The Development of Scientific Reasoning Skills: What Psychologists Contribute to an Understanding of Elementary Science Learning

The goal of this article is to provide an integrative review of research that has been conducted on the development of children's scientific reasoning. Scientific reasoning (SR), broadly defined, includes the thinking skills involved in inquiry, experimentation, evidence evaluation, inference and argumentation that are done in the service of conceptual change or scientific understanding. Therefore, the focus is on the thinking and reasoning skills that support the formation and modification of concepts and theories about the natural and social world. Major empirical findings are discussed using the SDDS model (Klahr, 2000) as an organizing framework. Recent trends in SR research include a focus on definitional, methodological and conceptual issues regarding what is normative and authentic in the context of the science lab and the science classroom, an increased focus on metacognitive and metastrategic skills, explorations of different types of instructional and practice opportunities that are required for the development, consolidation and subsequent transfer of such skills. Rather than focusing on what children can or cannot do, researchers have been in a phase of research characterized by an 'under what conditions approach', in which the boundary conditions of individuals' performance is explored. Such an approach will be fruitful for the dual purposes of understanding cognitive development and the subsequent application of findings to formal and informal educational settings.