Research School Network: How can we create metacognitive thinkers whilst working scientifically? Teaching in Primary Science

Roisin Knight, Evidence Lead in Education and Curriculum Lead at Christ the King Catholic Voluntary Academy Leicester explores how we can create metacognitive thinkers while working scientifically. 

The ultimate aim: a primary science classroom where children are able to effectively select appropriate equipment and design their own fair test to investigate a scientific problem that you have posed to them. You’ve given them the substantive knowledge and you want them to use their disciplinary knowledge to test their hypotheses.

The reality: you clock-watch in a panic as you see groups of children setting up implausibly complicated experiments that you can see won’t produce the results that you are hoping for. They’re enjoying the lesson and some discoveries are being made, but will all of that carefully selected and taught substantive knowledge be lost as the class instead remember frustration and failed attempts?

How can we ensure that we equip our classes with both the skills to work scientifically and the independent thought processes to plan, adapt, monitor and evaluate their decisions and processes when designing scientific investigations?

Metacognition, self-regulated learning and working scientifically

Recommendation three of the new EEF Guidance Report on Improving Primary Science highlights the need to guide pupils to work scientifically. It draws directly on the seven-step model which is applied in another guidance report on Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning in order to illustrate the steps required to support pupils to work scientifically. Metacognitive learning strategies overlap strongly with science – such as questioning, reflection, and inquiry, and metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies are intuitively integrated into the approach – particularly step 7​’structured reflection’.

A cycle of reflection

For successful investigation, we want children to have a well-developed cycle of reflection that guides them through a process of planning, monitoring and evaluating their scientific working as part of a self-regulatory process. This thought process is not something that necessarily naturally develops and, as the EEF Metacognition and Self- Regulation guidance report highlights, there are proven benefits to explicitly teaching self-regulative and metacognitive strategies to develop this within the primary classroom.

How can we encourage reflective thinking?

This can be done via both a direct and an indirect approach:

Direct:explicit instruction, teacher modelling, questioning that encourages metacognitive reflection

Indirect: learning environment (working walls, a culture of using knowledge organisers), dialogue (high-quality teacher talk), scaffolded inquiry

Modelling with verbalised ​‘think alouds’ is key to embedding suitable questioning within children’s internal dialogue. These questioning prompts can encourage learners to reflect and evaluate at each stage when working scientifically.

What does this look like in the classroom?

During a year 6 unit of work on light you want the children to design a fair test to investigate the relationship between the position of a light source and the size of a shadow. During your teaching, you have been modelling using prompts to elicit metacognitive thought at each stage of the process.

These are some of the questions that teachers could model asking ourselves as ​‘think alouds’ when demonstrating the process of working scientifically. Gradually, we can start to remove this scaffold and prompt children to ask these questions of themselves with the long term aim that these prompts become embedded within their long-term memory and can be used independently.

What might it look like when the children are able to use this self-regulatory process independently?

At the planning stage:

• Explaining and justifying their actions.
• Recognising a range of disciplinary skills that need to be deployed.
• Independently using resources around the room and looking back in their books.
• Referring to prior knowledge of using equipment.
• Quick white board or jotter work to gather thoughts.
• Referring to a teacher’s model.

At the monitoring stage:

• Pausing and checking their progress.
• Checking their work again a model.
• Making suitable amends and edits to their plan.
• Explaining their next steps.

At the evaluation stage:

• Checking their work.
• Checking off success criteria.
• Explaining and rationalising their process.
• Acknowledging challenges.
• Drawing a conclusion.
• Setting themselves targets and next steps.
  

Applying this to the task

The diagram below illustrates the reflective cycle that the children could go through when designing and carrying out their investigation:

Top tips for creating metacognitive thinkers when working scientifically

The example is intentionally from year 6, showing an end point that could be worked towards as children progress through the working scientifically strand of the primary curriculum. In order to encourage metacognition and self-regulatory thinking when designing, conducting experiments we should consider:

• Modelling each stage of the process including monitoring and evaluation as well as planning.
• Clearly verbalising our thought processes at each stage through think-alouds.
• Modelling and verbalising failed attempts and how to recover from these.
• Embedding a cycle of reflection using clear prompts as a scaffolds that can gradually be withdrawn.

With this embedded, we can hopefully move towards that ultimate aim of scientific inquiry through children’s independent investigation design.