Development of inductive reasoning in students across school grade levels

Abstract

Inductive reasoning is one of the main factors predicting academic success and a cognitive process of fluid intelligence. The main purposes of this study are to examine the psychometric characteristics of an inductive reasoning test and to explore the development of students’ inductive reasoning across school age groups. A random sample of 701 students was drawn from the 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th grades in six public schools in An Giang Province, Vietnam. The 32-item inductive reasoning test involves four different inductive reasoning tasks: figure series completion, figure analogies, number analogies and number series completion. The test was delivered online via the eDia assessment system. As the results of a confirmatory factor analysis show, the test is a suitable tool to measure inductive reasoning in the Vietnamese context with CFI = .902, RMSEA = .038, SRMR = .046 and Cronbach’s alpha = .88. The Rasch analysis also indicated that the test items fit the assessment model and formed an adequate instrument. Students performed better on the figural subtests than they did on the numerical subtests. The older age groups tended to earn higher scores than their younger peers on the test, indicating a modest pace of development. No significant difference was found between male and female students. Multiple regression analysis revealed that school grades predicted performance in inductive reasoning well, contributing 32.0 % to explaining the results of the inductive reasoning test. The current study provided evidence for students’ development in inductive reasoning across school grade levels in Vietnam, where improving thinking skills is embedded in the core curricula.