Promoting Conceptual Change in Reasoning

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The general goal of this project is to advance theory and practice in the area of promoting scientific reasoning among middle-school students studying the life sciences. Despite the importance of such strategies in people's professional, civic, and personal lives, adults as well as adolescents are typically poor at evaluating and interpreting research evidence. The project has three subgoals. The first subgoal is theoretical: To advance our understanding of how students learn to reason scientifically. The second goal is instructional: To study how to teach strategies that people need to evaluate and interpret scientific research. The third subgoal is methodological: To develop techniques for adapting the microgenetic technique, involving small-grained quantitative and qualitative analyses, to classroom settings. The two proposed studies will be conducted in diverse New Jersey middle schools. Study 1 will be an expert-novice study investigating the nature of students' tacit reasoning schemas and how students' schemas differ conceptually from experts'. This study will generate an understanding of the kinds of conceptual changes that are involved in learning reasoning schemas. Study 2 will be a microgenetic study that tracks students in six classes over 4 to 5 months as they learn from instruction that incorporates reasoning seminars. Building on preliminary work with middle school students, the project will develop seminars modeled on graduate research seminars. The research seminars will be implemented by integrating a variety of evidence evaluation activities into the middle-school life-sciences curriculum, including dramatic research scenarios, hands-on inquiry, PDA-based simulations, discussions of media reports of research, and multiple study evaluations. The overall goals of Study 2 are (a) to trace patterns of change in students' argumentation and reasoning and (b) to gain an understanding of the instructional events that engender these changes.