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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 14, Issue 2, Article 9 (Dec., 2013) |
In accordance with the regulation of National Education Ministry No. 26 Year 2007, the main task of a teacher is to prepare instructional materials which accommodate higher order thinking skills. This indicates that the learning materials developed by teachers are expected to enhance this skill. One important component of learning material which received less attention by teachers is the development of higher order thinking problems for students’ exercise. The exercise problems provided by teachers were oriented mainly on the development of low level thinking skill. Results of questionnaire on physics instruction given to 38 high schools teachers at Soppeng District showed that 80.5% of teachers used problems available at students’ textbook, 19.5% of teachers composed problems by themselves utilizing students’ textbook as a reference. It was also found that 100% of teachers used problems which suitable only to develop comprehension and application skills of students. This indicates that teachers are having difficulties in composing problems to train students in developing their higher order thinking skills (Abdullah, 2012).
Further investigation was conducted by interviewing 5 physics teachers. It was found that their difficulty in producing higher order thinking problems is due to: (1) they have never been trained to develop high order thinking problems, and (2) there is no guidance on how to develop such problems.
Based on this observation, the research team conducted a thorough investigation on problems sets available in physics textbook authored by Resnick & Halliday. This book was chosen based on its international reputation and it has been translated into many languages for physics teaching and learning.
Metacognitive experts agreed that the main objective of learning is to develop higher order of thinking skills. This ability can be developed by providing students with problem solving exercises based on metacognitive knowledge (Abdullah, H & Khaeruddin, 2012). Arends (2008), Anderson & Krathwohl (2001) pointed out that metacognitive knowledge is the implementation of procedural knowledge in solving problems either in real life or problems in a form of cognitive conflict.
Santrock (2007) stated that metacognitive knowledge is a strategic knowledge on how and when a specific procedure is used to solve problems. Similarly, Arends (2007) mentioned that metacognitive knowledge is students’ cognitive knowledge and when to use conceptual and procedural knowledge to solve problems. Torkamani (2010) pointed out that metacognitive knowledge is a knowledge used in problem solving.Balcikanli (2011) interpreted metacognitive knowledge into three types of knowledge namely declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge.
Some literatures differentiated the term of metacognitiveand metacognition. Metacognitive is related to knowledge dimension while metacognition is coined into thinking process. Lin (2001) defined metacognition as the ability to comprehend and monitor thinking styles and its implied activity. Dawson (2008), Coskun (2010) and Shanon (2008) translated metacognition as thinking about thinking. Veenman, Wolters dan Afflerbach (2006) and Wernke, Wagener, Anschuetz, & Moschner (2011) stated that metacognition is high-order cognition about cognition. Duque, Baird and Posner (2000) mentioned that metacognition is a process of thinking on its cognition skills, cognition strategies, and cognition tasks.
Based on experts opinion it appears that there are two important aspects of metacognitive knowledge, namely: (1) procedural knowledge, and (2) problem solving. Hence, metacognitive knowledge can be said as the usage of procedural knowledge dimension (including conceptual and factual) in solving problems particularly those related to daily life problems.
There are many benefits gained by students through the implementation of metacognitive knowledge. Kruger and Dunning (cited by Tok, Ozgan and Dos, 2010) pointed out that metacognitive knowledge is an important aspect in learning and can be used to predict academic achievement. Lin, Schwartz d and Hatano (2005) stated that metacognitive knowledge is used to assist students to monitor and control the effectiveness and accuracy of their understanding as well as their solving problem skills. Christine (cited by Kim, Park, and Baek, 2009) explained that metacognitive knowledge is important in enhancing the level of higher order thinking.
Generally, metacognitive knowledge is a nutritious substance for human brain. Therefore, in order to reach the level of higher order thinking skills, students must be trained through various problems based on metacognitive knowledge, one of them by using higher order thinking exercises.
Physics is a unique subject taught in school and required the whole human potentials available to learn it. One of the most prominent potential required in studying physics is logical thinking. Student who knows physics has a certain level of logical thinking and this is closely related to higher order thinking skills.
An indication that physics contained logical thinking is reflected from the IF–THEN relationship. For instance, IF a car is braked, THEN it will stop. IF a stone is thrown from a high place, THEN it will fall freely, and so on. IF-THEN relationship in physics describes two conditions, initial and final condition. These two conditions are connected by a procedural knowledge. An example for this is in the following problem.
Problem 1
A car is moving at a speed of 60km/h. How far the car has moved in one second when the driver looked at the side of the road where an accident occurred (Source, Resnick & Halliday,1989)
The solution of this problem can be done by drawing a logical sketch as follows:
Figure 1. Logical sketch of problem 1
The use of logical sketch is not only making student to be easier in determining principle, law, and equation, but also train students to use their logic and hence improving their thinking skill systematically. It can be seen that the logical sketch has a certain pattern of metacognition knowledge. This pattern is related to the problem solving technique by using an equation. As an illustration for the above problem, its knowledge pattern is pictured as follows,
Figure 2. The metacognitive knowledge pattern (triangular type)
The use of Δ in S and t indicates the change of position and time from initial to final condition, while v without Δ indicates constant velocity. Triangular type is a basic pattern describing one procedural knowledge. This pattern is commonly used by teachers in designing problems for students’ exercises as it is very simple and suitable to train basic knowledge operation but it will be very difficult to be developed into higher order thinking problems.
The development of metacognitive knowledge pattern was studied by analyzing a solution of escalator kinematic problem. A problem in a physics textbook written by Resnick & Halliday was used for this purpose and it is explained in following discussion.
