Promoting conceptual change in chemical equilibrium through metacognition development : students' achievement and metacognitive skills

Abstract

Poor student performance in the knowledge area of chemical equilibrium has been a challenge to most Physical Sciences students. The performance trend in this knowledge area has over the years been stagnant despite students’ exposure to problem-solving practices. For that reason, the purpose of this study is to propose a framework that will promote achievement and metacognitive skills in chemical equilibrium among grade 12 Physical Sciences students. The exploratory sequential mixed method research approach which involves an initial qualitative phase and a final quantitative phase was used. The qualitative phase explored students’ learning difficulties on four chemical equilibrium problems using the think- aloud protocol. Four low achieving and three high achieving grade 12 Physical Sciences students were purposively sampled for the qualitative study. In the quantitative phase the hypotheses developed from the qualitative phase were tested through a pre-test/post-test quasi-experiment involving 35 students in the experimental group and 34 in the control group. The experimental group was taught through conceptual change instruction based on metacognition development method while the control group was taught through the traditional lecture method. The chemical equilibrium achievement test (CEAT) and the chemical equilibrium metacognitive skills questionnaire (CEMS) were the instruments for data collection. The validity and reliability of these instruments were established in a pilot testing involving 207 grade 12 Physical Science students in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa prior to the main study. Results from the qualitative phase revealed that metacognitive skills of low achieving students was unacceptable or low while high achieving students had relatively high levels of metacognitive awareness. The study also found that the factors influencing the use of cognitive strategies were: (1) mental model/declarative knowledge of chemical equilibrium (2) scientific reasoning (3) conditional knowledge (4) confidence judgement (5) metacognitive knowledge. Data for the quantitative phase of the study were analysed using ANCOVA statistics. Results revealed a significantly better performance of the experimental group in achievement in chemical equilibrium over the control group F(1, 65) = 44,53 p < 0.0001. The post-test mean score for the experimental group was 41.57% and for the control group it was 26.58%. Results also indicated a significant performance of experimental group over control group in metacognitive skills F(1, 66) = 21.25, p < 0.0001. The mean of post metacognitive skills for the experimental group was 3.13 and that of the control group was 2.69. The results of this study suggest that metacognitive development occurs side by side with conceptual change. It is recommended that the development of metacognitive skills should form the bases of conceptual change instructional decisions