Identifying patterns and relationships among the responses of seventh-grade students to the science process skill of designing experiments

Abstract

The development of reasoning skills, higher-level thinking skills, and science process skills are some of the benefits students can realize by participating in inquiry in the science laboratory. We used student responses to the Alternative Assessment of Science Process Skills (AASPS) developed by the Missouri Department of Education and the Department of Educational Assessment to develop the Science Process Skills Inventory (SPSI). The SPSI was then used to analyze student efforts at writing experimental designs. Our goal was to gain insight into factors that may be related to students successfully designing experiments. The instrument guides teachers and researchers in assessing seven main components of experimental designs. Each component consists of elements unique to the specific laboratory exercise. Subsequent to its development, the instrument was used to score 364 student responses to the "design an experiment" portion of an alternative assessment instrument for science process skills. Results indicate that explicit, incremental development of the science process skills of formulating hypotheses and identifying variables, together with model examples, may be a means to facilitate student success in designing science experiments. Implications for the classroom and for research are discussed.

A Scientific Inquiry Abilities Test (SIAT) for Senior High School Students

“…In terms of the contents of scientific inquiry ability, some scholars believe that, from a scientific process perspective, advocating scientific inquiry ability involves a combination of a set of scientific process skills (Germann, Aram, & Burke, 1996;Keys & Bryan, 2001). Hung (2010) considered that, according to this perspective, students' performance in various scientific process skills should be evaluated.…”

What Do Science Teacher Candidates Know About Measuring Instruments and Units?

“…There is no doubt that teachers have an important mission and responsibility regarding students' upskill in measuring as well as teaching units. Teachers should exhibit exemplary behavior to their students because model teachers support students' learning (Germann, Aram & Burke, 1996). When teachers retain wrong information, it is inevitable that they will share it with their students by carrying it to their learning environments (Emrahoglu & Ozturk, 2009).…”

How Do Turkish Middle School Science Coursebooks Present the Science Process Skills?

“…Martin's (1997) classification includes observation, classification, communication, measurement, prediction, and inference in basic process skills. Integrated process skills include controlling variables, defining operationally, formulating hypothesis, formulating models, interpreting data, and experimenting (Padilla, 1990;Germann, Aram & Burke, 1996;Chabalengula, Mumba & Mbewe, 2012). Martin's (1997) classification involves determining and controlling variables, formulating hypotheses, interpreting data, making operational definitions, experimenting and modeling as integrated SPS.…”

“…Studies emphasize that SPS increase students achievement in problem solving (Huppert, Lomask, & Lazarowitz, 2002;Kazeni, 2005), develop science subject matter knowledge (Harlen, 1999;Aktamış & Ergin, 2008), develop positive scientific attitudes (Lawrenz & Cohen, 1985as cited in Yıldız Feyzioğlu & Tatar, 2012, increase the ability to design experiments in science labs, and perform research (Germann, Aram & Burke, 1996), and improve scientific creativity (Aktamış & Ergin, 2008).…”