Investigating cognitive and metacognitive components of WebQuest-based education in the 7^th grade work and technology curriculum according to Shannon’s entropy technique

Abstract

The current research was conducted to investigate the cognitive and metacognitive components of WebQuest education in the 7<sup>th</sup> grade work and technology curriculum using the strategy of quantitative content analysis and Shannon’s entropy technique. From the total population, it was selected as the sampling method of the research, therefore, all content elements, including activities, images, texts, and self-evaluations, were analyzed and investigated. These content elements were organized as the content analysis checklist and data collection tool. In this research, for the core components, the components obtained from the research with the title of “The application of WebQuest in teaching third-grade elementary science” were used, which included two core categories, cognitive and metacognitive, along with basic themes. The results of the examination of the cognitive components showed that in the 7<sup>th</sup> grade work and technology curriculum, the most attention was paid to the component of “pluralistic thinking” with an importance coefficient of (0/128) and also the least attention was paid to the components of “constructive thinking” and “creative thinking” with an importance coefficient of (0/061). Also, the results of the metacognitive components analysis illustrated that in the 7<sup>th</sup> grade work and technology curriculum, the most attention was paid to the components of “self-efficacy skills”, “self-management skills”, and “self-control skills” with an importance coefficient of (0/164) and the least attention was paid to the components of “self-directed skills” and “self-monitoring skills” with an importance coefficient of (0/109).