Zhou Shaona, Han Jing, Koenig Kathleen, Raplinger Amy, Pi Yuan, Li Dan, Xiao Hua, Fu Zhao, Bao Lei
School of Physics and Telecommunication Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510006, China; Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
Think Skills Creat. 2016 Mar 1;19:175-187. doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2015.11.004.
Scientific reasoning is an important component under the cognitive strand of the 21st century skills and is highly emphasized in the new science education standards. This study focuses on the assessment of student reasoning in control of variables (COV), which is a core sub-skill of scientific reasoning. The main research question is to investigate the extent to which the existence of experimental data in questions impacts student reasoning and performance. This study also explores the effects of task contexts on student reasoning as well as students' abilities to distinguish between testability and causal influences of variables in COV experiments. Data were collected with students from both USA and China. Students received randomly one of two test versions, one with experimental data and one without. The results show that students from both populations (1) perform better when experimental data are not provided, (2) perform better in physics contexts than in real-life contexts, and (3) students have a tendency to equate non-influential variables to non-testable variables. In addition, based on the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, a possible progression of developmental levels of student reasoning in control of variables is proposed, which can be used to inform future development of assessment and instruction.
科学推理是21世纪技能认知板块的一个重要组成部分，并且在新的科学教育标准中受到高度重视。本研究聚焦于对学生在控制变量（COV）方面推理能力的评估，控制变量是科学推理的一项核心子技能。主要研究问题是探究问题中实验数据的存在对学生推理和表现的影响程度。本研究还探讨了任务情境对学生推理的影响，以及学生在控制变量实验中区分变量的可测试性和因果影响的能力。数据收集自美国和中国的学生。学生被随机分配到两个测试版本中的一个，一个版本有实验数据，另一个没有。结果表明，来自这两个群体的学生：（1）在不提供实验数据时表现更好；（2）在物理情境中的表现优于现实生活情境；（3）学生倾向于将无影响的变量等同于不可测试的变量。此外，基于对定量和定性数据的分析，提出了学生在控制变量方面推理发展水平的一种可能的递进过程，这可用于为未来评估和教学的发展提供参考。
