supervisor: alieke van dijk
Topic
Differences in elementary school children’s performance on inquiry tasks is often connected to their ability levels – their general ability to learn. However, when offering children support to complete inquiry tasks that is tailored to their ability level do not always yield the expected results (e.g., van Dijk, Eysink & de Jong, 2016). Children still experience difficulties with completing the set of tasks accurately and precisely. An explanation could be sought in the demands that are placed on both children’s macro-level self-regulation skills (such as planning) and micro-level self-regulation skills (such as monitoring progress within a task). These demands, when working on inquiry tasks might be considered high. Adding self-regulation support to the lesson series might increase children’s capability to complete the assignments in time and, therefore, fully benefit from the way of learning that was offered. Previous research has shown that children indeed need sufficient self-regulation skills for inquiry learning to be effective (e.g., Manlove, Lazonder, & de Jong, 2007). However, determining when children’s self-regulation skills are ‘sufficient’ is, however, not unambiguous and more research could shed light on the necessary level of self-regulation. In this context, it might be interesting to investigate to what extent children of different ability levels show different levels of self-regulation skills, to tailor support for self-regulation in future inquiry learning tasks.
Method
To answer the research question ‘To what extent do students of different ability levels differ in terms of self-regulation abilities?’, think aloud protocol should be conducted while children perform an inquiry task (n=30; 10 per ability level).
Inquiry task: Gravity Drop Simulation:
https://go-lab.bms.utwente.nl/production/gravityDrop/build/gravityDrop.html?preview
references
Manlove, S., Lazonder, A. W., & de Jong, T. (2007). Software scaffolds to promote regulation during scientific inquiry learning. Metacognition & Learning, 2, 141-155. doi.org/10.1007/s11409-007-9012-y
van Dijk, A. M., Eysink, T. H. S., & de Jong, T. (2016). Ability-related differences in performance of an inquiry task: The added values of prompts. Learning and Individual Differences, 47, 145-155. doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2016.01.008