Abstract:

There is a lack of engineers, teachers, and scientists, because physics remained an unpopular subject among high school students (Cottaar, 2012). One possible explanation for why many students retain fundamental conceptual difficulties in physics, even after instruction is that students haven’t done enough problems (Kim & Pak, 2002). Highly developed cognitive skills and knowledge in a domain lead to efficiency in performance, for example, an ability to recall large amounts of knowledge and accompanying procedures to solve problems based on the problems’ cues with relatively little cognitive effort (Mestre, 2002). Mestre (2002) explains that when solving physics problems, novices typically search for equations that contain the variables given in the problem; in contrast, experts are able to recall large chunks of conceptual knowledge based on cues contained in the problem, and tethered to the conceptual knowledge are procedures for applying the concepts.

Since metacognition refers to higher-order mental process involved in using appropriate skills and strategies to solve a problem (Coutinho, 2007), learners’ metacognition ability allows them solving of problems successfully (Eric & Mansoor, 2007). Several cognitive processes and metacognitive strategies are integral to problem representation and problem execution and underlie successful problem solving (Mayer, 1985). Based on this framework, reviewing of the literature shows that metacognitive skills are relevant to students’ problem solving skills in diverse domains (Daniel, 2003; Eric & Mansoor, 2007; Meijer, Veenman & van Hout-Wolters, 2006; Rosenzweig, Krawec & Montague, 2011; Schonfeld, 1992; Rickey & Stacy, 2000). However, research exploring the relationship between metacognition and problem solving skills in physics is not ample. Therefore, the following research question put a light on this research: How physics students’ metacognitive awareness and their problem solving skills are related?

Both qualitative and quantitative methods (Creswell, 2008) were carried out for this research. Participants of the study were 30 eleventh graders studying in an urban all-boys school. After their metacognition was determined, they were asked to solve five authentic physics problems. Think-aloud protocol was used and the students were video recorded as they were solving the problems. The students’ verbalizations of their thinking and their written solutions for the problems were used to code them as experts and novices.

The students’ metacognition awareness was found between medium and high levels. Among the participants, 11 students were classified as expert while 19 students were categorized as novice. The biggest differences between experts and novices appeared in the understanding, analysis and exploration categories. Although there was a low level positive relationship between the students’ problem solving skills and their metacognition scores, this relationship was not significant (r = 0.234, p > .05). Metacognition scores of the expert problem solvers were generally high but two novices’ metacognition scores were also high. Detailed analyses showed that most of the expert problem solvers had the highest level conditional knowledge whereas most of the novice problem solvers had the lowest level procedural knowledge. More qualitative results will be presented at the conference.

Keywords:

Metacognition, problem solving, physics, high school students.