SCIENTIFIC REASONING:RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND ASSESSMENT

Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) is emphasized worldwide. Reports from large-scale international studies such as TIMSS and PISA continually rank U.S. students behind many other nations. As a result, the U.S. has increased its emphasis on the implementation of a more extensive science and mathematics curriculum in K-12 education. In STEM education, widely accepted teaching goals include not only the development of solid content knowledge but also the development of general scientific abilities that will enable students to successfully handle open-ended real-world tasks in future careers. One such ability, scientific reasoning, is closely related to a wide range of general cognitive abilities such as critical thinking and reasoning. Existing research has suggested that scientific reasoning skills can be trained and transferred. Training in scientific reasoning may also have a long-term impact on student academic achievement. In the STEM education community, it has been widely agreed that student development of transferable general abilities is at least as important as certain learned STEM knowledge. Therefore, it is important to investigate how to implement a STEM education program that can help students develop both STEM content knowledge and scientific reasoning.In order to develop such a knowledge base and to assess and evaluate the impact and effectiveness of education methods and resources, we need good assessment tools that can be easily applied in large scale and produce valid results comparable across a wide range of populations. This dissertation project establishes a first step to systematically improve the assessment instrumentation of scientific reasoning. A series of studies have been conducted, which include (1) a detailed validation study of the Lawson’s test, which has identified a number of validity issues including item/choice design issues, item context issues, item structure and wording issues (e.g. two-tier design), the limited scale of measurement range, and the ceiling effect for advanced students, (2) a study to determine the basic measurement features of the Lawson’s test with large scale data, (3) A data-mining study of Lawson’s test data, which helps identify learning progression behaviors of selected scientific reasoning skills. The results also provide evidence for researchers to evaluate and model the scoring methods of two-tiered questions used in the Lawson’s test, and (4) A study with randomized testing to investigate the learning progression of the skill of control of variables (COV), which showed a series of fine grained intermediate levels of COV skills.This project produces rich resources for sustained research and development on scientific reasoning. It establishes a valuable baseline for teachers and researchers to apply the Lawson’s test in research and teaching and a solid foundation for researchers to further develop the next generation assessment instruments on scientific reasoning.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

The Ohio State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Han, Jing

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bao, Lei

• Physics
• Education
• Educational Evaluation
• Scientific reasoning
• Reasoning Assessment
• Physics Education
• Science Method

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366204433

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:osu1366204433