Development of Metacognitive Skills: Designing Problem-Based Experiment with Prospective Science Teachers in Biology Laboratory

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of designing problem-based experiments (DPBE) on the level of metacognitive skills of prospective science teachers. For this purpose, pre test-post test design, without control group, was used in the research. The research group of the study comprised 113 second-grade prospective science teachers who studied at the Faculty of Education of a state university, which is in the west of Turkey, in 2011-2012 spring semester. DPBE practices were carried out under the course of biology laboratory II. The experimental study was continued for 10 weeks. In the research, Metacognitive Skills Test for Adults which consists of 52 items and 2 factors was used for data collection. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the test was 0.95. In the analysis of data, related samples T-test and unrelated sample T-test were used via SPSS-21. As a result of analyzing the data, it has been concluded that designing problem-based experiments contributes positively to the development of metacognitive skills and being aware of cognitive features, which are the sub-factors of the scale, of prospective science teachers. Besides, while metacognitive pre-test scores do not show any difference according to gender, post-test scores indicate a significant difference in favor of females.