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Engaging students in inquiry is a key component in order to fulfill essential goals in science education. To achieve successful engagement in inquiry process, students need to feel competent and autonomous in spite of the cognitive and mental challenges the process entails. The study focuses on the "problematizing" mechanisms of scaffolds and highlights the centrality of metacognition in the inquiry process. The study's primary goal was to examine how providing students involved in inquiry with individual, social, or a combination of both metacognitive scaffoldings affected their expressions of competence and autonomy. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, we examined middle-school students' expressions of competence and autonomy in an online asynchronous forum that accompanied a year-long socio-scientific inquiry process. The process included four research conditions which differed by the metacognitive scaffolding students received: only individual, only social, both individual and social, and no metacognitive scaffolds. Although no significance difference was observed in students' expressions of competence in the initial phases of the inquiry among the research groups, students who received individual or social metacognitive scaffolding increased these expressions as they progressed through the process. Expressions of competence by students who received a combination of both types of support remained constant. In contrast, a significant decrease in students' expressions of competence was observed in the control group. Regarding autonomy, students' expressions of autonomy from all scaffolded conditions remained constant throughout the inquiry process, except for a significant decrease, experienced by students in the control group. The results are discussed through the lens of problematizing mechanism by which metacognitive scaffolding operate.

This study examined teachers' expressions of the dynamic characteristics of open inquiry, which emphasize the scientific, continuous, and flexible thinking and affective aspects associated with the inquiry process. Metacognitive prompts supported teachers' reflections as they engaged in an open inquiry process. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, we analyzed teachers' reflections and characterized their expressions of the dynamic characteristics of open inquiry. The results indicate that metacognitive prompts focused teachers' attention to the characteristics of open inquiry, which were expressed in their reflections. These expressions varied according to the metacognitive prompts used to support the teachers. The results have implications for teachers' professional development, specifically for the design of metacognitive prompts to support teachers in internalizing the dynamic nature of open inquiry.

The prevalence of habitat and life-threatening environmental problems has motivated environmental researchers to develop education programs to strengthen students' environmental literacy. We argue that the connection between environmental literacy and metacognition is theoretically promising. Therefore, we developed the "Meta-CIC" model, which is designed to develop students' environmental literacy, in parallel to supporting their metacognition. The core of this model is open inquiry-based learning. An explicit environmentally focused metacognitive guidance ("Meta") was embedded within the inquiry setting. This guidance referred to the components of metacognition and the strands of environmental literacy. The model includes two levels of collaboration: the "Collaborating Inquiry" (CI), which refers to the interactions between a pair of students working on an inquiry project; and the "Collaborating Inquiry Community" (CIC), which refers to the interactions among pairs of students working on different projects. We investigated the contribution of the "Meta"-CIC model to students' expression of environmental literacy. For this purpose, 250 seventh and eight grade students, who conducted open inquiry projects throughout a full school year, participated in this research. We examined students' environmental literacy using two tools: an environmental literacy questionnaire, which adopts a positivist, outcome-based approach; and an innovative Environmental Literacy INventory (ELIN), which adopts a phenomenological process-based approach. The environmental literacy questionnaire served as pre- and post-test measurements. The ELIN was used to analyze students' reflections, following their involvement in the inquiry process. The results of this study provide supporting evidence for the theoretical relationship between metacognition and environmental literacy, and demonstrate the different effects of the "Meta" and the "CIC" components on students' expressions of environmental literacy. The results also point to the importance of providing explicit and context-based metacognitive support. This study highlights the importance of developing students' high order thinking and implementing the "Meta-CIC" model, within the framework of environmental education.