The Science-P Reasoning Inventory (SPR-I): measuring emerging scientific-reasoning skills in primary school

ABSTRACT

Scientific reasoning is a crucial ability in modern knowledge societies. An increasing body of developmental and educational research shows that already primary-school children possess emerging scientific-reasoning skills. The Science-P Reasoning Inventory (SPR-I) is a novel classroom-based paper-and-pencil instrument that was developed to measure children’s conceptual advances across diverse components of scientific reasoning (experimentation, data interpretation, understanding the nature of science). The SPR-I comprises 19 items, and a reduced, 7-item version is available: the SPR-I(7). Both versions measure broad scientific-reasoning skills and they can be used for whole-class testing. The administration of the SPR-I(7) requires only 30 min, allowing for its use across diverse research settings and the economic assessment of large samples of primary-school students. This article reports on the first empirical test (IRT analysis) of the theoretical, conceptual-development model that guided the construction of the SPR-I. Both the SPR-I and the SPR-I(7) are available from the Supplementary Materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Scientific reasoning
• primary (elementary) school
• inventory
• SPR-I
• SPR-I(7)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the term primary school to refer to Grades 1 to 4. The SPR-I has been developed for use in Grades 2 to 4. The present manuscript reports on findings from Grade 3; for studies involving items that are similar to the ones used in the SPR-I with children in Grades 2 and 4, see Koerber, Mayer, et al. (2015). Ongoing studies suggest that the SPR-I can reliably be used beyond elementary school (i.e. in middle school).

Additional information

Funding

The study was conducted as part of the project Science-P–‘Development of Science Competencies in Primary School’ and was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Priority Program ‘Models of Competencies for Assessment of Individual Learning Outcomes and the Evaluation of Educational Processes’ (SPP 1293, SO 213/29-2; KO 2276/4-3). We are grateful to all research assistants for their help in the data collection and to all teachers, children, and parents for their friendly collaboration and support of this research.