Enhancing students’ reasoning skills by asking students to provide evidence-based explanations in science classrooms: findings from TIMSS 2019

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores teachers’ instructional activities to ask students provide evidence-based explanations in science lessons. The sample of this study is 8739 eighth-grade students, 456 science teachers, and 273 schools in the US that participated in TIMSS 2019. Utilising a hierarchical linear modelling approach, the study found a significant correlation between teachers asking students to provide evidence-based explanations and student performance in answering reasoning questions on TIMSS 2019. The study suggests that promoting career growth that emphasises science content, science pedagogy, and critical thinking is closely associated with teachers’ encouragement of students using evidence-based explanations. Furthermore, the study indicates that teachers who undertook professional development (PD) in the last two years are more likely asking students to provide evidence-based explanations. However, the lack of science resources significantly influences teachers’ decisions to asking students to provide evidence-based explanations in science lessons.