A Survey Of High School Students' Scientific Reasoning Ability

Scientific reasoning ability reflects the individual's cognitive level.The development of scientific reasoning ability is the key to improving students' scientific inquiry ability,forming students' scientific literacy and developing their disciplinary core competencies.This research investigates the status quo of high school students' scientific reasoning ability,explores the characteristics of the development of high school students' scientific reasoning ability,and provides some reference for further developing students' scientific reasoning ability and cultivating students' scientific literacy.Taking the senior high school students in Jining area as the research subject,and using the test papers compiled based on the LCTSR scale as a tool,the research sampled and tested high school students in key high schools and ordinary high schools from the levels of county,district and city respectively.Based on 678 test results,the overall development level of high school students' scientific reasoning ability in Jining area was evaluated,and the student group test scores were compared and tested in terms of school,grade,course selection,gender,etc.,and a correlation test was done on the performance level of science subjects.The following conclusions were drawn:(1)The overall development level of the scientific reasoning ability of high school students in Jining area is relatively high;the development in the six capacity dimensions is uneven,and the levels in the three dimensions of mass and volume conservation,probability reasoning and proportional reasoning are relatively high.The levels of two dimensions and hypothetical deductive reasoning are relatively low,and ranking the lowest is the level of relevant reasoning,which is to be strengthened and improved.(2)There is a significant difference in scientific reasoning ability between students in key high schools and those in ordinary high schools;there are significant differences in scientific reasoning ability between high school freshmen and high school juniors,which is due to the fact that juniors have practiced the pattern of “course-selecting and class-shifting”;there are significant differences in the scientific reasoning ability between boys and girls in the first grade in terms of less reasoning dimensions,and there are significant differences between boys and girls in the second grade in terms of more reasoning dimensions.High school students' scientific reasoning ability test scores are positively correlated with their science academic scores,and relatively high school students' scientific reasoning ability test scores are more significantly related with the comprehensive scores in physics and other science subjects.Based on the investigation and research,several suggestions are put forward for science teaching,and views are proposed on grasping the critical period,updating concepts,and giving play to the role of science classroom teaching.