Identifying Valuable Components of Student Behavior: Things They Do Right When They Solve Wrong

Abstract

The present study explores and characterizes some metacognitive abilities of students in
an introductory university-level physics course. This characterization is done in the
context of solving problems on magnetism. The study is based on a manifold view of
cognition as the one in the theoretical framework proposed by Hammer, Redish and
others (Hammer and Elby, 2003, Hammer et al, 2005) according to which subjects’
cognition is the result of the context-sensitive activation of cognitive resources. Within
this framework, metacognition is studied together with subjects’ cognitive productions.
Results show that students, considered novices, have a series of metacognitive abilities,
from which they can construct their metacognitive expertise. This could help to better
understand the process by which students do this during their learning processes.