Children's Scientific Reasoning Research Articles

The personal epistemology of parents predicts the development of scientific reasoning in children aged 6-10 years.

The influence of the epistemological beliefs of parents on the development of comprehensive scientific reasoning abilities was investigated in a five-wave longitudinal study from kindergarten to elementary school. The 161 German 5-10-year-olds (89 girls, 72 boys) were assessed yearly on their scientific reasoning abilities using comprehensive measures for experimentation and data-interpretation skills, as well as understanding of the nature of science. The children were also tested on their language abilities and intelligence. Their parents completed a sociodemographics questionnaire and answered ten questions about their epistemological beliefs regarding (1) the interpretive nature of science, (2) the tentative nature of knowledge, and (3) the role of scientific framework theories. The personal epistemology of the parents significantly predicted the scientific reasoning development of their children regardless of the parents' education level and the children's general cognitive abilities. However, the effect of the epistemology of parents on their children's scientific reasoning was limited to the intercepts, suggesting that the epistemic understanding of parents affects how scientific reasoning develops in their children, but not the development speed. Although parental epistemology exerts substantial effects on scientific reasoning of their children, it did not affect their reading ability, suggesting an involvement of science-specific mechanisms rather than generalized family-based influences. These findings highlight the importance of family as a variable in the development of scientific reasoning, which is an area lacking in research, and it suggests that early interventions targeted at the epistemic understanding of caregivers can provide useful ways for promoting the reasoning of children. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: A five-year longitudinal study shows significant development of scientific reasoning from kindergarten to elementary school. Caregivers' personal epistemology predicted scientific reasoning development-independent of children's general cognitive abilities and caregivers' level of education. The effect was most-pronounced for caregivers' understanding that social framework theories determine which aspects of science are accepted and how they are conducted. Caregivers' personal epistemology did not predict children's reading abilities, suggesting that the effect of the caregivers' epistemology on children's scientific reasoning is domain-specific.

MEASURING SCIENTIFIC REASONING OF FOURTH GRADERS: VALIDATION OF THE SCIENCE-K INVENTORY IN PAPER-BASED AND COMPUTER-BASED TESTING ENVIRONMENTS

Nowadays, the assessment of student performance has become increasingly technology-based, a trend that can also be observed in the evaluation of scientific reasoning, with more and more of the formerly paper-based assessment tools moving into the digital space. The study aimed to examine the reliability and validity of the paper-based and computer-based forms of the Science-K Inventory, which assesses children's scientific reasoning in three aspects: experimentation, data interpretation, and understanding of the nature of science. The pilot study involved 84 fourth-grade Hungarian students, with 39 students taking the paper-based test and 45 students taking the computer-based test. Rasch measurements and reliability tests have indicated that both the paper-based and computer-based test versions are equally valid for assessing the scientific reasoning skills of fourth graders. Students achieved high test scores in both mediums, and there were no significant differences between boys' and girls' scientific reasoning in either test type. The novelty of this research was that the Science-K Inventory had not yet been tested in a computer-based format. The results demonstrate that the Science-K Inventory can be effectively utilized in digital testing to provide teachers with rapid and valuable information for fostering the development of their students' scientific reasoning. Keywords: computer-based testing, paper-based testing, primary school, Science-K Inventory, scientific reasoning

The role of creative thinking in children's scientific reasoning

Theories advocate that creative thinking could be strengthened within the science curriculum, yet empirical evidence supporting a connection between the two remains limited. This study is one of the first to examine the predictive value of creative thinking (divergent and convergent thinking) for scientific reasoning, while taking task specificity and academic achievement into account. A path analysis based on data of 225 fifth graders revealed that verbal and visual convergent thinking positively predicted the construction of research questions and evaluation of evidence, whereas visual divergent thinking negatively predicted the construction of research questions. Mathematical ability proved of no predictive value for any of the creative thinking and scientific reasoning measures, while reading comprehension positively predicted verbal convergent thinking, the construction of research questions and evidence evaluation. This study illustrates how convergent thinking could be of particular relevance for children's scientific reasoning, and can serve as a starting point for in-depth research examining the role of creative thinking within scientific reasoning.

Development and initial validation of a performance-based scientific reasoning test for children

Scientific reasoning encompasses the cognitive skills used when conducting a deliberate scientific investigation. As there are not that many instruments available for assessing scientific reasoning in children, a new performance-based test was developed that taps children’s command of five key scientific reasoning processes (predicting, experimenting, interpreting, evaluating data, and drawing conclusions). Results of this first validation study with 170 children age 7–10 showed that the test has good item characteristics and acceptable reliability. Initial validity evidence indicated that children’s test scores were unaffected by gender and prior domain knowledge and largely independent of language and math abilities.

