FOSTERING PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ METACOGNITION USING PROJECT-BASED LEARNING

Year 2016, Volume: 4 , 123 - 126, 01.09.2016

Milica Pavkov-hrvojevıć Dušanka ž. Obadovıć Stanko Cvjetıćanın İvana Bogdanovıć

Abstract

Primary
school students have difficulties in understanding the physical content due to
insufficiently developed abstract reasoning skills and metacognition.
Metacognition refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one’s
understanding and performance. It is "cognition about cognition",
"thinking about thinking", or "knowing about knowing".
Metacognition includes a critical awareness of one’s thinking and learning, as
well as awareness of oneself as a thinker and learner. There are three
distinctive components of metacognition: (1) metacognitive knowledge, (2)
metacognitive regulation and (3) metacognitive experiences. Since metacognition
includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning
or for problem solving it is very important in learning physics. Project Based
Learning can help fostering primary school students’ metacognition. Project
Based Learning enables students to gain knowledge and skills by investigating
and responding to challenging question or problem. Since the projects are
focused on student learning goals, including skills such as critical thinking,
problem solving and self-management, while working on projects students must
use metacognitive activities. Also project design includes that students make
decisions how they work on a project and they reflect on learning, the
effectiveness of their inquiry and project activities; they discuss the quality
of their work, obstacles and how to overcome them. Because of that students
benefit in respect of mentioned metacognitive components by the use of
project-based learning.

Keywords

metacognition, physics, project-based learning, primary school

References

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