Metacognition in Collaborative Learning : Focus on the Discussion in Lower Secondary School Science

Abstract

Recently, some studies focus on the metacognition in collaborative learning. In order to examine the method for fostering metacognition in collaborative learning, we considered that the research on the aspect of metacognition in the group discussion was required. So, the purpose of this study was to clarify the situation where students' metacognition activated in the science class group discussion. We conducted the research by recording the utterance of 7th-grade students in science class group discussion and analyzed metacognitive utterances. Secondly, we clarified the phase of discussion (Maruno et al., 2002) in order to analyze the situation where students' metacognition activated. As the main results of this research, we found out the triggers for changeover to "argument phase" where students' metacognition activated as follows: 1) argument of different thought, 2) request from friends, 3) others' metacognitive utterance, 4) literation.