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Identifying scientific reasoning skills of science education students
Zulinda Ayu Zulkipli1, Mohamad Mubarrak Mohd Yusof2, Norezan Ibrahim3, Siti Fairuz Dalim4.
This article discusses a study carried out to investigate scientific reasoning skills among 82
science pre-service teachers at the Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), one of the
public universities in Malaysia. Undeniably, the development of general scientific abilities is critical to
enable students of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to successfully handle openended real-world tasks in their future careers. Teaching goals in STEM education include fostering content
knowledge and developing general scientific abilities. One such important ability is scientific reasoning.
Scientific reasoning encompasses critical thinking skills as a vital learning outcome in modern science
education. Lawson (1978) categorized scientific reasoning into four domains: Conservative Concept,
Proportional Concept, Control Variable and Probabilistic Thinking, and Hypothetical-Deductive
Reasoning. An instrument by Lawson (1978) was adapted for this study. The findings show that a majority
of the science pre-service teachers possess low ability in scientific reasoning. It is also found that there was
no significant difference among the science pre-service teachers of the physics, biology and chemistry
disciplines when examined. The findings showed that Physics students had developed a higher ability in
Conservative Concept, Proportional Concept, and Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning and chemistry
students had a higher ability in Control Variable and Probabilistic Thinking, whereas biology students had
a moderate ability in the four scientific reasoning patterns.
Affiliation:
- Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia, Malaysia
- Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia, Malaysia
- Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia, Malaysia
- Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia, Malaysia
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Indexation |
Indexed by |
MyJurnal (2021) |
H-Index
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2 |
Immediacy Index
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0.000 |
Rank |
0 |
Indexed by |
Scopus 2020 |
Impact Factor
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CiteScore (0.5) |
Rank |
Q4 (Education) |
Additional Information |
SJR (0.198) |
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