El papel de los proyectos de investigación escolar sobre cuestiones sociocientíficas en la autorregulación del alumnado

Abstract

The thesis seeks to define a theoretical model that allows analyzing the contribution made by the treatment of socio-scientific questions (CSC) in the self-regulation of students in a science class. The hypothesis is that through school research projects chosen by the students, levels of affective, cognitive, metacognitive and social self-regulation mediated by progression hypotheses can be evidenced with higher levels of intermediate evolution at the beginning and more levels of advanced evolution after graduation. intervention. It will then be possible to evaluate how the situated learning of the students influences the mobilization of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and cognition for the learning of a didactic unit called the respiration of living beings. This approach introduces the idea of complexity (Vázquez-Bernal et al, 2007; Prieto et al., 2002 and García-Pérez and Rivero, 1995), that is, that knowledge, behavior and feelings evolve from simpler levels to more elaborate levels when students have the possibility of choosing what they want to learn (Dierking & Falk, 1992) without necessarily following a sequence (Pintrich, 2000). Thus, he realizes that by increasing the possibilities of thematic choice by the students, this will increase their levels of self-regulation in the different dimensions, especially in the affective one. Therefore, CSCs (Ratcliffe & Grace, 2003) use situated learning to contribute to greater possibilities of self-regulation in students when they are developed through school research projects. The applied methodology consists of using the MSLQ questionnaire (Pintrich et al., 1991) adapted for high school students, an interview, the teacher's and student's diaries, and a category system to analyze how they self-regulate in the affective, cognitive, metacognitive and social in the context of school research projects when addressing CSC. The research is developed in four parts: the statement of the problem, the theoretical framework, the definition of the methodology used and the discussion of results. In the first part, the context of the research is proposed as a starting point for self-regulation and metacognition and how it can be favored when addressing CSC from school. Secondly, in the theoretical framework, an account is made of the emergence of learning, self-regulation and metacognition theories and what subsequent contributions they can provide when approached through school research such as the curricular project Investigating Our World (Cañal, Pozuelos and Travé, 2005). The third part explains the methodology to determine the evolution of students in the different categories of self-regulation and metacognition to analyze them from a mixed approach: qualitative and quantitative using the instruments described above through the implementation of an intervention with 7 teaching units. The fourth part focuses on presenting and discussing the results through sections that respond to the sub-problems about the contribution of the CSC to the self-regulation of students: self-regulation in each dimension, the development of self-regulatory strategies, the level of metacognitive development, the relationship between the variables of the different dimensions, additionally, it has been determined through the interview how the context in which the students develop the school research projects influences self-regulation and metacognition with the systematic triangulation of the answers of the students, integrated into the different components of the thesis and a special section for it. Below are the conclusions on the most representative elements that favored metacognitive self-regulation and their implications, highlighting the contributions evidenced by each dimension analyzed in the treatment of CSC; It continues by establishing the connection of the theoretical model that involves the relationship between the processes of metacognition and self-regulation when dealing with CSC with the proposal of Holbrook & Rannikmae (2010), determining how students get closer to scientific concepts through our proposal. The study ends with two fundamental assumptions, the limitations that could influence some biases regarding the results and future studies for specific variables, applications of the progression hypothesis to other science contents, the potential of the AQUAD program, meta-studies and studies of inclusion in self-regulation.