Alone and Together: Exploring the Relationship Between Individual and Social Metacognition in College Biology Students During Problem Solving

When students use metacognition, they can more effectively problem solve on their own and in groups. Most metacognition studies have focused on individual learners while a few studies have begun to explore the metacognition learners use in social settings. Little is known about the comparison between how an individual student may use metacognition in solitary and collaborative contexts. To explore the relationship between individual and social metacognition, we asked: how do life science students' approaches for metacognition while problem solving on their own relate to their metacognitive approaches when problem solving in groups? We recorded students working in small groups and conducted think-aloud interviews with the same students. By coding for metacognition, we found that students vary in their use of metacognition during individual and group problem solving. The majority of the students in our study used similar metacognitive approaches across settings, while other students showed greater evidence of one form of metacognition over the other. Interestingly, we found that students corrected or evaluated their peers' thinking more than their own thinking, and we hypothesize that group dynamics can affect students' social metacognition. We present our results in a series of cases that illustrate the variation observed and offer suggestions for instructors for promoting metacognition.