Development Of Scientific Reasoning Research Articles

ROLE OF GENDER AND ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY ON STUDENTS ATTITUDES TOWARDS STATISTICS

Statistics is an essential subject in the educational landscape of Nigeria and a critical topic in the development of scientific reasoning. Perhaps, the students confront statistics with varying attitudes. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the variations in attitude towards statistics based on gender and academic self-efficacy. One hundred and twenty-eight undergraduates pooled from different public universities in the Anambra State of Nigeria participated in the study. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted. The participants completed a self-report measure of Survey of Attitude toward Statistics (SATS-36), initially developed by Schau (2003), and the College Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (CASES) created by (Owen & Froman, 1988). A multiple regression analysis was performed on the data, and the result established a statistically significant interaction between the independent and dependent variables. It was concluded that gender and academic self-efficacy are essential determinants of the variation in attitude towards statistics. The study recommends that relevant persons consider this interactional effect of the variables.

The relation between the control-of-variables strategy and content knowledge in physics in secondary school

The control-of-variables strategy (CVS) is considered a hallmark in the development of scientific reasoning. It holds that informative experiments need to be contrastive and controlled. Prior evidence suggests that CVS is connected to the acquisition of science content knowledge. In a cross-sectional study involving 1283 high school students (grades 5–13), we investigate whether students’ mastery of CVS is related to their science content knowledge in physics. A latent variable model indicates that CVS is substantially associated with students’ science content knowledge, even when controlling for common effects of general reasoning abilities. Substantial differences in students’ CVS skills and their science content knowledge exist between the lower grade levels in secondary school when students receive physics education. A latent profile analysis shows that the most difficult aspect of CVS is understanding the impact of confounding. This sub-skill emerges in late secondary school and it requires that students master more procedural sub-skills of CVS. These findings indicate that CVS and science content knowledge are closely related within secondary school science contexts. In addition, the findings emphasize that students show various distinct patterns of CVS skills. The identified skill patterns can inform researchers and science educators about the CVS skills that students typically show and thus can be utilized in inquiry activities in different school grades, while the CVS skills students are lacking might be trained in focused interventions.

Assessment of Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking: Measuring APA Goal 2 Student Learning Outcomes

Goal 2 of the APA Goals for Undergraduate Major in Psychology, Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking, addresses the development of scientific reasoning and problem-solving, including effective research methods, in undergraduate psychology students. These skills serve as the foundation of not only introductory courses but also the entire psychology curriculum. In this article, we address why these skills are critical to help students interpret information and assess claims and review the current practice of measuring student reasoning in this domain. The reach of Goal 2 is broad, including the application of scientific reasoning to interpret psychological phenomena, the demonstration of psychology information literacy, the interpretation and execution of basic psychological research, and an understanding of sociocultural influences in scientific inquiry. We discuss the value of both formative and summative assessments in this area, offer examples of assessment tools currently in use, and provide a list of nationally normed assessments in critical thinking and scientific reasoning. We conclude with a discussion of limitations in current assessment practices and suggest possible future directions.

Assessing Pharmacy Students’ Scientific Reasoning After Completing a Physics Course Taught Using Active-Learning Methods

Objective. To assess the degree of change in the level of scientific reasoning in first-year pharmacy students by applying active-learning methods during a physics course. Methods. The efficiency of the active-learning methods of experimentation and discussion in the development of scientific reasoning in 90 pharmacy students was determined by comparing it to the efficiency of using traditional learning methods (eg, lecture) with 60 students. The Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning was used to measure change. Results. The data from this five-year study showed that of all pharmacy students in the active-learning group who were functioning on a stable or transitional level of thinking at the time of the pretest, 28.6% achieved a shift towards a higher level of scientific thinking. The active-learning group also achieved better overall results in the course. Conclusion. Using active-learning methods (experimentation and discussion) in a physics course enabled pharmacy students to better master the content. By elevating students' level of scientific reasoning, a foundation for using evidence-based medicine was established.

Scientific Reasoning in Biology - the Impact of Domain-General and Domain-Specific Concepts on Children's Observation Competency.

Research on the development of scientific reasoning has put the main focus on children’s experimentation skills, in particular on the control-of-variables strategy. However, there are more scientific methods than just experimentation. Observation is defined as an independent scientific method that includes not only the description of what is observed, but also all phases of the scientific inquiry, such as questioning, hypothesizing, testing, and interpreting. Previous research has shown that the quality of observations depends on specific knowledge in the domain. We argue that observation competency shares the domain-general ability to differentiate hypotheses from evidence with other scientific methods. The present study investigates the relations of both domain-general scientific thinking and domain-specific knowledge in biology with observation competency in grade K children. We tested relations between observation competency, domain-general scientific reasoning, domain-specific knowledge, and language abilities of 75 children (age 4;9 to 6;7). Both scientific reasoning and domain-specific knowledge proved to be significant predictors of observation competency, explaining 35% of the variance. In a mediation analysis, we found a significant indirect effect of language via these two predictors. Thus, the present results indicate that observation skills require not only domain-specific knowledge but also domain-general scientific reasoning abilities.

