Search

In order to cultivate students to be able to participate in public affairs and make decisions about socioscientific issues (SSI), a web-based module was designed for students to collaboratively engage in the decision-making (DM) process. This study attempted to identify students' discourse characteristics that might lead to formulating an evidence-based decision on SSI. Twenty-nine Grade 10 students were randomly divided into eight groups of three or four. The transcribed data of one case from each performance level were compared to investigate the interplay between groups' DM performances and discourse characteristics. The results showed that the group that gained a high score on the DM group worksheet engaged in the metacognitive discussion for planning procedures of the module tools and in the conceptual exchanges to accomplish the tasks. The members of this group could initiate and extend ideas, provide prompts, and confirm or reject each other's ideas, resulting in sustained interactive dialogs that allowed them to learn from one another. This indicated that students need to be encouraged to clarify the task goals, plan procedures, monitor their performance, and exchange their ideas actively. The implications of how collaborative discourse promote students' SSI DM performance, and the better design and enactment of SSI modules are discussed.

This study designed a decision-making learning module to engage students in collective decision-making in a collaborative learning environment. The purpose of this study was to explore the interplay of students' regulation learning in groups and their collective decision-making about a socioscientific issue. Thirty-eight 10th-grade students participated in the study. A variety of data were collected to examine the students' collective decision-making and regulation learning while they collaboratively conducted a socioscientific decision-making activity, including worksheets, computer activity recordings, and students' verbal interactions. The results indicated strong associations which showed that students who had sophisticated decision-making in a group tended to have more social shared regulation, and performed more regulation behaviours to refine their collective decision-making. The sequential analysis also indicated that students who manifested the serial nature of regulation processes and goal-driven learning might have exhibited a sophisticated decision-making performance when engaged in collective decision-making. The deficiencies in group interaction identified in this study underscore the need to provide scaffolds for regulation learning in order to refine students' collective decision-making in a SSI context.

This study explores the effects of metacognitive and cognitive prompting on the scientific inquiry practices of students with various levels of initial metacognition. Two junior high school classes participated in this study. One class, the experimental group (n?=?26), which received an inquiry-based curriculum with a combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts, was compared to the other class, the comparison group (n?=?25), which received only cognitive prompts in the same curriculum. Data sources included a test of inquiry practices, a questionnaire of metacognition, and worksheets. The results showed that the mixed cognitive and metacognitive prompts had significant impacts on the students' inquiry practices, especially their planning and analyzing abilities. Furthermore, the mixed prompts appeared to have a differential effect on those students with lower level metacognition, who showed significant improvement in their inquiry abilities. A combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts during an inquiry cycle was found to promote students' inquiry practices.

This study explores the effects of metacognitive and cognitive prompting on the scientific inquiry practices of students with various levels of initial metacognition. Two junior high school classes participated in this study. One class, the experimental group (n = 26), which received an inquiry-based curriculum with a combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts, was compared to the other class, the comparison group (n = 25), which received only cognitive prompts in the same curriculum. Data sources included a test of inquiry practices, a questionnaire of metacognition, and worksheets. The results showed that the mixed cognitive and metacognitive prompts had significant impacts on the students’ inquiry practices, especially their planning and analyzing abilities. Furthermore, the mixed prompts appeared to have a differential effect on those students with lower level metacognition, who showed significant improvement in their inquiry abilities. A combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts during an inquiry cycle was found to promote students’ inquiry practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this study was to develop and examine supports for inquiry practices in computer-based learning environments (CBLEs). Two kinds of supports for inquiry practices were developed, namely cognitive and metacognitive prompts. We employed a multiple case study design to analyze students' metacognitive reactions to these two kinds of prompts and the fading effect on the regulation process using a sequential analysis technique. The results of this study indicate that the high level inquiry group performed not only more metacognitive actions of monitoring and evaluating, but also performed them in different sequences than the less successful students (the middle and low level inquiry groups) during the prompted inquiry tasks. The sequential analysis in this study identified the students' crucial learning patterns of successful inquiry practices in both the structured and guided inquiry stages. The findings can be used to explore the possible alignment between scaffolding and learning behaviors, and the mechanism of fading for inquiry-based learning in CBLEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]