Preschoolers’ Induction of the Concept of Material Kind to Make Predictions: The Effects of Comparison and Linguistic Labels

Analogical reasoning by comparison is considered a special case of inductive reasoning, which is fundamental to the scientific method. By reasoning analogically, learners can abstract the underlying commonalities of several entities, thereby ignoring single objects’ superficial features. We tested whether different task environments designed to trigger analogical reasoning by comparison would support preschoolers’ induction of the concept of material kind to predict and explain objects’ floating or sinking as a central aspect of scientific reasoning. Specifically, in two experiments, we investigated whether the number of presented objects (one versus two standards), consisting of a specific material and the labeling of objects with the respective material name, would benefit preschoolers’ material-based inferences. For each item set used in both experiments, we asked the children (N = 59 in Experiment 1, N = 99 in Experiment 2) to predict an object’s floating or sinking by matching it to the standards and to verbally explain their selections. As expected, we found a significant effect for the number of standards in both experiments on the prediction task, suggesting that children successfully induced the relevance of material kind by comparison. However, labels did not increase the effect of the standards. In Experiment 2, we found that the children could transfer their conceptual knowledge on material kind but that transfer performance did not differ among the task environments. Our findings suggest that tasks inviting analogical reasoning by comparison with two standards are useful for promoting young children’s scientific reasoning.

The linguistic nature of Children's scientific reasoning

The linguistic nature of Children's scientific reasoning

Designing for Learning Conversations: How Parents Support Children's Science Learning Within an Immersive Simulation

This research investigates the social learning affordances of a room-sized, immersive, and interactive augmented reality simulation environment designed to support children's understanding of basic physics concepts in a science center. Conversations between 97 parent–child pairs were analyzed in relation to categories of talk through which children's activities are structured, and their physical and perceptual experiences are related to scientific content knowledge. We provide a detailed account of how parents guide children's scientific reasoning in this novel learning environment, such as by structuring the exploration, and emphasizing perceptual observations as evidence and data. We argue that this particular type of interactive environment affords activities that support learning of complex ideas in science, empowering parents to provide support to the children's perceptual focus and physical engagement. Our findings contrast with studies on high-interactive immersive environments that have typically shown that children tend to isolate themselves from their social surroundings. Mixed-reality environments, in contrast, appear to support significant social interaction, while still offering children playful and engaging experiences.

The Contributions of Explanation and Exploration to Children's Scientific Reasoning

AbstractBoth explanation and exploration can foster causal learning, yet the mechanisms underlying these effects are largely unknown, especially in early childhood. In this article, I provide an overview of research on the relation among explanation, exploration, and the development of scientific reasoning. I propose that explaining and exploring operate in tandem as hypothesis‐generating and hypothesis‐testing mechanisms. I review evidence that supports this claim by demonstrating that inconsistency with prior knowledge selectively motivates children to construct explanations, guides discovery‐oriented behavior, and drives the early‐developing capacity to reason scientifically. I conclude with a discussion of the educational applications of research on the development of children's scientific reasoning in informal learning settings.

The Development of Diagnostic Reasoning about Uncertain Events between Ages 4–7

The present investigation examines the development of children's diagnostic reasoning abilities when such inferences involve belief revision about uncertain potential causes. Four- to 7-year-olds observed an event occur that was due to one of four potential causes. Some of those potential causes were revealed to be efficacious; others were revealed to be inefficacious, but there was always one potential cause presented with unknown efficacy. While all children could make appropriate predictive inferences about this situation, 4- and 5-year-olds were less capable of making correct diagnostic inferences about the cause of the event under these circumstances than older children. We discuss possible mechanisms for this development, as well as speculate on the relation between these findings and literature in children's scientific reasoning.

Bit by bit or all at once? Splitting up the inquiry task to promote children's scientific reasoning

This study examined whether and why assigning children to a segmented inquiry task makes their investigations more productive. Sixty-one upper elementary-school pupils engaged in a simulation-based inquiry assignment either received a multivariable inquiry task (n = 21), a segmented version of this task that addressed the variables in successive order (n = 21), or could formulate a task themselves (n = 19). Results showed that children are naturally inclined to pose single-variable inquiry questions. Segmented tasks, in addition, invoked more systematic but equally comprehensive investigations than a single, unsegmented task. More systematic experimentation was associated with more valid inferences and beliefs. These findings demonstrate that dividing a multivariable inquiry task into a series of single-variable subtasks facilitates the control of variables rather than the control of the learning process, and promotes inference performance and conceptual understanding.

