ABSTRACT:It is recognized widely that learning is a dynamic and idiosyncratic process of construction and reconstruction of concepts in response to new experiences. It is influenced by the learner's prior knowledge, motivation, and sociocultural context. This study investigated how year 11 and 12 physics students' metacognition influences the development of their conceptual understandings of kinematics. An interpretive case study approach was used to investigate students working in collaborative groups in the context of an amusement park physics program. The metacognitive character of individual learners was demonstrated to have a strong influence on their conceptual development. Moreover, the metacognitive character of individuals within the small group contexts investigated was a key factor influencing the groups' collective knowledge development. A coyote -rabbit metaphor was developed to interpret the resilience and weaknesses of individual and group knowledge construction processes, and elucidates new theoretical understandings regarding metacognition and its influence on knowledge construction.

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This paper is about a study into the nature of analogies recorded from three Form 2 (Grade 10) classes in Kenya, instructed by three physics teachers. Through a case study method involving classroom observation, several analogies were recorded and analysed. These analogies were predominantly environmental (drawn from students' socio-cultural environment) and anthropomorphic (life and human characteristics ascribed to analogues involving familiar concepts). A small number were scientific (those in which analogues are drawn from the science knowledge domain) -ones the author, for pedagogical reasons, wishes to see exploited. In addition, targets (concepts to be explained) were not freed from analogues (concepts used to explain), which is problematic. Also recorded were instances of students making statements that contained counter-physics messages. These included statements conveying literal understanding of technical terminology, sense experience understanding, which proved very robust, and obvious transfer of error from a particular knowledge domain to another. Caution is therefore advised to ensure that before developing and deploying analogies, students' understanding of the analogues must be sought. This most likely will reveal problems in their understanding and should be rectified before applying its meaning to the target.

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This paper reports on a study that investigated students' metacognitive engagement of in both out-ofschool and classroom settings, as they participated in an amusement park physics program. Students from two schools that participated in the program worked in groups to collectively solve novel physics problems that engaged their individual metacognition. Their conversations and behavioral dispositions during problem solving were digitally audio-recorded on devices that they wore or placed on the tables where groups worked on the assigned physics problems. The students also maintained reflection journals on the strategies they employed to manage their own understanding as well as learning processes.Prior to the amusement park physics discourse, the students completed a specially-developed questionnaire instrument. This provided signposts of the students' metacognitive engagement during group problem-solving at the park and subsequent related physics learning tasks back in the classroom. This data, added to field notes arising from observations, and formal and informal interviews during post-visit learning activities provided the data corpus on the students' metacognitive engagement. Analysis of this data revealed three types of metacognitive engagement during group learning tasks: collaborative and consensus-seeking, highly argumentative, and eclectic, resulting from high levels of dissonance. In both cases, evidence of individual students' deeper understandings, which manifested through students' cognitive and social behaviors, demonstrated the invocation of metacognition to varying degrees. The novel physics problems tackled by the students created situations where discrepancies between their prior knowledge and the direct experiences enabled them to explicate their thinking through dispositions of behavior.