New Perspectives in Science Education

The competencies for the 21st century call for people with a broad and interrelated system of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes enabling the full application of an individual in personal and professional life [1, 2]. Education, including higher education, focuses therefore not only on the development of knowledge, but also inquiry, critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem solving and decision making [3]. All these skills are in science often labeled as scientific thinking and reasoning skills. Our long-term research shows that employers from manufacturing and services firms in natural sciences may expect these abilities from their job applicants. However, they often do not find them at the university/high-school graduates seeking for a job. The students have a good domain-specific knowledge of content and basic procedures (in chemistry, biology, etc.) but they are not able to apply scientific thinking and reasoning skills such as asking precisely formulated questions, drawing conclusions considering all evidence or communicating conclusions properly. This may be due to the fact that they do not have many opportunities to practice such tasks. In order to support both participants/sides, we have developed several tasks for specific positions in the companies, such as quality manager, quality assurance specialist, or validation specialist. These tasks can serve as a tool for companies to evaluate the skills of scientific thinking and reasoning of employees, as well as tasks that will give the university graduate a clearer idea of what scientific thinking and reasoning skills they must undergo during the job interview. A qualitative research engaging representatives of manufacturing and services firms in natural sciences was performed: structured interviews collected data that resulted in a scientific and reasoning framework. This framework and other information from the interviews served as a basis for creating specific tasks. The content and construct validity of the tasks were approved by an expert panel (representatives of the companies) and also through a pilot testing with employees. Selected tasks will be presented and discussed in the context of scientific and reasoning skills.

Keywords: Scientific thinking and reasoning, assessment tool.

References:

1. Ananiadou, K., & Claro, M. (2009). 21st century skills and competences for new millennium learners in OECD countries.
2. Winterton, J., Delamare-Le Deist, F., & Stringfellow, E. (2006). Typology of knowledge, skills and competences: clarification of the concept and prototype. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
3. Turiman, P., Omar, J., Daud, A. M., & Osman, K. (2012). Fostering the 21st century skills through scientific literacy and science process skills. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 59, 110-116.