In the study, young adolescents’ hypothesis development in a computer-supported and
problem-based learning environment was examined in terms of two empirical studies.
The first study examined the effect of metacognitive scaffolds to strengthening
hypothesis development as well as the influence of hypothesis development in the
promotion of young adolescents’ problem solving performance in an ill-structured
problem solving environment, Animal Investigator. Data was collected from sixth grade
students (N = 172). The findings of the study indicated that participants using
metacognitive scaffolds attained significantly higher hypothesis-development
performance. Results also revealed that the hypothesis-development performance
showed the predictive power of the solution development performance.
In the second study, the researcher examined three factors, motivation,
metacognition, and prior domain knowledge, as a predictor for children’s hypothesisdevelopment
performance in the problem-based learning environment. A hypothesized
model was evaluated using structural equation modeling, which is a statistical method of causal relationships. Data were collected from sixth grade students (N = 101) in
treatment groups. Two significant factors toward children’s hypothesis-development
performance in an ill-structured problem solving environment were determined: Prior
domain knowledge and metacognition.
Implications and limitations of the present study and issues including the
experimental design are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2740 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Kim, Hye Jeong |
| Contributors | Pederson, Susan |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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