Children's scientific reasoning at the end of primary school has a three-component structure: Hypothesis validation, Experimentation, and Generating conclusions¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2019 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? An exploratory factor analysis of the Scientific Reasoning Inventory extracted three correlated factors rather than the expected four, with research-question and evidence-evaluation items merging into one Hypothesis validation factor. → Van de Sande 2019

Evidence¶

Van de Sande 2019¶

Van de Sande, E., Kleemans, T., Verhoeven, L., & Segers, E. (2019). The linguistic nature of children's scientific reasoning. Learning and Instruction, 62, 20-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2019.02.002

q3 · i? · associational · r2

Exploratory factor analysis (Oblimin rotation) of the SRI administered to 269 sixth graders. The three factors explained "45.69% of the variance", with loadings of 0.41-0.87 across factors; factor scores were used in analyses.

"The results from the EFA indicated that three factors could be ex- tracted from the data. These three factors covered a final set of 23 items in total, together explaining 45.69% of the variance."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Academic vocabulary relates to hypothesis validation and experimentation but not to generating conclusions in sixth graders — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Visuospatial inferencing relates to hypothesis validation and experimentation but not to generating conclusions when linguistic abilities are controlled — related
• Linguistic inferencing uniquely predicts all three components of children's scientific reasoning over and above visuospatial inferencing — related
• Exploratory factor analysis in the pilot stage supported a four-factor solution, with three items removed (a weak loading, a cross-loading, and a low item–total correlation with duplicated content) — related