Science curricula often require students to collect, record, and describe experimental observations and results, as well as to draw conclusions. The first purpose of this study is to document and analyze students’ performance regarding the differentiation between results and conclusions, while they are engaged in scientific investigations within biology classrooms. The second purpose is to describe and analyze teachers’ thinking regarding this issue. The findings show that while learning biology in school, students often have difficulties in differentiating between experimental results and conclusions. Although teachers were highly aware of their students’ difficulties and held a rich set of ideas about the sources of those difficulties, the instructional means they used were insufficient. Two hypotheses are suggested as the source of students’ difficulties. Further research is needed to investigate those hypotheses and to formulate recommendations for improved instructional means.

In the ‘Thinking in Science Classrooms’ project the regular biology curriculum is supplemented by learning activities designed to enhance specific thinking skills. Learning environments are designed under the assumption that teaching for higher order thinking skills requires a structured instructional sequence, focusing on inducing strategic change. A constructivist framework suggests that inducing such a change should include learning environments which are designed to challenge students’ initial non-scientific reasoning strategies. The learning environment described in the present article is designed to create a cognitive conflict with students’ initial strategies. The findings from this study show that when students in eighth and ninth grade first encounter problems such as those described here, most of them do not use accurate scientific reasoning strategies. Interaction with the learning environment increased the rate of students’ valid inferences from 11% to 77%. Students were able to transfer their newly acquired reasoning strategies to a new problem taken from a new biological topic. They were also able to retain their newly acquired strategies across time, and to transfer them to yet another biological topic 5 months after instruction took place.

Thinking about interactions between variables is a necessary condition for accurate scientific thinking. The purpose of this study was to investigate difficulties in thinking about interactions between variables and to suggest remedial educational means. A conceptual analysis distinguishes between valid interaction inferences, invalid interaction inferences, and limited inferences which can be seen as a partial or a primitive interaction inference. Empirical findings show that expert thinkers demonstrate thinking about interactions at both an operational and a metastrategic level. Some lay-adults however, although able to draw many limited inferences, encounter substantial difficulties in drawing valid interaction inferences while engaged in an investigation of a scientific sort. Four types of difficulties were identified in this study: lack of a “double set of controlled comparisons” strategy that is necessary for valid inferences about interacting variables; lack of the conceptual framework for interacting factors; diversion of attention to other features; and difficulty in maintaining the necessary control of other variables. The implications of the findings to science curriculum are discussed.

In this Monograph, knowledge acquisition is examined as a process involving the coordination of existing theories with new evidence. Although researchers studying conceptual change have described children’s evolving theories within numerous domains, relatively little attention has been given to the mechanisms by means of which theories are formed and revised and knowledge is thereby acquired. Central to the present work is the claim that strategies of knowledge acquisition may vary significantly across (as well as within) individuals and can be conceptualized within a developmental framework. To study these strategies and their development, we use a microgenetic method. Our application of the method allows extended observation of the acquisition of knowledge within a domain, of the strategies used to acquire this knowledge, and of the change in these strategies over time. The method also allows qualitative analysis of individuals and quantitative analysis of groups to be used in complementary ways. Knowledge acquisition processes were examined at two age levels. Community college adults and preadolescents participated in two 30-45-min individual sessions each week over a 10-week period. Subjects worked on problems involving a broad range of content from both physical and social domains. A transfer design was situated within this microgenetic framework, for the purpose of assessing generality of strategies with the introduction of new content. Subjects of both ages showed progress across the 10 weeks in the level of strategies used as well as similarity in the form that this progress took. Despite initial performance levels that did not vary greatly, children showed less strategic improvement than adults and inferior knowledge acquisition. Strategic progress was maintained by both groups when new problem content was introduced midway through the sessions. The results thus indicate significant generality of strategies and strategy change across content, as well as populations. A further indication of generality was the emergence of new strategies at about the same time in the social and physical domains, even though performance in the social domain overall lagged behind that in the physical domain. At the individual level, mixed usage of valid and invalid strategies was the norm. This finding in an adult population suggests that this variability is a more general characteristic of human performance, rather than one unique to states of developmental transition. Another broad implication of this variability is that single-occasion assessment may provide an at best incomplete, and often misleading, characterization of an individual’s approach. Still another implication is that at least part of variability in performance across content resides in the subject, rather than exclusively in the task. That superior strategies present in an individual’s repertory are not always applied highlights the fact that more is involved in competent performance than the ability to execute effective strategies. Metastrategic competence-the ability to reflect on and manage strategic knowledge-and metacognitive competence-the ability to reflect on the content of one’s knowledge-are emphasized as critical components of cognitive development. These competencies determine the strategies that are actually used, among those potentially available, and therefore the effectiveness of an individual’s performance. Finally, the presence of multiple strategies and multiple forms of competence greatly complicates the portrayal of developmental change. Rather than a unidimensional transition from a to b, the change process must be conceptualized in terms of multiple components following individual (although not independent) paths.

