The Development of Scientific Thinking and Conceptions of Science in College Science Students

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The Development of Scientific Thinking and Conceptions of Science in College Science StudentsThe project is a three-year comparative study of general (as opposed to field-specific) student outcomes of introductory college science instruction will be compared with those resulting from more traditional instruction. Assessments will be conducted in a large state university, several private colleges, and several junior colleges. A rich, mutimodal assessment methodology will be employed, including the following components: 1. Interviews of students to assess their scientific epistemologies. A modified version of the Nature of Science Interview will be employed.2. On-line essay-style assessments of students' higher-order scientific inquiry and basic quantitative skills. Two new instruments developed in previous research will be combined and refined for this project.3. On-line student surveys covering student demographics, attitudes, and motivation.4. Classroom observation, including detailed coding of teaching method and content. An observational protocol developed in previous research will be employed. 5. Faculty interviews. The methodology will be deployed in three interrelated subprojects. First, student outcomes will be assessed and correlated with instructional practices and demographic variables in 12 courses distributed factorially across the three types of institution, two levels of innovation, and two disciplinary areas (biology and earth/environmental science). This project will produce a rich picture of higher-order cognition in today's college student and of the cognitive gains associated with various instructional practices. Second, a sample of students from the 12 courses will be followed longitudinally for the duration of the project. The persistence and further development of early gains in cognitive skills and epistemology will be assessed. Students' choices of major field of study will be added to the demographic analyses of this data. This project will produce rich data on the development of scientific epistemology and cognitive skills in contemporary college students, and it will allow the assessment of the hypothesis that early explosure to inquiry-oriented instruction triggers persistent cognitive and motivational change. Third, three intervention studies will be undertaken in which the researchers work with faculty members for courses that were assessed in the first year to redesign their courses to improve general student outcomes. The course will then be reassessed. The intervention projects concern the introductory chemistry curriculum at a large university, an interdisciplinary general science course at a small college, and geoscience course at a small collge. This project will attempt to use early findings of the assessment research and cognitive-informed principles of instructional design to improve student gains in general inquiry and quantitative skills and in epistemological sophistication. Overall the project will produce research findings and new assessment techniques that will have an impact on changing college science education to meet national standards for improving students' understanding of the nature of science and skills in scientific reasoning.