مطالب

Popper, by proposing the theory of falsifiability as a prerequisite for the scientific nature of theories and hypotheses and by rejecting inductive method as the conventional scientific methodology up to that time, presented a new criterion for distinguishing science from pseudo-science, which sparked much agreement and disagreement. Inspired by the Socratic dialectical method, he affirmed the un-certainty and conjectural nature of theories and beliefs, and by equating reason with criticism, he considered the only method of approaching truth to be through continuous dialogue while observing the principles of liberty, tolerance, and fallibility in a free environment guaranteed by the democrat-ic state he envisioned. The democracy Popper had in mind, contrary to the prevailing interpretation, did not mean rule by the people or rule by the majority but rather stemmed from critical rationality and its foundations such as falsifiability and fallibility, which had a negative rather than a positive character. Popper, through a negative interpretation of how democracy functioned in ancient Greece, particularly during the Periclean era, first regarded the age-old question of “Who should rule?” as fundamentally mistaken and defined the correct interpretation of democracy as the ability to remove or dismiss an undesirable government without bloodshed. He redefined the punishment of exile in ancient Greece as a method of preventing tyranny and despotism stemming from popular-ity, thereby presenting evidence of the negative and deterrent aspect of democracy. In this study, the researcher, based on a descriptive-analytical method, attempts to show the close relationship be-tween the theory of critical rationality and Popper’s theory of democracy based on the main ques-tion and hypothesis.

Teachers’ cognition, as an important entity in determining the level of efficient teaching, has been the target of recent studies. Metacognitive awareness is also claimed to be the manifestation of the underlining cognition. Therefore, this study took a new move in the area of teacher cognition research. It integrated teaching experience, one of the main factors of cognitive/metacognitive building blocks, in language noticing. It also managed to perceive the relation between teachers’ cognition and metacognitive awareness, taking experience into account.  For this, at first, Noticing Concept Inventory (NCI) was given to 60 experienced and novice teachers, then the same teachers took teacher metacognitive awareness Inventory (MALT). The independent sample t-test confirmed the role of teaching experience in conceptualizing noticing; in the next statistical step, Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Multiple Regression Analysis detected the relation between teachers’ cognitive status and metacognitive awareness. Experienced teachers were found to be more metacognitively aware hence holding up higher level of noticing cognition. In the final step, the ANOVA pertained the procedural knowledge, as a metacognitive component, actively involved in the teachers’ noticing cognition. Findings illustrated the key role of teaching experience in forming and modifying teachers’ cognition on noticing.