Students' Ideas about Their Conceptualization: Their Elicitation through Instruction.

Project META (Metacognitive Enhancing Teaching Activities) is a 3-year naturalistic case study designed to explicitly enhance the metacognitive capabilities of learners in order to illuminate the nature of metacognitive interactions among elementary students and to describe the impact this type of enhancement has on the formation of students' conceptual knowledge. This study discusses the preliminary findings of the first year's data in which the classroom interaction and development of physical science concepts of six cohorts of students, grades 1-6, were studied. The study examines how metacognition can be promoted in individual science students, the role of classroom discourse in facilitating the development of metacognition, the nature of metacognitive processes, and the role of metacognition in promoting conceptual knowledge development in the elementary science classroom. Selected samples of discourse from six different grade levels illuminated the nature of metacognitive interactions among elementary students. Data analysis indicates that: (1) students can provide extensive and varied evidence of their metacognitive capabilities; (2) students become more capable of being metacognitive over time as evidenced by comparisons of metacognitive discourse taken from second, third, and fourth graders; (3) a qualitative difference in the types of metacognitive statements is produced by the students; and (4) conceptual changes took place in the learners as indicated by the students' statements. Contains 33 references. (MDH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** STUDENTS' IDEAS ABOUT THEIR CONCEPTUALIZATION: THEIR ELICITATION THROUGH INSTRUCTION M. Gertrude Hennessey, PSN Science Department St. Ann's School Stoughton, WI 53589 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and tcrionovensent EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Ot This documenl has been reproduced as recewed born the perSOn or oroanisavon noose bng it C Minor changes have been made to trnprove utproduchon Quality Point Sof view or OpimonS staled .n this docu merit do noI necesSarify rePresent officlaI Paper given in the strand on INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." OERI positron Or ooficy "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY M. Gertrude Hennessey TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Conceptual Change at the Annual Meeting of the National Amciation for Research in Science Teaching Atlanta GA, April, 1993. 2 ` 0' 0, 0! r, r, 1 1. ,

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