Abstract
Developing scientific reasoning (SR) is a central goal of science-teacher education worldwide. On a fine-grained level, SR competency can be subdivided into at least six skills: formulating research questions, generating hypotheses, planning experiments, observing and measuring, preparing data for analysis, and drawing conclusions. In a study focusing on preservice chemistry teachers, an organic chemistry lab course was redesigned using problem-solving experiments and SR video lessons to foster SR skills. To evaluate the intervention, a self-assessment questionnaire was developed, and a performance-based instrument involving an experimental problem-solving task was adapted to the target group of undergraduates. The treatment was evaluated in a pre-post design with control group (cook-book experiments, no SR video lessons) and alternative treatment group (problem-solving experiments, unrelated video lessons). Interrater reliability was excellent (ρ from 0.915 to 1.000; ICC (A1)). Data analysis shows that the adapted instrument is suitable for university students. First insights from the pilot study indicate that the cook-book lab (control group) only fosters students’ skill in observing and measuring, while both treatment groups show an increase in generating hypotheses and planning experiments. No pretest-posttest differences were found in self-assessed SR skills in the treatment groups. Instruments and data are presented and discussed.
Highlights
The study of scientific thinking dates back nearly a century and has been the interest of psychologists and science educators alike [1,2]
Self-assessment data on scientific reasoning (SR) skills were collected in the treatment groups, totaling
The majority of participants already judged their skills in using blanks, observing and measuring, and drawing conclusions to be very high before participating in the laboratory
Summary
The study of scientific thinking dates back nearly a century and has been the interest of psychologists and science educators alike [1,2]. One main focus of research covers the development of domain-general strategies of reasoning and problem-solving [2]. Terminology varies respectively by discipline as well as focus on research or teaching, yielding terms such as scientific reasoning, critical thinking (with regard to a science context), scientific discovery, scientific inquiry, or inquiry learning [2,4]. For the purpose of this article, scientific inquiry is used to describe teaching methods and activities aimed at the process of gaining scientific knowledge [5,6], whereas scientific reasoning (SR) refers to the cognitive skills required during a scientific inquiry activity [1,6,7]. Due to its cognitive nature, SR is viewed to be a competency consisting of a complex set of skills [8,9]
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