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  • Open Access

Effects of metacognitive scaffolding on students’ performance and confidence judgments in simulation-based inquiry

Hong-Syuan Wang1, Sufen Chen2,3,*, and Miao-Hsuan Yen1

  • 1Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 11677, Taiwan
  • 2Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan
  • 3Optentia Research Focus Area, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark 1900, South Africa

  • *Corresponding author. sufchen@mail.ntust.edu.tw
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Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 17, 020108 – Published 13 August, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.020108

Abstract

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of metacognitive scaffolding in different inquiry tasks related to optics. Two high school classes participated in this study. One class, the treatment group (n=33), which integrated metacognitive prompts into the simulation-based inquiry, was compared to the other class, the control group (n=34), which received only simulation-based inquiry. Students’ conceptual understanding, integrated science process skills, confidence judgment, and inquiry performance were measured using a multiple-choice pretest and post-test and worksheets. The results show that the students’ conceptual understanding and confidence judgments on conceptual understanding in both groups significantly increased from the pretest to the post-test. Incorporating metacognitive scaffolds into inquiry-based learning better facilitated the improvement of integrated science process skills as well as the confidence judgment on the process skills, especially in the more complex tasks. The metacognitive scaffolding could be applied to various inquiry activities to enhance students’ control of variables, data interpretation, and graph comprehension.

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Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 17, 020108– Published 13 August, 2021
  • Received 10 March 2021
  • Accepted 17 June 2021
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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