Spontaneous evocation of metacognitive thought in physics lessons: making comparisons with the day-to-day situations

Abstract

The work refers to a study conducted with students of the first year of high school at a private school in the city of Passo Fundo/RS, Brazil, where was investigated the use of metacognitive thoughts for this pupils in activities the school and in day-to-day life. The goal was to confront the shapes as they are using metacognitive thought, considered inherent to human beings and differential between good and badly succeeded students in Physics, as shown in the search results concerning the resolution of problems. On the basis of the answers to the two questionnaires, each one designed to search the action of students’ thought in different contexts investigated (experimental activities and day-to-day situations), it discusses the results on two categories established (knowledge of knowledge; executive control/ autorregulator), by reference to the understanding of the metacognition term, whose meaning is polysemic in literature, requiring delimitations in relation to the object of study. The results of the survey showed that students have a metacognitive thought and make use of it when it suits them. However, only do it when the situation requires, here expressed by the quotas of day-to-day situations considered as interest by them. In the school environment, this way of thinking was absent for most students, since, by not required for the teacher, it has not been taken by those. Thus, in the end of the study, it points to the importance of the need that the teacher establishes didactic situations of explicit evocation of the metacognitive thought, beyond the understanding of this ritual as something spontaneous in students.

Keywords

• metacognitive thinking
• Physics; high school