SILVIA’S JOURNEY: SCIENCE AND METACOGNITION IN PRIMARY EDUCATION C. Llopis Pablos1, V. Jiménez Rodríguez1,2 1
Universidad Camilo José Cela (SPAIN) Universidad Complutense de Madrid (SPAIN)
[email protected],
[email protected]
2
Abstract Metacognition is the knowledge that people have on their own metacognitive processes and products including motivation. The training on metacognitive strategies in class is going to cause a change in the students’ attitudes and aptitudes because they’ll be aware of the control of their own learning internalizing new knowledge. This training can start in Nursery Education stressing cognitive aspects to go subsequently to metacognitive aspects. Due to the lack of resources with these characteristics Silvia’s Journey is born. It’s a new material which includes activities to train metacognitive strategies in class. These strategies are liable to be trained in any curricular area. Our team is nowadays working in the reading area relating this theme with reading metacomprehension, but the main objective is the generalization of learning, so we can’t leave the scientific area out, where the metacognitive skills are particularly important. In the area of science learning, the traditional methods are not always effective to achieve a real conceptual change in the student’s mind but the new proposal to integrate didactic and cognitive processes through metacognitive ones focus the learning on the students and make them think of their own knowledge to remove their previous ideas to get the conceptual change. Within this model we propose audiovisual, experimental and computer teaching resources, which allow students of Primary Education, to develop epistemological conceptions about scientific knowledge and cognitive processes and products, which have a decisive influence on their learning strategies. Keywords: metacognition, science, innovation, technology.
1
INTRODUCTION
Metacognition is the knowledge and control that people have about their own cognitive processes. One of the pioneers in research and definition of this construct was John Flavell [1] who began studying the metamemory. Flavell and Wellman [2] defined the metamemory as a result of their research with children, as the knowledge children have about the task, the characteristics of the person performing the task and strategies that influence the time to remember . Flavell defined metacognition as one's knowledge about their own cognitive processes and products. Later, in 1979, added the terms affection motivation and definition. [3] Brown [4] speaks of two closely related dimensions: knowledge and regulation of cognition. Knowledge has to do with what we know about cognition. This brings us to explain three types of knowledge: declarative (knowledge that the individual has about himself as an apprentice and the factors that influence performance), procedural (how the individual has to learn skills designed to succeed in task) and conditional (knowing when and why to use a particular strategy). The regulation has to do with how we treat cognition. This regulation implicit in three processes: planning, supervision or monitoring and evaluation. There are three processes that occur simultaneously and are fed back as they come to consciousness. Planning involves activating prior knowledge, set objectives, select strategies, define a plan of action ...; monitoring is to determine the effectiveness of strategies for solving the task, discovering errors and based on them, redirect selecting actions other strategies, evaluation refers to establishing the correspondence between the objectives and the goals achieved, decide on the best solution and assess the validity and relevance of the strategies implemented. [5]. Thus, one can establish that metacognition consists of three processes: (1) Develop an action plan (Planning). (2) Monitor the plan (Supervision). (3) Evaluate the plan (Evaluation). [6]
Proceedings of INTED2012 Conference. 5th-7th March 2012, Valencia, Spain.
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ISBN: 978-84-615-5563-5
Besides the three already mentioned processes, metacognition includes a number of variables: person, task, strategy and context. The variable person has to do with the personal characteristics of the individual performing the task, such as age, knowledge is on the subject, skills and motivation, interests, ..., the task variable refers to the level of difficulty of it, the ambiguity , attention and effort needed to succeed, ..., the variable strategy is the sequential process used to control the individual cognitive activities and ensure that it has reached the goal set above, and the context variable refers to materials the situation and the sociocultural context. [6], [7]. In the absence of scales in Spanish that measured the level of awareness of our students reading was developed ESCOLA (Reading Awareness Scale). This scale assesses the competence of Hispanic readers aged 9 to 12 years [8]. ESCOLA Following came the need to raise materials to work in the classroom training in metacognitive strategies and is thus born Silvia's journey. Silvia's journey is a material that aims to develop in students both linguistic and scientific skills to develop metacognitive strategies that may be able to generalize in their own learning process and product. These concepts are adapted to the new Spanish educational law posed a curriculum in which the student is considered competent if it is capable of creating knowledge, to self-regulate their learning process and self-assessment, emphasizing the importance of education aimed at training will young people to solve problems, so that, in any situation, know various strategies and know what they have to apply at that time. In this work we want to emphasize, in Silvia's journey in the scientific and technological knowledge, its implementation in the stage of primary education and its usefulness to generalize learning.
