Abstract
The aim of this study is to devise a method of teaching chemistry and experimental teaching materials to develop “metacognition during an experiment” in upper secondary school students and to verify the effect of this method through teaching practice.
In order to achieve this, a teaching method is devised whereby students are first encouraged to conduct monitoring through their own experience, then, via use of the experimental teaching material, to recognize the need for students to reflect on their own learning, and then to conduct immediate monitoring based on their cognitions and experience in the next experiment. A “synthetic experiment with ethyl acetate” was also used as an experiment for embodying this teaching method, after which a lesson about aliphatic organic compounds containing oxygen atoms was taught to a class of 71 third-grade upper secondary school students so as to verify the effect of the teaching method.
Based on the students’ writings on questionnaires and worksheets in this experiment, we conclude that our teaching method can contribute to develop students’ own monitoring skills, which are part of their metacognition, during the experiment, whereby they understand the experimental methods and reflect on their own cognitions and experience.