Young Children Can Be Sophisticated Scientists

Since the first international comparison of student achievement in mathematics and science, we've been worried about the disappointing showing by U.S. students. However, while the United States has tried to improve mathematics achievement in every grade from kindergarten to 12th, its efforts to improve education have emphasized only middle school and high school. Elementary school has been relatively neglected. One cause is an outdated idea that elementary school children aren't developmentally ready to handle complex science. But my research and that of others shows that young children can be surprisingly capable scientists. Their abilities far exceed the notions of age-appropriate in current curriculum policy documents. This means that today's curricula are unnecessarily watered down. What children know determines what they can learn next. we update our thinking about what young children can do with and give them more optimal learning opportunities, we may be able to significantly strengthen young children's scientific reasoning and position them to take on more rigorous curriculum in later grades. What Science? For many years, educators have categorized what is appropriate for children according to Jean Piaget's developmental stages. We've thought about kids' capabilities and deficiencies in terms of different grade bands, and we've thought about the science process skills that are available to them in those grade bands. But this approach substantially underestimates children's capabilities. One problem with Piaget's stages is that his investigations of children's scientific inquiry used tasks for which they had weak conceptual knowledge, thus handicapping their reasoning (Carey 1985). But how well children perform a task depends on both how well they reason and how well they know important concepts. As Susan Carey noted, If these concepts are not completely clear in the child's mind, due to incomplete scientific knowledge, then the child will, of course, be unable to separate them from each other in hypothesis testing and evaluation (1985: 498). Later work on children's development by Piaget (1978, 1980) and others (see Duschl, Schweingruber, and Shouse 2007) reveals that young children have a wide range of intellectual resources. But many educators have clung to the idea that young children have limited scientific reasoning capabilities. The developmental literature may identify the intellectual resources that children bring to the classroom, but it is blind to the capacities that children can reveal under better learning conditions. Recent research suggests that children's capabilities are surprisingly plastic and sensitive to the opportunities they have to learn. Stronger Science Instruction In my research, I analyze how well children can think scientifically when they get instruction that uses their intellectual resources to the fullest. One line of my work investigates the power of scientific inquiry in the hands of children in the primary grades (Metz 2004, 2008). More recently (Metz et al. 2010), I've been investigating the extent to which young children can understand core scientific ideas. From this work, I've developed five instructional design principles aimed at maximizing the power of children's scientific inquiry, and I've incorporated these principles into an elementary school curriculum. The design principles are: 1. Scaffold relatively rich knowledge, emphasizing big ideas that transcend the topic being studied. A solid grasp of concepts leads to better scientific reasoning. Unfortunately, U.S. curricula cover many topics superficially (Valverde and Schmidt 2000), undermining in-depth conceptual understanding. This instructional model sacrifices coverage of many topics to go deep into strategically selected ones. This principle gives rise to the next two. …

Scientific reasoning in a real‐world context: The effect of prior belief and outcome on children's hypothesis‐testing strategies

The impact of event outcome and prior belief on scientific reasoning was investigated within a real-world oral health context. Participants (N= 144; ranging from 3 to 11 years) were given hypothesis-testing tasks and asked to explain their answers. Participants were presented with information that was either consistent or inconsistent with their own beliefs. Each task consisted of scenarios in which the outcome was either good or bad oral health. When the information was belief consistent and the outcome was good, or when the information was belief inconsistent and the outcome was bad, children were more likely to choose scientifically appropriate tests of the stated hypothesis (i.e. manipulate only one variable). Evidence-based explanations were associated with scientifically appropriate choices in the good-outcome, belief-inconsistent scenario and the belief-consistent, bad-outcome scenario. Participants' performance on these tasks is explained by considering the plausibility of causal variables. A control of variables strategy was used to test hypotheses in cases in which the evidence was consistent with participants' beliefs and knowledge of causal mechanisms. In contrast, when the evidence was inconsistent with participants' beliefs, children chose to manipulate behaviours likely to lead to a positive health outcome. These findings demonstrate that context and prior knowledge interact to play an important role in children's scientific reasoning.

