Adolescents' Understanding of Observation, Prediction, and Hypothesis in Everyday and Educational Contexts

Abstract

Adolescents' (N = 688, ages 11-17 years) understanding of the science-related categories of observation, prediction, and hypothesis was tested via the Test of Hypo-thetico-Deductive Reasoning (THDR), developed by the authors. The THDR required the students to classify statements from everyday and educational contexts according to those 3 categories. Results indicated that the students performed increasingly better from Grade 6 to Grade 11 on both the everyday and the educational context items (significant increases with each grade level, p < .001). In general, the students had considerable difficulty in classifying the statements. Even the 11th-grade students, who had the best performance, obtained a mean score of 47.6% on everyday items and a mean score of 37.3% on educational context items. The authors conclude, despite some recent contrasting findings, that school curricula should include development of students' hypothetico-deductive reasoning abilities.