Individual Differences in Children's Development of Scientific Reasoning Through Inquiry-Based Instruction: Who Needs Additional Guidance?

Scientific reasoning involves a person’s ability to think and act in ways that help advance their understanding of the natural world. Young children are naturally inclined to engage in scientific reasoning and display an emerging competence in the component skills of, for example, hypothesizing, experimenting and evaluating evidence. Developmental psychology research has shown that same-age children often differ considerably in their proficiency to perform these skills. Part of this variation comes from individual differences in cognition; another part is due to the fact that the component skills of scientific reasoning emerge at a different age and mature at a different pace. Significantly less attention has been paid to children’s capacity to improve in scientific reasoning through instruction and deliberate practice. Although elementary science lessons are generally effective to raise the skill level of a group of learners, not all children benefit equally from the instructional treatment they receive. Knowing what causes this differential effectiveness is important as it can inform the design of adaptive instruction and support. The present study therefore aimed to identify and explain how fifth-graders (N = 138) improve their scientific reasoning skills over the course of a 5-week inquiry-based physics unit. In line with our expectations, significant progress was observed in children’s achievements on a written scientific reasoning test, which was administered prior to and after the lessons, as well as in their responses to the questions and assignments that appeared on the worksheets they filled out during each lesson. Children’s reading comprehension and mathematical skillfulness explained a portion of the variance in children’s pretest-posttest gain. As these overall results did not apply equally to all component skills of scientific reasoning, we recommend science teachers to adapt their lessons based on children’s past performance in reading and math and their actual performance of each scientific reasoning skill. The orchestration and relative effectiveness of both adaptive science teaching approaches is an interesting topic for future research.

The development of scientific reasoning: Hypothesis testing and argumentation from evidence in young children

This study investigates scientific reasoning abilities in 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 67) focusing on their understanding of the relation between causal hypotheses and evidence. Children’s evidence generation behaviors and their evidence-based verbal arguments against false causal claims were examined in a blicket detector paradigm. Children were first led to generate and then to test a specific hypothesis about the cause of a light effect. Subsequently, children were presented with two false causal claims in order to elicit evidence-based verbal counterarguments and evidence generation behaviors. The large majority of the children (82%) adopted a systematic hypothesis testing strategy (positive or contrastive testing). Furthermore, 70% of the children provided disconfirming verbal counterarguments and/or selectively generated disconfirming evidence in response to a false claim at least once. In sum, the present study yielded new evidence for scientific reasoning abilities in early childhood.

Progression Trend of Scientific Reasoning from Elementary School to University: a Large-Scale Cross-Grade Survey Among Chinese Students

This study examines progression trends of Chinese students’ scientific reasoning skills across grade levels from elementary school to university. A large-scale survey using the Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (CTSR) was conducted with 2669 Chinese students at 13 grade levels (grades 4–16). The construct validity of the CTSR was first examined using Rasch analysis to verify that the various reasoning sub-skills targeted by the test (hypothetical-deductive reasoning, proportional reasoning, correlation reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, and control of variables) form a cohesive cognitive construct. Based on an affirmative result, we proceeded to fit grade-level averages to the best-fit logistic regression model and generated trend lines for the reasoning sub-skills measured by the CTSR. Results show that the cross-grade progression trends generally follow continuous paths through increasingly greater levels of improvement. While all sub-skills display a noticeable growth during middle and high school years, they progress across the grades with different rates. Specifically, the development of proportional reasoning is fast-paced and large, but the progression of hypothetical-deductive reasoning and control of variables is markedly tardy and small. Formal science instruction, particularly the emergence of multiple domain-specific science courses in middle and high school, can influence the cross-grade progression trends. Possible causes and future improvement in science education are proposed. This study contributes to our understanding about the development of scientific reasoning and offers important implications for science instruction and research at different grades.

The Analysis of Students Scientific Reasoning Ability in Solving the Modified Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (MLCTSR) Problems by Applying the Levels of Inquiry

<p>This study aims to determine the students’ achievement in answering modified lawson classroom test of scientific reasoning (MLCTSR) questions in overall science teaching and by every aspect of scientific reasoning abilities. There are six aspects related to the scientific reasoning abilities that were measured; they are conservatorial reasoning, proportional reasoning, controlling variables, combinatorial reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, correlational reasoning. The research is also conducted to see the development of scientific reasoning by using levels of inquiry models. The students reasoning ability was measured using the Modified Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (MLCTSR). MLCTSR is a test developed based on the test of scientific reasoning of Lawson’s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR) in 2000 which amounted to 12 multiple-choice questions. The research method chosen in this study is descriptive quantitative research methods. The research design used is One Group Pretest-Posttest Design. The population of this study is the entire junior high students class VII the academic year 2014/2015 in one junior high school in Bandung. The samples in this study are one of class VII, which is class VII C. The sampling method used in this research is purposive sampling. The results showed that there is an increase in quantitative scientific reasoning although its value is not big.</p>

The development of scientific reasoning in medical education: a psychological perspective.

