Relations between scientific reasoning, culture of problem solving and pupil's school performance

Abstract

The article reports the results of a study, the main aim of which was to find out correlations among the three components of the Culture of problem solving (reading comprehension, creativity and ability to use the existing knowledge) and six dimensions of Scientific reasoning (conservation of matter and volume, proportional reasoning, control of variables, probability reasoning, correlation reasoning and hypothetical-deductive reasoning). Further, we present the correlations among individual components of the Culture of problem-solving and individual dimensions of Scientific reasoning with pupils’ school performance in mathematics and physics. We conducted our survey among 23 pupils aged between 14–15 years in the Ústí nad Labem Region. The results have shown that one component of the Culture of problem-solving – the ability to use the existing knowledge – strongly correlates with three dimensions of the Scientific reasoning structure: proportional reasoning, control of variables and probability reasoning. However, no correlation was proved between the creativity and the dimensions of Scientific reasoning. We have found out also that the indicators of the Culture of problem-solving and the Scientific reasoning largely do not correlate with school performance either in mathematics or in physics.