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Appendix
Table 1
Demographic Information
White African American Hispanic Diabilities
_______ ________________ ________ _________
Students 78 7 12 17
Percent 80% 7% 13% 18%