Abstract
It has been clarified by past science education research and national school achievement tests that metacognitive control in science class is difficult for children. In order to improve from those problems, and to clarify the information that children consider to be accepted and the bases for their choices in science learning, in this research study we attempted to develop a “Science Learning Process Sheet” (worksheet) in which children externalize metacognitive regulation, and we utilized it to try to understand the process of the construction of children’s scientific conceptions. As a result of utilizing this “learning process sheet” in the science class, the following was clarified: 1) In this study, we could uncover five children’s thinking process with expectations of the learning task. Also, by encouraging the thinking process to visualize and promote dialogue with others, children updated their ideas based on experimental results. 2) When choosing information that children considered to be accepted in science learning, children recall what originated from their life experience related to learning keywords. Based on the relationship between their ideas and the learning objective, children added grounds supplementary to their expectations, with the addition of children’s understanding from prior science learning and other experiences. 3) Depending on how easily the factors that resulted in the experimental outcomes could be expresed, the children’s methods of expression varied. Their methods of expression were determined by their ability to articulate the cause of the experimental results as well as their conceptualizations, and further varied according to the children’s confidence in their explanations.
