Inquiry provides opportunities to engage students in authentic science. Although inquiry's underlying principles can motivate students to learn, the challenges that students encounter may hamper their motivation. Thus, the teacher's role in providing motivational support is crucial. This research examines how the interplay among the inquiry's characteristics, the challenges encountered by students, and the motivational support provided by the teacher affects students' expression of motivation throughout an online inquiry process. The messages of both the teacher and the students were examined using self-determination theory (SDT). The results indicate that the students did not automatically embrace the autonomous characteristic of open inquiry. Their expressions of motivation were dynamic, affected by the challenges that they encountered. In contrast, the teacher maintained high levels of autonomy and competence and intertwined these components in a strategy that we term guided autonomy. The teacher and students expressed high-order expressions of affect. In addition, we found a positive correlation between the teacher's motivational support and the students' expressions of motivation. The results indicate that SDT can provide a powerful framework for understanding students' unfolding motivation throughout a challenging educational process and for guiding teachers' efforts in supporting the motivation of their students in an online environment.

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The prevalence of habitat and life-threatening environmental problems has motivated environmental researchers to develop education programs to strengthen students' environmental literacy. We argue that the connection between environmental literacy and metacognition is theoretically promising. Therefore, we developed the Meta-CIC model, which is designed to develop students' environmental literacy, in parallel to supporting their metacognition. The core of this model is open inquiry-based learning. An explicit environmentally focused metacognitive guidance (Meta) was embedded within the inquiry setting. This guidance referred to the components of metacognition and the strands of environmental literacy. The model includes two levels of collaboration: the Collaborating Inquiry (CI), which refers to the interactions between a pair of students working on an inquiry project; and the Collaborating Inquiry Community (CIC), which refers to the interactions among pairs of students working on different projects. We investigated the contribution of the Meta-CIC model to students' expression of environmental literacy. For this purpose, 250 seventh and eight grade students, who conducted open inquiry projects throughout a full school year, participated in this research. We examined students' environmental literacy using two tools: an environmental literacy questionnaire, which adopts a positivist, outcome-based approach; and an innovative Environmental Literacy INventory (ELIN), which adopts a phenomenological process-based approach. The environmental literacy questionnaire served as pre-and post-test measurements. The ELIN was used to analyze students' reflections, following their involvement in the inquiry process. The results of this study provide supporting evidence for the theoretical relationship between metacognition and environmental literacy, and demonstrate the different effects of the Meta and the CIC components on students' expressions of environmental literacy. The results also point to the importance of providing explicit and context-based metacognitive support. This study highlights the importance of developing students' high order thinking and implementing the Meta-CIC model, within the framework of environmental education. The crucial role of environmental education in the face of environmental conflicts has long been acknowledged. According to the Tbilisi Declaration, the goal of environmental education (EE) is to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems (UNESCO, 1977). Specifically, EE should empower students worldwide with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations, and commitment to work both individually and collectively toward solving current problems and preventing new ones (UNESCO, 1977). These goals can be achieved by developing "environmental literacy," which Roth (1992) defines as the capacity to perceive and interpret the relative health of environmental systems, and to take appropriate action to maintain, restore, or...

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Our research examined the effect of the Meta-CIC model on students' metacognitive performances in an online discussion. This model embeds individual and social metacognitive support within an inquiry computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. The research population consisted of 150 high-achieving 7th-and 8th-grade students who were divided into four research groups, according to the instructional method to which they were exposed. An online discussion forum accompanied the students' inquiry process. The results indicate that the individual metacognitive support significantly affected students' online metacognitive performances, while the social metacognitive support increased the students' involvement in their peers' learning processes, and enabled them to collaborate in the CSCL. We therefore recommend embedding the Meta-CIC model in a CSCL environment as a means to develop students' online metacognitive performances.