Scientific Reasoning in Elementary School Children: Assessment of the <i>Inquiry Cycle</i>

Schiefer, Julia; Golle, Jessika; Tibus, Maike; Oschatz, Kerstin

doi:10.1177/1932202x18825152

Cited by 20 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Moreover, because some potentially influential characteristics could not be taken into account, our results paint an incomplete picture. Future longitudinal studies should address one or more characteristics that have been shown -in descriptive research -to influence scientific reasoning, such as inhibitory control (Van der Graaf et al, 2018), nonverbal intelligence (Schiefer et al, 2019;Veenman et al, 2004) and problem solving ability (Mayer et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Supplementary evidence comes from studies investigating children's scientific reasoning at a single point in time. Reading comprehension affected scientific reasoning in all of these studies (e.g., Mayer, Sodian, Koerber, & Schwippert, 2014;Schiefer, Golle, Tibus, & Oschatz, 2019;Van de Sande, Kleemans, Verhoeven, & Segers, 2019), which seems at least partly due to the use of written tests. Another reason is that reading comprehension requires linguistic inferencing, which is also involved in scientific reasoning -for instance to create a mental representation of the inquiry process or experimental outcomes (Van der Graaf et al, 2018;Van de Sande et al, 2019).…”

Section: Factors Influencing Developmental Changementioning

confidence: 92%

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Patterns of Development in Children’s Scientific Reasoning: Results from a Three-Year Longitudinal Study

Lazonder

Janssen

Gijlers

et al. 2020

Journal of Cognition and Development

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Scientific reasoning refers to the thinking skills involved in conceiving and conducting an investigation. This study examined how proficiency in performing these skills develops during the upper-elementary school years. A sample of 157 children (age 7-10) took a performancebased scientific reasoning test in three consecutive years. Four distinct developmental patterns emerged from their annual test scores, which were independent of prior domain knowledge and sociodemographic characteristics except gender. Developmental patterns in scientific reasoning and reading comprehension, but not math, were related such that many children with a high entry level or accelerated growth in scientific reasoning also performed better and progressed more in reading comprehension. These results indicate that scientific reasoning develops differently in same-age children, largely independent of personal characteristics but generally comparable with reading comprehension.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Factors Influencing Developmental Changementioning

confidence: 92%

Patterns of Development in Children’s Scientific Reasoning: Results from a Three-Year Longitudinal Study

Lazonder

Janssen

Gijlers

et al. 2020

Journal of Cognition and Development

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“…This is the reason why we chose to use 1PL IRT analysis instead of 2PL IRT. Similarly, 1PL IRT/Rasch analysis has been applied in developing several other tests in science education (see DeBoer et al, 2014;Kuo et al, 2015;Schiefer et al, 2019). The 1PL IRT analysis was used in both the second and third phase of the study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even less attention has been paid to assessing the inquiry process outcomes on a primary school level (ISCED 1). For example, Schiefer, Golle, Tibus, and Oschatz (2019) developed an instrument for assessing 8-to 10-year-old students' understanding of the phases of the inquiry cycle. They confirmed the reliability of their 15-item test using Item Response Theory (IRT).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a science inquiry test in primary education: development of items and scales

Pedaste

Baucal

Reisenbuk³

2021

IJ STEM Ed

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Background Inquiry-based learning is widely applied in science education; however, so far, the outcomes of learning process have been systematically assessed mainly at the secondary school level. For primary school students, there is no valid instrument for assessing the outcomes of their science inquiry. The aim of the current study was to develop a test for assessing science learning outcomes (analytical skills, planning skills, interpretation skills, and science knowledge) related to the five phases of inquiry-based learning (Orientation, Conceptualization, Investigation, Conclusion, and Discussion) at primary education level (ISCED 1). Results A set of contextualized science tasks was created to assess each of the learning outcomes at three levels. The Science Inquiry Test for Primary Education (SIT-PE test) was developed through several phases, including pilot studies with large groups of fourth-grade students (10 to 11 years of age). The 1 PL Item Response Theory model was used to analyze the quality of the test and items based on the test’s reliability score, item difficulty measure, infit and outfit indices, estimation of item discrimination, item-scale correlation, and the quality of the scoring key. The final test, consisting of 24 items, was used with a sample of 1868 students. The analysis showed the SIT-PE test to be of good quality on test level and item level and to also have good predictive validity. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the correlated factors model and second-order factor model of the science learning outcomes both had a good fit to data collected with the SIT-PE test. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the multidimensionality of science learning outcomes and validated four dimensions of the model: analytical skills, planning skills, interpretation skills, and science knowledge. Conclusions In conclusion, the SIT-PE test could be further used for assessing students’ inquiry competence in primary education. However, it could be even further improved in several ways and this study provides guidelines on how to do that. In addition, the SIT-PE provides test developers with information on how to design derivations of the SIT-PE test for assessing particular science inquiry outcomes or the same outcomes in older age groups as well.

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“…Scientific reasoning consists of multiple component skills, namely, hypothesizing, experimenting and evaluating evidence, the latter of which can be further divided into inferencing, evaluating data and drawing conclusions [7,8]. These component skills emerge at a different age, tend to develop at a different pace and are known to vary greatly between same-age children (e.g., [9]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Children’s Scientific Reasoning

et al. 2021

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Scientific reasoning is an important skill that encompasses hypothesizing, experimenting, inferencing, evaluating data and drawing conclusions. Previous research found consistent inter- and intra-individual differences in children’s ability to perform these component skills, which are still largely unaccounted for. This study examined these differences and the role of three predictors: reading comprehension, numerical ability and problem-solving skills. A sample of 160 upper-primary schoolchildren completed a practical scientific reasoning task that gauged their command of the five component skills and did not require them to read. In addition, children took standardized tests of reading comprehension and numerical ability and completed the Tower of Hanoi task to measure their problem-solving skills. As expected, children differed substantially from one another. Generally, scores were highest for experimenting, lowest for evaluating data and drawing conclusions and intermediate for hypothesizing and inferencing. Reading comprehension was the only predictor that explained individual variation in scientific reasoning as a whole and in all component skills except hypothesizing. These results suggest that researchers and science teachers should take differences between children and across component skills into account. Moreover, even though reading comprehension is considered a robust predictor of scientific reasoning, it does not account for the variation in all component skills.

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Scientific Reasoning in Elementary School Children: Assessment of the Inquiry Cycle

Cited by 20 publications

References 64 publications

Patterns of Development in Children’s Scientific Reasoning: Results from a Three-Year Longitudinal Study

Patterns of Development in Children’s Scientific Reasoning: Results from a Three-Year Longitudinal Study

Towards a science inquiry test in primary education: development of items and scales

Individual Differences in Children’s Scientific Reasoning

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