Extending Students’ Practice of Metacognitive Regulation Skills with the Science Writing Heuristic

Abstract

Metacognition can be described as an internal conversation that seeks to answer the questions, ‘how much do I really know about what I am learning’ and, ‘how am I monitoring what I am learning?’ Metacognitive regulation skills are critical to meaningful learning because they facilitate the abilities to recognize the times when one's current level of understanding is insufficient and to identify the needs for closing the gap in understanding. This research explored how using the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) as an instructional approach in a laboratory classroom affected students’ practice of metacognitive skills while solving open-ended laboratory problems. Within our qualitative research design, results demonstrate that students in the SWH environment, compared to non-SWH students, used metacognitive strategies to a different degree and to a different depth when solving open-ended laboratory problems. As students engaged in higher levels of metacognitive regulation, peer collaboration became a prominent path for supporting the use of metacognitive strategies. Students claimed that the structure of the SWH weekly laboratory experiments improved their ability to solve open-ended lab problems. Results from this study suggest that using instruction that encourages practice of metacognitive strategies can improve students’ use of these strategies.

Keywords:

• Metacognitive Regulation Skills
• Science Writing Heuristic
• Qualitative Analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Camellia Hilker for assistance in coding of the interview transcripts; Linda Brazdil, Ellen Yezierski and Dawn Del Carlo for their generous time to review the manuscript; and the reviewers for their comments to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2015.1019385]

Notes

1. All experimental procedures in this research were approved and complied with protocols for conducting research with human subjects (IRB Approval #2052).