Social Barriers to Meaningful Engagement in Biology Field Trip Group Work

摘要

This paper reports on a study that employed metacognition and social cog-nition theoretical frameworks to explore and interpret students' views of their cognitiveroles and the nature of the mechanisms that they considered influenced and mediated theirlearning within small group contexts. An instrumental interpretive case study methodologywas used to capture students' descriptive accounts of their Year 11 Biology learning experi-ences, as conveyed through their recollections and reflections concerning their interactionsand roles, perceptions of the learning task, and their learning strategies that they consideredto be manifest during a field trip visit to a nature center. We conclude that, even amongapparently highly collegial student groups, deemed by their teacher to be effective learninggroups, and constituted in ways consistent with the literature on effective collaborativegroup work, there existed metasocial metacognitive factors that influenced and shaped cog-nition in ways counterproductive to the effective learning of science. This study reveals theexistence of metacognitive knowledge and processes, common among students and relatedto their views of what is appropriate thinking and behavior within small groups, whichinform collective and individual task actions. We contend that students are highly awareof their social status within groups and of their individual group's social conditions andthat this awareness affects cognition and behavior. Moreover, they monitor these conditionsand employ strategies that simultaneously service both the task and social relationshipsand their learning processes to varying extents depending on individual and group factors.