Multidisciplinary (99) To be effectively prepared for the workforce, students need to learn not only science content (facts) but also advanced transferable reasoning skills. Through development and practice of these skills students will be better prepared to successfully handle real-world tasks in future careers. Not only does inquiry-based instruction promote scientific reasoning (SR) abilities, but also the SR skills of teachers significantly impact their ability to effectively use inquiry methods. Effective STEM teachers need to be competent in both their own content knowledge as well as advanced reasoning skills.
Many teacher preparation programs include inquiry-based courses in order to develop both content knowledge and general abilities, such as scientific reasoning, while modeling best teaching practices. Innovative teacher education programs at many institutions now have many inquiry-based courses designed specifically for pre-service teachers. However, there is evidence (derived through pre- and post-tests of students' SR abilities and their understanding of the nature of science) that many pre-service teachers are not developing these critical skills. In response to this need, this project is developing SR-oriented training modules that can be readily transferred to teacher preparation programs at other institutions
The purpose of this project was to enhance the scientific reasoning skills and the understanding of the nature of science in students at a mid-sized Midwestern US university. These students are education majors, preparing to teach grades K-8. Scientific reasoning skills include abilities specific to science, such as the ability to develop a hypothesis and to develop an experiment to test that hypothesis, and more broadly applicable abilities such as proportional reasoning and an understanding of probability. Improving these skills would not only prepare these students to become more effective science teachers, but better abstract thinkers. As teachers, they will also need to understand how science is done, that it is based on empirical observations, but that even observations, let alone the inferences drawn from them, are affected by subjectivity. Scientific knowledge is socially negotiated, subject to change as new discoveries are made and old ones are re-evaluated, and requires creativity. The first part of the project involved rewriting the introductory science-methods class required for all education majors at Wright State University. Among other exercises, the students developed parts of several experiments and performed them. They wrote and revised two lab reports using a detailed rubric which laid out every step of the process. Students were tested at the beginning and the end of the class using standardized scientific-reasoning and nature-of-science tests in addition to their exams. The new version of the class significantly improved key scientific reasoning skills and student understanding of the nature of science. The class workbook was revised several times to address topics that the tests and the exams indicated were poorly understood. In 2012, Wright State University switched to a semester-based curriculum, and the science methods class had to be eliminated, even though education students still needed to work on scientific reasoning skills and to understand the nature of science. Two of the principal investigators on this project worked with the instructors of other required science classes for education majors to identify activities in those classes that would teach scientific reasoning and the nature of science. They also adopted and developed activities that would cover the rest of the material from the science-methods class. The new versions of the classes, in physics, biology, and geology have been at least twice each, and the science-methods content is now integrated.
