The fifth online academic seminar of the Fall Semester of 2021-2022 will be given by Assist. Prof. Zerrin Doğanca Küçük. The title of her talk is “Metacognition in action as a possible explanation for stock-flow failure.” The abstract of her talk, her short bio and the link of the seminar are given below. The seminar will be held in English.

Considering the nature of problems in dynamic systems, the systems thinking literature introduces various failures and oversimplified strategies while solving perceived problems of a system and possible reasons for failures. It is revealed that poor understanding of stocks and flows was due to the problems people have in their decision making processes. To understand the differences in individuals' abilities in solving stock-flow problems, it is important to examine their decision making processes and thinking strategies while solving stock-flow problems.In this presentation, Dr Zerrin Doganca Kucuk will share findings of their study along with Dr Gursu Asik about which metacognitive strategies pre-service mathematics students used and how successful problem solvers organized their thinking processes to arrive at a correct answer when prompted and permitted to retry. They used a concurrent think-a lot protocol methodology in the study to examine individuals' thinking when performing two stock-flow tasks. They believe the study has implications for both systems dynamics and mathematics education fields especially on our understanding of metacognitive deficiencies in stock-flow failure.

Short Bio:

Dr. Doganca Kucuk is an assistant professor in the Education Department in Maynooth University, Ireland. She holds a Bachelor's degree (Undergraduate Mathematics Education Program) and a minor degree (Undergraduate Science Education) from Bogazici University. After studying as a mathematics teacher at a private school in Istanbul for one year, she worked as a research assistant and a post-doc researcher at the Primary Education Department in Bogazici University. She got her MS and PhD degrees from the Environmental Sciences Institute at the same university. Prior to joining the Education Department in Maynooth University, she also held the roles of Vice Director at the BAUSTEM Center and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education in Bahcesehir University. Her main interests are initial teacher education, professional teacher development, environmental education, socio-scientific issues, and systems thinking. She has been involved in several national and international projects and recently, she is working in the project 5*S: Space, Surveyors and Students- STEM and the Sustainable Development Goals Project funded by Science Foundation Ireland.

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