Young adolescents' metacognition and domain knowledge as predictors of hypothesis‐development performance in a computer‐supported context

Recently, the importance of ill‐structured problem‐solving in real‐world contexts has become a focus of educational research. Particularly, the hypothesis‐development process has been examined as one of the keys to developing a high‐quality solution in a problem context. The authors of this study examined predictive relations between young adolescents' metacognition, prior domain knowledge, and hypothesis‐development performance in a computer‐supported environment. Data were collected from 11‐ and 12‐year‐old Korean students (N = 101). A hypothesised model in predicting hypothesis‐development performance was evaluated using structural equation modelling. Both metacognition and prior domain knowledge significantly predicted young adolescents' hypothesis‐development performance. Implications and limitations of the present study and issues, including the experimental design, are discussed.

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