UC Santa Cruz

ABSTRACT

AN INQUIRY INTO HOW FOURTH-GRADE STUDENTS INVESTIGATE THEIR THEORIES FOR LEARNING SCIENTIFIC VOCABULARY

By

Tatiana F. Miller

While instructional practices that engage students in developing metacognitive skills and capabilities are likely to be beneficial for all students, they may be particularly beneficial for students who are traditionally less well-served by schools. In this research, two culturally and linguistically diverse groups of fourth-grade students engaged in developing and investigating their theories of how they learn scientific vocabulary in an ecology unit of study. Through collaborative inquiry, students tested and refined their learning theories, while simultaneously developing metacognitive capabilities and theories for when and how to apply them in order to meet a variety of learning goals. Collaborative inquiry served as the pedagogical approach for engaging students in investigating their own theories, which in turn promoted their learning of and participation in academic discourse, in addition to their learning scientific vocabulary, science content, and inquiry practices. Employing a quasi-experimental design, and using a mixed-methods approach, this study investigated changes in students’ orientations towards the complexity of word learning and their metacognitive capabilities. Through collaborative inquiry into their own theories of how they learn, students developed awareness and capabilities for taking charge of and improving their own learning in ways that extended beyond learning new words in science, and which could be useful in their lives and in developing their sense of self-efficacy. Informed by sociocultural and sociocognitive theories of learning, this study contributes to a theory of learning and a vision for how inquiry, metacognition, and language may be synthesized within a sociocultural and sociocognitive framework. It also helps to advance a vision for designing curriculum and learning environments that foster metacognitive development and students’ feelings of self-efficacy. Findings suggest that synthesizing inquiry, metacognition, and word learning within a sociocognitive, collaborative learning framework is beneficial for developing students’ metacognitive capabilities, word learning theories, and word consciousness, while advancing a pedagogical approach which helps students become self-efficacious and self-directed learners.