Variations to stimulated recall protocols to enhance student reflection: I did, I saw, I remembered

Abstract

The project, Mental Models and Robotics and Middle Schooling, was an empirical qualitative study centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm. The study involved students and their teacher in a socioeconomically diverse urban primary school and aimed to establish how the identification of participants’ mental models can assist in the authentic assessment of learning through a richer understanding of the cognitive development taking place in a technology based learning experience. The strict protocols of Stimulated Recall methodology were used to externalise participants’ ‘in-action’ mental models, using the opening question ‘What were you thinking?’ The use of this rigid questioning technique elicited insufficient responses from the students. An additional opening question, ‘What were you doing?’ was added in the second episode of Stimulated Recall prior to the question, ‘What were you thinking while you were doing that?’ This change elicited increased quantity and quality of responses because students were able to link their thoughts and feelings with associated actions and reactions. Richer mental models of procedural knowledge but more crucially, conceptual knowledge, were evident in the recall of journaling activities. Social construction mental models were also richer as students more willingly linked thought to action.