2
SCIENCE IN THE EARLY STAGES
The Rocard Report (2007) alerts us to the decline of young Europeans who decide to study science, which could cause a real obstacle to a knowledge economy such as ours. The causes are varied as the reality that we face is very complex, but one of the first conclusions of this report indicates that the source can be found in the way we teach these subjects [9]. So one possible solution would be to perform a transformation of the methodological dimension, from the earliest stages of education. The child's early years are an ideal time for the start of the teaching of science, posing a pedagogical objective focused on the development of intellectual skills, proper handling of instruments and the acquisition of a certain attitude towards the environment. Throughout primary school, children use objects, establish relationships with them and live a large number of situations. Most of the time play freely without depending on any adult and it is they that give coherence to this vast flow of information that is built to interact with objects, inventing and respect their own rules, thus previous ideas about that will support teaching activities. Therefore, the practice of Experimental Science Elementary classroom gives us the opportunity for educators to guide them to develop their relationship with the environment. An appropriate methodology children become actors of knowledge, teaching them to raise good questions to answer by experiments or further observations [10]. It is important to start working in this way as soon as possible (first cycle) for getting them to go work methodology as something natural, integrating such strategies, metacognitive, they can use later if suited to the context presented to them. We must not forget that the scientific activity itself, takes many forms: manipulation, questioning, right to trial and error, observation, expression, communication, verification, but also the analysis and synthesis capabilities, by the age of students are not yet fully developed
2.1
What science should we teach?
Currently, research on the teaching of experimental sciences, regardless of the stage, have not found a clear consensus to the question about what we should teach science [11]. In our case, based on curriculum designed for the Knowledge of the subject of the first cycle of primary, we have selected the content blocks proposed for the area's natural environment, by Royal Decree of Elementary Education core curriculum within the area Environmental Awareness in the first cycle. The learning modules are being designed to "Silvia's journey" will follow a structure based on models from the scientific significance '(Fig. 1) and based on a number of key ideas that will help support later learning (fig. 2).
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Figure 2. Key ideas Following this approach, each module in turn raises experimental activities that respect the following principles [12 -
Encourage
the development of
spontaneous activities of
exploration, which
can lead us to
redirect
the proposed activities
if the teacher
deems it necessary.
-
Respect
the main
variables
of school activity,
contextualizing
the proposal to the
reality of the center
and the classroom
in which they
can develop.
In addition, each task is preceded by an introduction of the literary history of science with metacognitive guidance. The method of classroom work that we propose is the proper scientific procedures that we have worked in the previous sections, because without them we cannot carry out an activity like this. ( fig. 3
Observation
Experimentati on
Classification Science procedures
Formulation of hypotheses
Deduction
Figure 3. Science procedures
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3
SILVIAS’S JOURNEY: SCIENCE AND METACOGNITION
As we have seen, meaningful learning of science by students has a high failure rate. In recent decades, researchers in science education have studied students' previous ideas and involvement in their learning, and have concluded that they maintain a diverse set of preconceptions about scientific content, which are almost always wrong and this should take into account for meaningful learning in these subjects [13]. Current teaching approaches based on conceptual change have attempted to resolve this situation but without success because they did not pay attention to the metacognitive, whose skills are especially important in the learning of the subject at hand. If students are aware that they hold misconceptions about the scientific content and the role of analogy in conceptual change, achieve a higher degree of learning [14]. On the other hand, developing such skills, you can add an extra dimension to the experiences in the material proposed, the metaknowledge or knowledge about the nature of science. To achieve the earliest stages of education students to apply scientific strategies and metacognitive experiences should be designed to allow students to apply the skills of comparing, organizing information consistently, predict or make assumptions and inferences and draw conclusions . The material developed in the "Silvia's Journey" in the primary stage, it provides through each module, metacognitive nature resources that facilitate. -
The knowledge and control of the previous ideas and cognitive processes.
-
Self-regulation and self-cognition.
-
Good ideas on the structure and organization of knowledge production.
Following the definition of metacognition raised in the first paragraphs, each activity is composed of three phases or distinct processes: (1) Develop an action plan (Planning). (2) Monitor the plan (Supervision). (3) Evaluate the plan (Evaluation). Thus, it is not intended to distort the students' ideas, but affect their ideas about the nature of science and the nature of scientific knowledge.
Such activities show students, in any stage, which in most cases scientific knowledge may be counterintuitive, and that learning requires a certain level of abstraction. To complete the collection of strategies and resources developed in the proposed material, raise the need for each student develop their own "Science Journal" thanks to which may be registered in the classroom experiences, the difficulties experienced in each module, the conceptions initial exchange of views with colleagues and their expectations and results. The preparation of this book will encourage self-evaluation by students and teachers will evaluate the conceptual change learning.
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TECHNOLOGY INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION
A reality described above will include the social impact we are having the new developments in Information Technology (ICT hereafter) and which directly affect the way students learn from the stage of primary . Thanks to advances in technology, the company has experienced great advances in accessibility to information and knowledge, as well as communication and social relationships. According to the 2010 Horizon Report [15], the technology market has more than four million subscribers around the world, whose latest evolution, and perhaps most impressive has been the emergence of smart phones or Smartphone. Its sale has grown in recent years causing, in the case of our country, 4 out of 10 phones already are. Furthermore, the connection between this and the increased level of coverage has created what we call mobile Internet technology has advanced to new ways of communication and access to information and knowledge. A corroborating fact is the increasing use of mobile Internet in the global market. In the case of Spain, users prefer the mobile as a device to access the network [16]. These mobile devices have a number of features that makes them an ideal tool to improve learning through experimentation and manipulation of digital form of display elements.
