How Can We Support More Independent Inquiry?

Inquiry is a very complex process. In order to become successful inquirers, students need to master a large repertoire of inquiry-related competencies and strategies. They need to be able to set a broad goal for the inquiry, select and sequence the sub-goals that will lead to that goal, and then map the strategies they will use during the inquiry onto the sub-goals.

In order to do this they need to understand when and how particular competencies and strategies can be used to meet specific sub-goals. Further, in order to adjust their plan effectively during the inquiry they need to have the metacognitive competencies necessary to monitor their ongoing progress towards their inquiry goal: make decisions about which strategies are working, which may need rethinking, when a sub-goal has been reached, and when to move on to the next sub-goal.

Finally, after completing the inquiry they need to be able to evaluate the success of both their goal-setting and strategy use so that they can carry forward what they have learned to the next inquiry they undertake. It is no surprise that getting students to the point where they have developed this set of competencies is a truly challenging task.

In designing classroom experiences that might help support students along this pathway, the results of a series of studies by Barbara White, John Frederiksen, and Allan Collins may provide some guidance.

Study 1

The aim of this first study was to determine whether students’ prior metacognitive knowledge would affect their development of the competencies of scientific inquiry. Students were given two assessments prior to and following their participation in an inquiry curriculum in Science.

The first assessment was of their metacognitive knowledge and involved watching a movie of students engaged in inquiry. From time to time, one of the students in the movie looks at the camera and either expresses a metacognitive thought or indicates that they have one, but does not express it explicitly.

The students watching the movie must either (a) categorize the metacognitive thoughts expressed from a multiple choice selection, or (b) generate an appropriate metacognitive thought for the actor. The second assessment was an assessment of inquiry skills where students planned an inquiry around a research question they were given.

What were the results of the study?

• Students with low scores on the metacognition assessment made no significant gains in their ability to plan an inquiry.

• Students with high scores on the metacognition assessment made significant gains in their ability to plan an inquiry.

• There were no significant increases in scores on the metacognition assessment for either group as a result of their participation in the inquiry curriculum.

The results seem to indicate that higher metacognitive competency allows students to learn more about inquiry through participating in the process of inquiry. However, metacognition itself seems to be something that is difficult to learn spontaneously. This was the case even though the inquiry curriculum students participated in contained explicit elements of metacognition.

Metacognition within this curriculum was practiced through self-assessment against goals embedded in the curriculum. Self-assessment alone does not seem to have been sufficient to improve the metacognitive skills of the students, however.

The researchers wanted to find out what might lead to improvements in metacognition. They hypothesized that role-playing specific metacognitive roles in collaborative groups may help students internalize metacognitive thinking, and thus improve their metacognitive competency.

Study 2

In this follow-up study, Grade 5 students carried out two inquiry projects. Between the two projects they engaged in a literacy task where their goal was to understand a biography through group discussion. Their discussion was structured as an inquiry into the biography using an inquiry cycle, with stages similar to the inquiry cycle used for the projects.

During the discussion students were given various roles, which included cognitive roles (Theory, Evidence, Synthesis and Application Managers), social roles (Collaboration, Communication, Mediation, and Equity Managers) and metacognitive roles (Planning, Productivity, Reflection, and Revision Managers). For each role there was a single-page guide, which included strategies the students could use and things they could say to achieve the purpose of the role.

Students kept journals, where they planned for their role and monitored and reflected on their success. Over time students became more natural in their roles and relied less on the “things to say” provided in the guides. Students also began playing roles they had not been assigned, but had observed other students play.

The final inquiry project was an inquiry into the roles they had played in literacy groups. Students created theories about how different roles impact a group’s performance based on their experience in the literacy groups. They designed an inquiry to see which of their theories was most accurate.

What were the results of the study?

There was a significant increase in scores on the metacognition assessment for students who participated in the role-playing and role research experiences compared with a control group who did not.

What might this mean for our classrooms?

While students may master cognitive strategies such as those of inquiry through practice, the effective deployment of those strategies in transfer contexts appears to rely on students also having effective metacognitive strategies. Simply having a repertoire of inquiry strategies does not necessarily lead to self-regulation of inquiry.

Why should this be the case? There are a number of possible reasons. One is that even if students master a particular cognitive strategy, unless they understand when, where and how it is applicable, they are unlikely to be able to spot opportunities to use it outside of structured situations where strategy use is prompted by a teacher.

Metacognitive activities (such as the metacognitive roles in the second study) involving planning for, monitoring, and evaluating strategy use can bring about the thinking necessary for students to develop this understanding. It is therefore important that we deal with both cognitive and metacognitive strategies simultaneously.

A further reason for the lack of self-regulation may lie with motivation. There is always a trade-off between the effort necessary to apply a strategy and the perceived pay-off. While it is beyond the scope of the study discussed here, there is evidence that self-regulation is best encouraged by classroom environments where cognitive, metacognitive and motivational strategies are intertwined.

In a meta-analysis of the literature relating to interventions designed to promote self-regulation in primary schools Dignath, Buetter & Langfeldt (2008) found that teaching cognitive strategies alone had only small effects, whereas interventions that combined metacognitive and motivational strategies produced large effects on overall attainment.

References

White, B., Frederiksen, J. & Collins, A. (2009) “The interplay of scientific inquiry and metacognition”; in Hacker, D. Dunlosky, J. & Graesser, A. (Eds) Handbook of Metacognition in Education. Routledge: New York, pp. 175-205.

Dignath, Buetter & Langfeldt (2008). How can primary school students learn self-regulated learning strategies most effectively? A meta-analysis on self-regulation training programmes. Educational Research Review, 3, pp. 101-129.

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