The development of students' justifications for their positions regarding two theoretical models: Electron cloud or sodium chloride crystal—After engaging in different learning activities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore high school students' ideas regarding two theoretical scientific models, either electron cloud or sodium chloride crystal, in the context of active learning in small groups. Conversations among peers regarding these models took place during two types of active learning activities: small-group discussion and wholeclass debate. The study was conducted in four different high school classes, each of which was in a different school for girls in Oman. The study included 108 grade 10 female students. Two of the classes discussed the electron cloud and the other two classes discussed the sodium chloride model. Qualitative data included students' written responses to prompts, class worksheets, and field notes of student ideas in class debates. In each class, the teacher used a teaching sequence during which the participants expressed their justifications for their positions in writing regarding the particular model on five different occasions, as they progressed through three interactive small group learning activities. The participants' written responses were analyzed using a coding scheme comprising of eight different categories describing the participants' type of justifications regarding the theoretical scientific models: nonsense, approval, mental, experimental, appreciative, external, structural, and modeling. The findings indicated that participants' justifications for their positions regarding theoretical scientific models tended to change over time following each group learning activity. Participants focused their discussion more on external factors, such as the teacher, textbook, religion, and media, after discussions with peers in small groups. In contrast, later their attention focused more on the submicroscopic structural

Metacognitive Awareness Perceptions of Students with High and Low Scores on TIMSS-Like Science Tests

“…In addition, students with good metacognitive skills are better able to assess the prior knowledge they retrieve from long-term memory during a test, and can mediate the construction of meaning in working memory , skills which gain them better results. Metacognition also increases the ability to conceptualize and think about a variety of abstract scientific concepts and phenomena, a skill which constitutes a major learning challenge for many novice learners, (Al-Balushi and Martin-Hansen, 2019). According to Piaget's theory of cognition, meta-thinking is a core metacognitive process and is also essential to comprehending abstract concepts and phenomena (Bates, 2019); students with high metacognitive awareness are therefore in a better position to process science test questions involving a high level of abstraction.…”