فصلنامه روانشناسی شناختی

Researchers emphasise the effect of metacognition on learning and teaching. The purpose of this article was to investigate the metacognitive knowledge and skills of physics students at Farhangian University in mechanic's problem solving. This qualitative study is an interpretive phenomenology and the methods of think-aloud protocols, interviewing and observation in natural conditions have been used to collect data and evaluate the metacognitive knowledge and skills of students and instructors at Farhangian University. The sample of the current study were forty two girls in the first semester, who studied physics at the Nasibeh Campus of Farhangian University in Tehran. Metacognitive evaluations were also performed to solve problems in mechanics in the kinematic field. In this study, the samples included students who had successfully passed the university entrance exam in the previous six months. In addition, one day before the start of the research, they participated in the university's basic physics exam, therefore, they had the necessary preparation and knowledge to solve the problems. The study was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, two to three problems were solved by the students with the think-aloud protocols. To familiarize students with the think-aloud protocols, they practiced this method with the help of a researcher. In the second stage, the researcher interviewed six students who were more interested and cooperative. In the third stage, the behavior of all forty-two students was observed and recorded during the academic semester, while solving problems under normal conditions. The results showed that most of the students surveyed had moderate metacognitive knowledge and very poor metacognitive skills

Researchers in the field of science education believe that people's attitudes about learning will have a significant impact on their future learning and what they learn from science will not be irrelevant to their views and attitudes. Accordingly, most questionnaires have been developed to measure attitudes towards science. One of the newest questionnaires is the Colorado Learning Attitudes about science, known as CLASS. This questionnaire has not been standardised in Iran for the use of researchers in the field of education and psychology. The current descriptive research has been based on instrument designs and examined their psychometric properties. In this study, 476 high school students in science and mathematics courses were recruited to evaluate the psychometric properties of the questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to investigate the questionnaire structures and a graded response model in Polytomous Item Response Theory (IRT) was used to analyse items. The Cronbach’s alpha for all eight factors of the questionnaire ranged from 0.701 to 0.891. All the eight factors perfectly fitted into the Polytomous IRT models, in addition to having diagnosis and threshold parameters. In terms of classical measurement, indicators such as reliability and validity of the structure as well as the estimated parameters in the Polytomous IRT model, the items and structure of this questionnaire could be considered as desirable. Therefore, the authours would recommend using the Persian version of this questionnaire to examine attitudes about science, especially physics, appropriately.