Metakognition och Internet : Om gymnasieelevers informationsanvändning vid arbete med Internet

This thesis describes what happens when a group of high-school students practice their ability to reflect upon their learning (metacognitive training) and then solve tasks with information collected on the Internet. The overall aim of the thesis is to make an explorative investigation to find out if exercises of metacognitive type can support the use of information for high-school students in their work with the Internet. The dissertation also aims at making clear what significance certain pre-requisites have for metacognitive training, ie if the students attend vocationally or theoretically oriented programmes and the attitude of the teacher towards metacognitive exercises. There are a number of reasons why I have chosen to investigate the field of learning and information and communication technology (ICT). The use of the Internet to search for information in school work has increased. An important reason to investigate these issues is that the use of ICT in itself doesn´t seem to mean improved learning, according to existing research. A central question to study is where the pedagogical surplus value lies in the use of the Internet in school work? In the thesis it is argued that it is not enough to provide schools with computers and Internet connections, but that something more is needed in order to achieve a development in teaching with ICT. During one year 40 students in theoretically and vocationally oriented programmes are being monitored together with their English teachers, in four different actions. The collection of data was done exploratively by interviews, logbook notes, observations and the SOLO-taxonomy. The result is accounted for in four case studies. During the action the professionalism of the teacher in creating beneficial teaching environments, by contextualizing the metacognitive exercises to things that challenge the students' internal motivation, turned out to be central. Furthermore it was shown that the students in the vocationally oriented programmes had most use of developing their reflective ability