Neo-Piagetian Predictors of Students’ Performance in Science Learning: Evidence from Primary Education

Abstract

This study explores primary school pupils’ knowledge recall and interpretation skills regarding chemical and physical phenomena, in relation to three psychometric variables: logical thinking, field dependence/field independence, and divergent thinking. The participants (N = 375) were in the fifth and sixth grades (aged 11–12) taking an introductory course in science, and they were involved in three tasks related to combustion, dissolution, and mixture separation. The pupils had to complete an instrument, in which they were asked to describe and interpret the phenomena involved in the tasks. Two achievement variables were recorded separately, one relating to knowledge recall and the other to the interpretation of the phenomena. In addition, the participants completed the corresponding psychometric tests. Correlational and multiple linear regression analysis showed that the dependent measures were associated with the cognitive variables, while path and mediation analysis showed the direct and indirect effects of the neo-Piagetian constructs on the dimensions of knowledge and interpretations. The main implications of the findings are theoretical and concern the role of the operationalized mental resources in learning the specific subject matter. Moreover, the results inform teaching practices and curricula designs, and they point out the learning difficulties ascending from the individual differences under study. Further discussion on conceptual change is provided.

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“…Third, the explanatory power of R 2 in the regression analysis was relatively low, which may have undermined the results of the study. However, aside from the R 2 value, all other values that assess significance were shown to be appropriate, and although the R 2 value was low, based on other studies that have conducted regression analysis [59][60][61], it was decided that it is possible to conclude even with a relatively low R 2 value. Therefore, it is suggested that future research makes improvements to this study and increases the number of samples to obtain an R 2 value with greater reliability.…”

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“…LCA was used in an exploratory mode since the clusters were not defined a priori, but they emerged from the analysis. Note that elsewhere (Straatemeier et al, 2008;Vaiopoulou et al, 2017;Vaiopoulou and Papageorgiou, 2018;Stamovlasis et al, 2020), the method was used in a confirmatory mode to validate specific mental models explicitly stated in the literature (Vosniadou and Brewer, 1992;Ioannides and Vosniadou, 2002). These proposed mental models/ latent classes were identified and characterized by specific concurrent misconceptions, which, in fact, have been used in the classification process to obtain those mental models.…”

“…Among them, latent class analysis (LCA) assumes that both observable and latent variables are categorical, and it is the proper measurement model for the coherent knowledge theory since the latter considers the children's mental models as a categorical type of entities. Its applications have been demonstrated in exploratory and confirmatory approaches (Straatemeier et al, 2008;Vaiopoulou et al, 2017).…”