edited by
J. DUDLEY HERRON Purdue University
West Lafayene, Indiana 47907
A Group Administered Reasoning Test for Classroom Use Douglas R. Martin Acalanes High School 1200 Pleasant Hill Road Lafayette, California
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Hieh school science teachers show increasing.interest in assessing their students' reasoning patterns. Piaget's interview method is a oowerful techniaue, hut too time-consuming for teachers dealing with manistudents. A test which can he given to a whole class and scored in a reasonable length of time is ideal. This article describes a group-administered test of reasoning given a t Acalanes High School. The test was administered by all the science teachers a t our school in an attempt to characterize the reasoning patterns of students in the various science classes. In this article our actual results are ~-~~ reported, and we describe how we plan to use this information to imorove our teaching. - The onroose . . of this article is not to report new research data, hut to share our experiences in using this test. The test was originally developed by Dr. Anton Lawson and consists of fifteen items, most of which are patterned after traditional Piagetian tasks ( I ) . Two items require concrete reasoning and the rest require formal operations. Each of the test items is demonstrated before the entire class. Simple objects like halls of clay, balances, and graduated cylinders are used in the demonstrations. A snecific auestion is asked. and each person being tested seleds one of thk multiple-choice answers on his or her answer sheet, then writes a brief description of the reasoning which led to the answer. As an examole. in one of the auestions on ~rouortionalreasoning two p~abtiicylinders of equal height b u t different diameter are used. Colored water is poured into the wide cylinder up to the four-unit mark. The students are shown that upon pouring the water from the wide container into the narrow one the water rises to the six-unit mark. They are then asked to predict how high water that rises six units in the wide container would rise if noured into the narrow one. Further. thev are asked to write out the argument that led to their piediction. A freouentlv seen orediction was eight units. The argument was "The water gains two units when going from the wide cylinder to the narrow one." Other formal questions dealt with control of variables, combinatorial reasoning, and prohahilitY. Administration of the test requires ahout XO min. In curing. therxplanatitm js the moreimp~rtnatasprct and must clearly indicate the appropriate levelof reasoning, as implied by the question, in order to he scored as correct. In our study, each teacher was assiened two oarticular auestions to score and the tests were passid around. About 4 minutes were needed to score one entire test. The test was designed to place students' reasoning patterns on a continuum from concrete to formal. On the basis of the number of correct items the student is described as concrete, transitional, or formal. The total score necessary to achieve each designation was determined by Lawson by comparing individual's scores on the group test with the results of Piagetian interview tasks. ~
Percent of Each Class Categorized Concrete, Transitional, or Formal IPS Biolagy Chemi~try Physics
% Concrete
% Transitional
Sb Formal
33 12 4
65 80 74 50
2
0
8 22 50
O f t he se\.en different science c Insses sun,eyed, resrrlts from four are repurted here. Tht! ptwent of each c l a ~ in s the categories concrete. transitional. and formal is shown in the table. "PS" stands for ~ n t r o d u c t b Physical r~ Science, a freshman class enrolling a broad cross-section of students. Bioloev is taken by 90% of the sophomores and is a representative cross-section. Chemistry and physics are taken by juniors and seniors, respectively, and have more selective enrollments. The results exoected for hieh school students mav denend on the nature of'the commurky the school serves. Acalanes High School is an academically strong school in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area. Our students typically have strong basic skills and most will go to colleee. Our data are similar tdthose published elsewhere: ninth graders are chiefly concrete or transitional, while older students have moved toward formal thought. One might object that teachers' use of the group test sheds no new light on the development of reasoning in adolescent students.~owever, the point of using this test in classrooms is not to provide data for research. but to indicate to teachers. on an ohiective basis. how their students reason, hoth collecthely and individually: For examole. one may exoect chemistrv students in various schools tokxhihit diffirenies in reasonin"g development. Some factors leading to expected differences are social background. previous school experiences, counseling patterns in &hools; etc. The group test allows us to characterize our own students. There are several indications that individual scores on the group test have predictive value. There is strong correlation between individual scores and total semester grades in science classes. The correlation between semester grades and .. erouo. test icures was 0.M in physics, 0.71; in chrmistry, 0% in hioluas, and 0.74 in IPS for s a m d r sizt:s ranrine hetween 40 and 60. These data indicate string correlati'on in chemistry and IPS, moderately strong correlation in physics and fairly low correlation in biology. The moderate correlation in physia is probably because this class exhibits the smallest spread in group test scores. Thus, factors such as motivation become relatively more important. The low correlation in biology is understandable since these particular biology classes were taught in a manner which placed a premium on memorization. Many teachers reported strong agreement between a student's group test score and their subjective assessment of that student's intellectual strength. Although this evidence is not quantitative, it is meaningful to us as teachers. Further, the group test appears to be sensitive enough to detect differences among various periods of the same class. The five sections of chemistry classes, which are not tracked, scored in the same rank order on a cumulative semester final as they did on the group reasoning test. Thus, for groups of 30 students, differ-
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Volume 56, Number 3, March 1979 1 179
ences in average total scores of only 5% may have significance. Once teachers have information on the reasoning levels of their students, what can they do with it? There has been much discussion in previous articles in this Journal and elsewhere concerning the question of teaching science to st~identswho are largely non-formal reasoners (2-9). As has been pointed out by Herron (41, one can certainly make productive use of these ideas without actually identifying the reasoning levels of individual students. However, before teachers can use information of students' reasoning patterns effectively, they must have some familiarity with the nature of concrete and formal thought. Many of the teachers in our department developed such an understanding in the process of administering and scoring the test. There was much discussion between teachers concerning the implications of the written explanations offered by students. After having scored the test, several teachers reported having greater insight into the reasons for their difficulties in teaching certain concepts. Thus, we participated in "in-service training" which seems to have heen unusually productive. This, of course, was not direct use of the data, but does constitute an important facet of our experience with the test. Information on individual students' reasoning can help a teacher understand how to approach each student in particular. For instance, the physics lab in our department is very open-ended. It is expected and observed that concrete reasoners find such an approach difficult. From the results of the group test the teacher knows in the first week of school which students will probably need extra guidance. This information can he gathered by classroom observation, but such an approach is slow. Further, some students, perhaps shy ones, Can he overlooked entirely. In extreme cases, students can he counseled into other classes conveniently early in the year. Lawson discusses three formal reasoners discovered in a class
180 1 Journal of Chemical Education
of "less able" biology students. The three students were transferred to a regular hiology class where they functioned very well ( I ) . Use of the group test affords an ohjective basis for interschool comparison. For example, one problem teachers continuallv face is choice of curriculum. The erouo test results u . give teachers ohjective information about their particular students as a group. Curricular choices can be made with this information in mind, although a t this time curricula are not clearly defined in terms of their reauisite reasoning skills. Such definition may he part of curricukm development in the future. t hrrt: may not seem The uses of the group t ~ s deicrihed sufficient t o s ~ m teachers. e At this time the theoriesof I'inget dnd urhers do not tell ttwchers hmr I,, present a leison; huu,. ever, they (It, pnwide suhtk insight iuto the rwstminy patterns of "voune-. neo~le. the . Our exoerience with erouo. testinemade " insight real and personal to us since we were actively involved in urohine our own students' reasonine. The actual data has he& helpful in some situations by drawing our attention to specific students. In general, we have a greater understanding of typical student reasoning. We would like to encourage others to try a group assessment. Specific materials on the test are available from Dr. Anton Lawson, Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
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Literature Cited