Scientific reasoning has been studied from a variety of theoretical perspectives, which have tried to identify the underlying mechanisms responsible for the development of this particular cognitive process. Scientific reasoning has been defined as a problem-solving process that involves critical thinking in relation to content, procedural, and epistemic knowledge. The development of scientific reasoning in medical education was influenced by current paradigmatic trends, it could be traced along educational curriculum and followed cognitive processes.The purpose of the present review is to discuss the role of scientific reasoning in medical education and outline educational methods for its development.Current evidence suggests that medical education should foster a new ways of development of scientific reasoning, which include exploration of the complexity of scientific inquiry, and also take into consideration the heterogeneity of clinical cases found in practice.

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 relation between preschool children’s false-belief understanding and domain-general experimentation skills

The focus of the present study is on the developmental antecedents of domain-general experimentation skills. We hypothesized that false-belief understanding would predict the ability to distinguish a conclusive from an inconclusive experiment. We conducted a longitudinal study with two assessment points (t1 and t2) to investigate this hypothesis. As language, executive functioning, working memory, and intelligence have been discussed as potential influencing factors in theory of mind and scientific reasoning development, we included measures of these abilities as control variables. We recruited 161 preschool children (73 girls and 88 boys); we administered a false-belief task, an experimentation task, and the control variables at t1 when the children were 4 years old. We repeated the false-belief and experimentation tasks at t2 when the children were 5 years old. Our results show that children who solved the false-belief task correctly at age 4 were more likely to solve the experimentation task correctly at age 5, but not vice versa, even after controlling for the influence of language, executive functioning, working memory, and intelligence. The implications of these results on theories about the development of scientific reasoning and for science education concepts for young children are briefly discussed.

Reasoning Ability in Science of Secondary School Students In Relation To Some Personal Variables

Science education has become a priority subject area in the present generations and it has a worldwide significance. It has brought about revolutionary changes in every walk of our lives. It has been a compulsory subject from the primary to the higher levels in all over the world. Therefore the priority research area in the school education system has been research in science education. The present study is a sincere attempt of the investigator to assess reasoning ability in science of secondary school students in relation to some personal variables. Reasoning ability in science according to Joshi and Mahapatra (1994) has been categorized as follows; inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, analogy as reasoning, abstract reasoning, axiomatic reasoning, eclectic reasoning, syllogistic reasoning and classification as reasoning. The mental exercise or the power of mind to deduce inferences from premises concerning all information of sciences to argue, to examine, to think out, to bring by rationale is called scientific reasoning. Scientific reasoning refers to “the mental exercise of inferring relationships among facts and phenomena having scientific basis, evaluating evidences and coming to a conclusion”, (Joshi and Mahapatra, 1994). It may also called the reasoning ability in science. Ghosh (1989) conducted a study on development of scientific reasoning, scientific attitudes of students and found that development of such thinking depended upon the student’s perception of learning science. The students’ reasoning ability in science was assessed through the administration of Joshi and Mahapatra’s scale (1994) over a sample of 100 boys and girls in 10 schools of Gangtok city in Sikkim state of India selected on simple random basis, and the results were extrapolated through projective technique based on a normative study design.. The personal variables here were referred to age, sex, type of subjects preferred, achievement, intelligence, educational aspiration, attitude towards science and parental education, occupation, income and facilities available in schools for science teaching. The study revealed significant differences in reasoning ability in science in relation to age, sex, type of subjects preferred. Among the psycho social variables, significant differences were observed in reasoning ability in science of students having high and low level of achievement, intelligence, educational aspiration, attitude towards science and socioeconomic status. Significant relationship existed in reasoning ability in science and intelligence, achievement, educational aspiration and attitude towards science.

Argument-Driven Inquiry To Promote the Understanding of Important Concepts & Practices in Biology

Research Article| October 01 2009 Argument-Driven Inquiry to Promote the Understanding of Important Concepts & Practices in Biology Victor Sampson, Victor Sampson Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Leeanne Gleim Leeanne Gleim Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The American Biology Teacher (2009) 71 (8): 465–472. https://doi.org/10.2307/20565359 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Victor Sampson, Leeanne Gleim; Argument-Driven Inquiry to Promote the Understanding of Important Concepts & Practices in Biology. The American Biology Teacher 1 October 2009; 71 (8): 465–472. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/20565359 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright National Association of Biology Teachers Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Is Developing Scientific Thinking All About Learning to Control Variables?

