ABSTRACT
This paper draws attention to the crucial need to acknowledge the importance of students, their contexts, and their perceptions of their classroom environments and interventions when conducting and reporting research into metacognition in high school science education. Drawing on the concepts of ecological validity and representative design, I consider the extent to which existing research and suggestions for instruction for metacognition are generalisable across contexts. I propose that we, researchers in metacognition in science education, should do more to make our research findings relevant for teachers if we want our research to be impactful beyond our academic communities. We should recognise that our research being ecologically valid is insufficient to confer generalisability on our findings or recommendations. Incorporating principles of representative design requires increased attention to and detailed reporting of our research contexts, including the students and teachers within those contexts. Such detail is important for us and our audiences to determine the extent to which our research findings and consequent recommendations might be generalisable.
