How and when does complex reasoning occur? Empirically driven development of a learning progression focused on complex reasoning about biodiversity

Abstract

In order to compete in a global economy, students are going to need resources and curricula focusing on critical thinking and reasoning in science. Despite awareness for the need for complex reasoning, American students perform poorly relative to peers on international standardized tests measuring complex thinking in science. Research focusing on learning progressions is one effort to provide more coherent science curricular sequences and assessments that can be focused on complex thinking about focal science topics. This paper describes an empirically driven, five-step process to develop a three-year learning progression focusing on complex thinking about biodiversity. Our efforts resulted in empirical results and work products including: (1) a revised definition of learning progressions, (2) empirically-driven, three year progressions for complex thinking about biodiversity, (3) an application of statistical approaches for the analysis of learning progression products; (4) Hierarchical Linear Modeling results demonstrating significant student achievement on complex thinking about biodiversity, and (4) Growth Model results demonstrating strengths and weaknesses of the first version of our curricular units. The empirical studies present information to inform both curriculum and assessment development. For curriculum development, the role of learning progressions as templates for the development of organized sequences of curricular units focused on complex science is discussed. For assessment development, learning progression-guided assessments provide a greater range and amount of information that can more reliably discriminate between students of differing abilities than a contrasting standardized assessment measure that was also focused on biodiversity content.

Planning and carrying out investigations: an entry to learning and to teacher professional development around NGSS science and engineering practices

“…Songer has advanced the notion of 'fused' practices as a strategy for bundling together NGSS core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices. In Songer et al (2009) and Gotwals and Songer (2013), the core idea biodiversity is blended with the crosscutting concept patterns and three fused practices: planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, and constructing explanations. Rather than bundling practices, we advocate a practice unpacking stance.…”

Learning progressions: Aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment

“…A third approach involves the development of a progression based on the careful sequencing of teaching experiments across multiple grades (Lehrer & Schauble, 2000;Songer et al, 2009). This bottom-up approach provides evidence of what students are capable of given carefully designed instructional contexts.…”

“…The LPs described in this issue ranges in time span from two to three years (Schwarz et al, 2009;Songer et al, 2009) to several grade bands (Duncan et al, 2009;Mohan et al, 2009). The number of levels also varies among these progressions and in some cases students may progress several levels in one year or progress one level over several years.…”

Large‐scale science education intervention research we can use

“…In science education, a number of studies in the past decade have analyzed the effectiveness of programs when implemented across a large number and wide variety of settings (Borman, Gamoran, & Bowdon, 2008;Buckley et al, 2004;Lee, Maerten-Rivera, Penfield, LeRoy, & Secada, 2008;Penuel, Gallagher, & Moorthy, 2011;Rethinam, Pyke, & Lynch, 2008;Songer, Kelcey, & Gotwals, 2009;Vanosdall, Klentschy, Hedges, & Weisbaum, 2007). Many of these interventions are grounded in decades of basic research on learning and are intended to instantiate principles derived from that research for organizing coherent sequences of instruction for students (Pea & Collins, 2008).…”