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4.1
Educational utilities of technologies
In our educational system, in a further attempt to adjust education to the future needs of European citizens have been introduced in terms of curriculum literacies and skills, two closely related terms that reflect real change in mentality in some sectors of our society [17]. The profit educational ICT have increased exponentially in recent years, as the number of users who own them, so their inclusion in the classroom is increasing. Although we cannot forget that the real change in education and new literacies will also change when the current school learning approach focused on the "production of knowledge." If we translate the impact of new mobile devices and the need for their integration into the teachinglearning process, we can speak of the Mobile Learning (M-learning) or learning on the move, which can bring added value to the models of learning, to expand the training space and time, opening the possibility to learn anywhere and at any time. That way we can talk about a new concept: the ubiquity, the possibility of training activities regardless of physical location. Currently, the trend is moving towards a society so hyper-real development of this conceptual shift would be an evolution of m-learning to the already known u-learning or ubiquitous learning, which would mean the maturity of e-learning, the end point of meeting between education and ICT [18]. At present, the "digital age", learning cannot rely on the same principles as the "analogue era". We know that the teacher should be the guide and the mediator essential for the student to attain the objectives of their subject, so it no longer seems to have no sense that the teacher continue to assume a role as a transmitter of knowledge isolated [19]. Only through this change of character in the teaching-learning process and the change in orientation processes that revolve around the student we speak of a genuine education 3.0 [20]. (See Table 1) Table 1: Education 3.0, compared to 2.0 and 1.0 EDUCATION 1.0
EDUCATION 2.0
Meaning is…
Dicted
Socially constructed
Technology is…
Confiscated at the classroom door (digital refuges)
Cautiously adopted (digital inmigrants)
Teaching is done…
Teacher to student
Teacher to student and student to student
School are located…
In a building (brick)
In a building or online (brick and click)
Daycare
Daycare
A place for them to learn, too.
Licensed professionals Are purchased at great cost and ignored
Licensed professionals
Everybody, everywhere
Are open source and available at lower cost
Are available at low cost and are used purposively
Parents view schools as… Teachers are… Hardware y el Software in schools… Industry views graduated as…
4.2
Assembly line workers
As ill-prepared assembly line workers in a knowledge economy
EDUCATION 3.0 Socially constructed and contextually reinvented Everywhere (ambient digital universe) Teacher to student, student to student, student to teacher, peopletechnology-people (co constructivism) Everywhere (thoroughly infused into society: cafes, bowling, alleys, bars, workspaces, etc.)
As co-workers or entrepeneurs
The platform of “The Silvia’s Journey”
To achieve a truly profound change has been to transform not only how to teach it is also necessary to create virtual learning environments that exceed the time-space barriers and facilitate the traditional individual learning methods in addition to the collaborative.
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A first step to begin that journey is the use of a platform tailored to the new mobile devices that enable a new way to foster creativity and collaborative work through the production of content for the Web by teachers and students within a dynamic and interactive. This allows, in turn, generate and facilitate access to digital educational materials tailored to the curricula. Therefore, since our team is committed to a methodological change, to incorporate the development of metacognitive strategies in a virtual learning environment that will overcome barriers and facilitate space-time as well as virtual learning methods, collaborative learning. Thus, we take a step in the curriculum materials designed for learning experimental sciences. Our journey focuses on a different way of living education in which the role of technology in the classroom allows them to be students who learn for themselves aided by the teacher's guide. We want to autonomous learners enjoy their own learning. To achieve this we need to ask a school curriculum that emphasizes content in excess and do not underestimate the tools of thought and analysis of future generations.
5
CONCLUSIONS
The science and study of learning are in a dark moment. Therefore, educational materials such as "The Journey of Silvia" may provide a new meeting point between science education and cognitive psychology, an area which is a long way to go. Apply the principles of metacognition would establish an intimate relationship between aspects of cognition of student and teaching strategies posed by teachers. As a result of efforts to reform the educational models and to give greater publicity to the journal of science education, many educators, especially in the secondary stage today are aware of the importance of previous ideas in learning significant part of their students. In contrast, there are so many education professionals who know the importance of the development of metacognitive strategies in the teaching-learning process. The shift in this direction can be complex, but only through reflective elements, administrative and evaluative offered to students, they may recognize their own potential to apply the skills acquired in the classroom in a given context, thus learning based on competencies. This also must implement methodologies to establish a flexible time, various activities and environments that require the student to further their learning, not to mention our students-mostly digital natives, learn differently, which require a different way of teaching. The inclusion of a new curriculum model, whose origin is in the metacognitive principles and to integrate the new tools provided by advances in technology, will increase the complexity of the student's conceptual structures making it a powerful tool for training skills.
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