From “Try It and See” to strategic exploration: Characterizing young children's scientific reasoning

AbstractThis article explores ways of characterizing different dimensions and levels of scientific reasoning in early elementary school children, in the context of open explorations. The article focuses on children's performance on three probes which involve using evidence to generate and evaluate knowledge claims. A number of dimensions have been used to characterize children's approaches to exploration and knowledge construction, which demonstrate the interrelationship between conceptual knowledge and scientific reasoning. Children differed markedly across these dimensions, yet individual children were relatively consistent in their approach to the tasks. The major differences in performance are linked to fundamental distinctions in the way ideas are viewed in relation to evidence. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 94–118, 2004

Tracing Young Children's Scientific Reasoning

This paper explores the scientific reasoning of 14 children across their first two years of primary school. Children's view of experimentation, their approach to exploration, and their negotiation of competing knowledge claims, are interpreted in terms of categories of epistemological reasoning. Children's epistemological reasoning is distinguished from their ability to control variables. While individual children differ substantially, they show a relatively steady growth in their reasoning, with some contextual variation. A number of these children are reasoning at a level well in advance of curriculum expectations, and it is argued that current recommended practice in primary science needs to be rethought. The data is used to explore the relationship between reasoning and knowledge, and to argue that the generation and exploration of ideas must be the key driver of scientific activity in the primary school.

Parents' Assistance of Their Children's Scientific Reasoning

Research suggests that parents are effective at scaffolding their children's learning to help them become self-regulated problem solvers. Yet little is known about parents' effectiveness at assisting their children with problems that parents find unfamiliar and, thus, do not have at hand either the solution or strategies that a novice child could profitably implement. In this study, 20 dyads of parents and their preadolescent children spent 45 min solving a scientific reasoning problem that entailed generating and interpreting a series of experimental trials to understand the causal structure of a moderately complex system. As the dyads worked, researchers tracked their experimentation strategies, patterns of interaction, and changes in their domain-specific beliefs about the system. In comparison to solo participants observed in previous research, the dyads performed well on strategies for generating and interpreting evidence. However, parents assumed most of the difficult conceptual tasks, including recording data and making inferences, and delegated the logistical roles-the actual manual operation of the equipment-to the children. Parents did not cede the conceptual roles to children as the session progressed. On the positive side, parents shared control of the problem solving and engaged in collaborative discussions with their children. Parents also provided valuable assistance of many kinds, usually during the evidence-generation phase of the trials. They missed key opportunities for helping children interpret evidence, and as a result, children failed to achieve the gains in understanding that the parents did. The beliefs of parents and children did not come into closer alignment over the course of the study. We conclude, especially as children reach school age, that parents who wish to assist their children's learning may increasingly need to understand how their children think-not just in general, but about central kinds of problems and content domains.

The mind's staircase: exploring the conceptual underpinnings of children's thought and knowledge

Contents: Part I:Introduction. R. Case, General and Specific Views of the Mind, its Structure, and its Development. R. Case, A Neo-Piagetian Approach to the Issue of Cognitive Generality and Specificity. R. Case, Advantages and Limitations of the Neo-Piagetian Position. Part II:The Role of Central Conceptual Structures in the Development of Children's Logico-Mathematical Thought. Z. Marini, Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Development of Children's Scientific Reasoning. S. Griffin, R. Case, R. Sandieson, Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Acquisition of Children's Everyday Mathematical Knowledge. A.M. Capodilupo, A Neo-Structural Analysis of Children's Response to Instruction in the Sight-Reading of Musical Notation. R. Case, R. Sandieson, Testing for the Presence of a Central Quantative Structure: Use of the Transfer Paradigm. Part III:The Role of Central Conceptual Structures in the Development of Children's Social and Emotional Thought. J. Goldberg-Reitman, Young Girls' Conception of Their Mothers' Role: A Neo- Structural Analysis. M. Bruchkowsky, The Development of Empathic Cognition in Middle and Early Childhood. A. McKeough, A Neo-Structural Analysis of Children's Narrative and its Development. S. Griffin, Young Children's Awareness of Their Inner World: A Neo-Structural Analysis of the Development of Intrapersonal Intelligence. A. McKeough, Testing for the Presence of a Central Social Structure: Use of the Transfer Paradigm. Part IV:The Role of Central Conceptual Structures in the Development of Children's Spatial Thought. S. Dennis, Stage and Structure in the Development of Children's Spatial Representations. D.T. Reid, Horizontal and Vertical Structure: Stages and Substages in Children's Motor Development. Part V:Cross-Domain Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Acquisition of Different Central Conceptual Structures. R. Case, S. Griffin, A. McKeough, Y. Okamoto, Parallels in the Development of Children's Social, Numerical, and Spatial Thought. J. Crammond, Analyzing the Basic Cognitive-Developmental Processes of Children with Specific Types of Learning Disability. M. Porath, Stage and Structure in the Development of Children with Various Types of Giftedness. T.A. Fiati, Cross-Cultural Variation in the Structure of Children's Thought. Part VI:Conclusion. R. Case, The Mind and its Modules: Toward a Multi-Level View of the Development of Human Intelligence.