Reckless behavior in adolescence: A developmental perspective

A study was conducted to determine the logical reasoning necessary to construct line graphs. Three types of line graphs were used: a straight line with a positive slope, a straight line with a negative slope, and an exponentially increasing curve. The subjects were students in grades six through twelve enrolled in a laboratory school. The responses were classified into one of nine categories. The categories ranged from no attempt to make a graph to a complete graph with a statement of a relationship between the variables. Subjects in grades six through eight exhibited behaviors mainly in the first four categories, ninth- and tenth-grade subjects scored in the middle categories, and eleventh and twelfth graders scored mainly in the upper categories. These response categories also showed a close fit with Piagetian concrete operational structures for single and double seriation and formal operational structures for proportional reasoning and correlational reasoning.

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Logical Reasoning Necessary to Make Line Graphs.

Although correlational reasoning problems are frequently encountered in a variety of school and out of school situations, student acquisition of the requisite skills is incomplete under conditions of existing instruction. An innovative instructional programme was developed and implemented in 12 grade 9/10 classrooms using a delayed treatment design. The study found that performance on a multivariate correlational task increased substantially; the average treatment student scored higher than 99% of those in the control condition. The impact of the programme was mediated by teacher commitment to improving students’ correlational reasoning skills and by teacher efficacy. The programme was less successful in developing students’ ability to draw conclusions from correlational data, a finding that diminished optimism about real life applications.

Enhancing Secondary School Students’ Acquisition of Correlational Reasoning Skills

Previous studies of correlational reasoning have focused on the interpretation of 2 × 2 tables. The research in this article examined age trends in responses to problems involving more than 2 continuous variables. Instruments were developed and administered to Ss from Grade 4 through postgraduate (n = 20 in each grade) to produce multidimensional profiles of student growth. Experiment 1 found that correlational reasoning skills increased with age. Experiments 2 and 3 found that student performance could be improved through instruction. Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity of the instruments was obtained. Although there were similarities between results obtained with 2 × 2 data problems and results on continuous data problems, the evidence in support of a single correlational schema underlying both was ambiguous

Patterns of Student Growth in Reasoning about Correlational Problems.

This paper presents different views of practitioners, teachers, and learners of science about the nature of science and aims to draw attention to why and how history and the nature of science (HP&S) should be taught as part of science teaching. Three different approaches to teaching HP&S were identified in the literature: including the nature of science as part of science teaching, learning by reflecting upon critical incidents in science classrooms, and teaching the nature of science more explicitly as a separate course. Also in this paper some features of an elective course entitled "The History and the Nature of Science" offered at the junior level at The Gazi Faculty of Education is introduced to the reader.

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Teaching history and the nature of science in science teacher education programs

Interrelationships among logical reasoning in the areas of proportions, probability, and correlation are reported. Age, gender, and analysis of ordering of the logical reasoning tasks were investigated in a sample of 94 students selected from the 8th, 10th, and 12th grades. A consistent grade-level increase in logical reasoning was found. No gender differences were found in performance in logical reasoning on the tasks, and the developmental relationship, which Inhelder and Piaget (1958) postulated, was shown to exist.

Michael J. Wavering

Papers

Interrelationships Among Piaget's Formal Operational Schemata: Proportions, Probability, and Correlation

What Are the Basics of Science Education? What Is Important to Know, How to Use Knowledge or How to Obtain Answers?.