Enhancing critical thinking, metacognition, and conceptual understanding in introductory physics: The impact of direct and experiential instructional models

This study investigates the impact of three different instructional models, direct model (DIM), experiential learning (ELM), and their combinations (DIM-ELM) on enhancing critical thinking, metacognition, conceptual understanding in an introductory physics course. The included 84 first-year pre-engineering students aged 18-24 years who were enrolled course at two public science technology universities Ethiopia. A quasi-experimental design was used with intact classes randomly assigned to one treatment groups: ELM, DIM, DIM-ELM. instruments measure outcomes thinking test electricity magnetism, magnetism assessment, metacognitive awareness regulation scale magnetism. one-way analysis covariance examine models students’ topic while a variance analyze effects metacognition. Results showed that ELM more effective than DIM DIM-ELM post-test scores. also method improving scores, showing better results DIM. However, there no significant differences approaches These findings suggest may be physics.