2010 Volume 51 Issue 1 Pages 39-50
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of hands-on experience of the metacognitive activity of upper secondary school students with regards to their understanding of scientific knowledge. Students in two public upper secondary school classes received instructions concerning the "separation and identification of compounds" in Chemistry (I). One class received experimental instructions, while the other class received control instructions. Students in the class for the experimental instructions designed and carried out experiments in groups to solve a problem based on scientific knowledge. Students in the control class carried out experiments to induce scientific knowledge. The main results were as follows: (1) Student's self-estimated scores for their "level of metacognition before the experience" and their "level of metacognition arising from interaction with peers or teachers after the experience" were higher in the experimental class than in the control class. (2) Students in the experimental class did better than students in the control class on especially cloze and transfer tests concerning the understanding of scientific knowledge.
