engleski

The effect of individual and cooperative learning on conceptual change and metacognitive confidence judgments

The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of individual and cooperative learning task on confidence judgments and conceptual change of the concept of operant conditioning in students enrolled in graduate teacher education program. In order to explore whether students pre-existing misconceptions diminish and whether students become more accurate in their calibration, a sample of 223 first-year graduate students were examined. At the beginning of the educational psychology course, students explained the similarities and differences between various concepts related to operant conditioning and rated the confidence in the accuracy of their answers. Additionally, their recognition of the operant conditioning principles in examples and their explanations of the identified principles were collected along with ratings of their confidence in both the answer and the explanation. The same tasks were administered following instruction. Instruction included the explanation of the key concepts and examples by the lecturer and later students worked on examples individually or in small groups. After finishing the tasks, students were informed of the correct answers through discussion. The results showed that students initially held various misconceptions about operant conditioning and greatly overestimate the accuracy of their explanations. Students reduced misconceptions following instruction, but the accuracy of explanations was still low. They still overestimated the accuracy of answers, although lower bias indexes indicated better calibration. Students in collaborative learning condition showed better recognition of the principles of operant conditioning. However, the two groups of students demonstrated similar levels of conceptual understanding of operant conditioning.

confidence judgments ; conceptual change ; cooperative learning

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