Opportunities and Challenges of Using Video to Examine High School Students' Metacognition

This article reflects on the opportunities and challenges of using digital video (DV) technology as a visual research tool in qualitative research. The ideas are derived from a multiple case study that examined ten high school students' metacognitive thinking as they created video representations of their own. The article begins with a brief history of visual research, and an introduction to the context, problem, and definition of metacognition within the study. This is followed by a literature review that examines the use of video in qualitative research and an explanation of the research questions and methodology. As revealed by the embedded video exemplars within this paper, many instances of students' metacognitive thinking, behavior, and feelings were inferred from video observations of students working on their video artifacts, discussing ideas with their group members, or responding to my questions. In the discussion, I explore the opportunities and challenges of drawing definitive conclusions about students' metacognitive thinking within video imagery and the multiple possible ways of interpreting this information.