Research On The Assessment Of Students' Scientific Reasoning Ability

In today's society,the influence of science and technology is increasing day by day.The level of scientific literacy of citizens affects the individual value and even the overall strength of the country.Scientific reasoning ability is an important content of scientific literacy,and it is also an important ability advocated in the reform of science education today.As a high-order thinking ability,scientific reasoning ability can reflect individual's cognitive and intellectual level.Therefore,it is very important to study the development characteristics of students around the ability of scientific reasoning.This study revolves around the "scientific reasoning ability" for students to carry out evaluation studies,the scientific reasoning ability testing tool is based on the LCTSR.The reasoning dimensions include conservation logic,control variables,proportional thinking,probability reasoning,correlation reasoning,hypothesis deduction and causality,the reliability and validity of testing tools are tested and optimized according to the Rasch model.553 students were evaluated for scientific reasoning ability.Characteristics were studied from the academic level,grade level,gender,and academic performance.The ability difference analysis was conducted on the seven dimensions of scientific reasoning.Through the interview,the students'thinking path and reasoning barriers in the process of scientific reasoning was explored.The research results show that the students' scientific reasoning ability has the following characteristics:(1)There are differences in the scientific reasoning ability of students at different levels of study,and they are consistent with their academic level.However,in the dimension of related reasoning,there is no significant difference between the three types of students.(2)There are grade differences in scientific reasoning ability.The performance of ninth grade students is better than that of eighth graders,but there is no significant difference in control variables,related reasoning,causality dimension;(3)The gender difference in scientific reasoning ability is not significant.However,there are significant differences between the control variables and the proportional thinking dimension.(4)The scientific reasoning ability is moderately related to the physics subject performance.(5)There is a reasoning barrier in the student's scientific reasoning process because of understanding one-sided knowledge and insufficiency of reasoning strategies.