Academically low-performing urban sixth graders engaged in inquiry activity received a suggestion that they focus their investigation on the role of a single factor. This suggestion had significant effects on their use of a superficially dissimilar strategy--controlling the variation of other factors. This latter strategy has received the lion's share of attention in research on the development of scientific reasoning. These results have implications, we propose, for what undergoes development with respect to scientific thinking and how this development can best be facilitated.

The Nature and Development of Scientific Reasoning: A Synthetic View

This paper presents a synthesis of what is currently known about the nature and development of scientific reasoning and why it plays a central role in acquiring scientific literacy. Science is viewed as a hypothetico-deductive (HD) enterprise engaging in the generation and test of alternative explanations. Explanation generation and test requires the use of several key reasoning patterns and sub-patterns. Reasoning at the highest level is complicated by the fact that scientific explanations generally involve the postulation of non-perceptible entities, thus arguments used in their test require sub-arguments to link the postulate under test with its deduced consequence. Science is HD in nature because this is how the brain spontaneously processes information whether it basic visual recognition, every-day descriptive and causal hypothesis testing, or advanced theory testing. The key point in terms of complex HD arguments is that if sufficient chunking of concepts and/or reasoning sub-patterns have not occurred, then one’s attempt to construct and maintain such arguments in working memory and use them to draw conclusions and construct concepts will “fall apart.” Thus, the conclusions and concepts will be “lost.” Consequently, teachers must know what students bring with them in terms of their stages of intellectual development (i.e., preoperational, concrete, formal, or post-formal) and subject-specific declarative knowledge. Effective instruction mirrors the practice of science where students confront puzzling observations and then personally participate in the explanation generation and testing process – a process in which some of their ideas are contradicted by the evidence and by the arguments of others.

Development of Scientific Reasoning in College Biology: Do Two Levels of General Hypothesis-Testing Skills Exist?

The primary purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that two general developmentally based levels of hypothesis-testing skills exist. The first hypothesized level presumably involves skills associated with testing hypotheses about observable causal agents; the second presumably involves skills associated with testing hypotheses involving unobservable entities. To test this hypothesis, a hypothesis-testing skills test was developed and administered to a large sample of college students both at the start and at the end of a biology course in which several hypotheses at each level were generated and tested. The predicted positive relationship between level of hypothesis-testing skill and performance on a transfer problem involving the test of a hypothesis involving unobservable entities was found. The predicted positive relationship between level of hypothesis-testing skill and course performance was also found. Both theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 81–101, 2000

“I can change your opinion on that”: Social constructivist whole class discussions and their effect on scientific reasoning

Recent theoretical and empirical work in science education has led to greater consideration of the role of social constructivist discussions in science classrooms. This paper advances an intervention model for effective whole class discussions based on the Philosophy for Children program, and reports on a year long study of its application, focussing on the development of scientific reasoning. The evaluation employs two methods: a quantitative pretest/posttest measure of scientific reasoning using science reasoning tasks; and qualitative analysis of four transcripts at the utterance, epistemic episode and thematic levels. The former method indicates that the experimental class experienced significantly greater gains in scientific reasoning than a control group, and the latter offers empirical support to theoretical accounts of how this occurs. Implications for classroom teaching and further research are discussed.

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Reaching Into thought: The Minds of the Great Apes. By Anne E Russon, Kim A. Bard & Sue Taylor Parker.What Young Chimpanzees Know About Seeing. By Daniel J. Povinelli & Timothy J. Eddy.Evaluation for Education and Psychology. By Arlene Fink.Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought. By K. J. Holyoak & P. Thagard.Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning. By Barbara Koslowski.Issues in the Developmental Approach to Mental Retardation. Edited by R. M. Hodapp.Critical Readings on Piaget. Edited by L. Smith.

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Adolescent Dysfunctional Behavior: Causes, Intervention and Prevention. Edited by. G. Blau and T. Gullotta.Mathematics Teachers in Transition. Edited by Elizabeth Fennema and Barbara Scott Nelson.Critical Psychology: An Introduction. Edited by Dennis Fox and Isaac Prilleltensky.The Physical Self: From Motivation to Well‐being. Edited by Kenneth R. Fox.An Introduction to Object Relations. By Lavinia Gomez.The Reflective Professional in Education: Psychological Perspectives on Changing Contexts. Edited by Carmel Jennings and Elizabeth Kennedy.Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning. By Barbara Koslowski.Teacher Education Research in a New Context – the Oxford Internship Scheme. Edited by Donald Mclntyre.