This article describes the Biology Critical Thinking (BCT) project in which carefully designed activities for developing specific critical thinking skills are incorporated into the biology curriculum. The objectives were to find out whether the BCT project contributes to the development of critical thinking skills in various biological and nonbiological topics and how it affects students’ biological knowledge and classroom learning environment. The study consisted of 678 seventh graders who were assigned randomly into two groups that studied the same seventh-grade biology textbook. Only one group, the experimental, completed the BCT activities. The results indicate that the students in the experimental group improved their critical thinking skills compared to their own initial level and compared to their counterparts in the control group. Improved critical thinking skills were observed in a new biological context and nonbiological everyday topics, suggesting generalization of thinking skills across domains. The experimental students scored significantly higher than the control on a knowledge test, suggesting that “knowledge of facts” as one educational goal and “learning to think” as another, need not conflict, but rather can interact with each other. Finally, the results show that BCT involvement decreased the frequency of teacher-centered teaching and enhanced student-centered, more active learning.

The purpose of this study is to investigate two issues related to the teaching of thinking skills: (1) transfer across domains; and (2) comparison between individual learning of a thinking strategy and ‘class-like’ setting, which consists of a didactic intervention that takes place in small groups. A microgenetic design was used, in which community college students engaged in investigation of problems (each student participated in 20 sessions). It was found that: (1) the control of variables strategy that was taught in the context of a problem in one domain transferred fully to a new problem in the same domain, hut transferred less well to an isomorphous problem in a different domain; (2) the ‘class-like’ setting contributed to improved performance (as measured by the frequency of valid inferences), with the didactic intervention seeming to contribute to this improvement; and (3) the learning environment described in this study had a larger effect on ‘slower learners’ than on ‘faster learners’. It is proposed to teach for enhanced transfer by focusing explicitly on recognition of underlying logical structures of content-rich contexts.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there are developmental differences in teleological and anthropomorphic reasoning and whether biology students differ from non?biology students in teleological and anthropomorphic reasoning. The 168 high school and university participants responded to a Microcomputer?based Interactive Test (MBIT) which identified their anthropomorphic/teleological versus causal reasoning patterns. The findings of the study indicate that maturation contributes to the development of causal, non?teleological reasoning between tenth and twelfth grade. It was also shown that the study of biology is a major factor influencing the ability to distinguish between teleological and causal non?teleological reasoning. The educational implications of the study refer to the need to deal with the issue of causal, non?teleological reasoning explicitly and repeatedly during the study of biology.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there are developmental differences in teleological and anthropomorphic reasoning and whether biology students differ from non?biology students in teleological and anthropomorphic reasoning. The 168 high school and university participants responded to a Microcomputer?based Interactive Test (MBIT) which identified their anthropomorphic/teleological versus causal reasoning patterns. The findings of the study indicate that maturation contributes to the development of causal, non?teleological reasoning between tenth and twelfth grade. It was also shown that the study of biology is a major factor influencing the ability to distinguish between teleological and causal non?teleological reasoning. The educational implications of the study refer to the need to deal with the issue of causal, non?teleological reasoning explicitly and repeatedly during the study of biology.

Deficiencies in rational thinking skills are the source of many difficulties in science education. Characterization of these deficiencies is a first step in finding a possible remedy. The present paper describes an instrument for diagnosing students' difficulties in causal reasoning while studying biology. The results provide evidence that, while studying various biological topics, students have difficulties in understanding logical relationships. Similar results were obtained from logically equivalent items in four different biological contexts. The two main difficulties found are (a) inability to organize events according to their correct temporal sequence and (b) inability to identify an event which had been caused by another (given) event. Possible implications for biology education are discussed.

Deficiencies in rational thinking skills are the source of many difficulties in science education. Characterization of these deficiencies is a first step in finding a possible remedy. The present paper describes an instrument for diagnosing students’ difficulties in causal reasoning while studying biology. The results provide evidence that, while studying various biological topics, students have difficulties in understanding logical relationships. Similar results were obtained from logically equivalent items in four different biological contexts. The two main difficulties found are (a) inability to organize events according to their correct temporal sequence and (b) inability to identify an event which had been caused by another (given) event. Possible implications for biology education are discussed.

Describes the "Computer Software Inquiry Inventory" (CSI), which was designed for content analysis of inquiry-based science computer software. Explains the five basic features of the instrument. Includes analyses of two programs using the CSI categories of evaluation. (ML)