Preservice biology teachers’ decision-making and informal reasoning about culture-based socioscientific issues

Informal reasoning fallacies belong to a persuasive tactic, leading to a conclusion that is not supported by premises but reached through emotions and/or misleading and incomplete information. Previous research focused on the ability to recognize informal reasoning fallacies. However, the recognition itself does not necessarily mean immunity to their influence on decisions made. An experiment was designed to study the relationship between the presence of informal reasoning fallacies and a consequent decision. Having conducted paired comparisons of distributions, we have found some support for the hypothesis that informal reasoning fallacies affect decision-making more substantially than non-fallacious reasoning—strong support in the case of a slippery slope, weak in that of appeal to fear, anecdotal evidence argument defying evaluation. Numeracy and cognitive reflection seem to be associated with higher resistance to the slippery slope, but do not diminish appeal to fear.

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Socioscientific Decision Making in the Science Classroom: The Effect of Embedded Metacognitive Instructions on Students' Learning Outcomes

Education Research International ◽

10.1155/2013/309894 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2013 ◽

pp. 1-12 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Sabina Eggert ◽

Frauke Ostermeyer ◽

Marcus Hasselhorn ◽

Susanne Bögeholz

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

High School Students ◽

Cooperative Learning ◽

Learning Outcomes ◽

Science Classroom ◽

Socioscientific Issues ◽

Control Group ◽

Metacognitive Skills ◽

Cooperative Training ◽

Training Strategies

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of cooperative training strategies to enhance students' socioscientific decision making as well as their metacognitive skills in the science classroom. Socioscientific decision making refers to both “describing socioscientific issues” as well as “developing and evaluating solutions” to socioscientific issues. We investigated two cooperative training strategies which differed with respect to embedded metacognitive instructions that were developed on the basis of the IMPROVE method. Participants were 360 senior high school students who studied either in a cooperative learning setting (COOP), a cooperative learning setting with embedded metacognitive questions (COOP+META), or a nontreatment control group. Results indicate that students in the two training conditions outperformed students in the control group on both processes of socioscientific decision making. However, students in the COOP+META condition did not outperform students in the COOP condition. With respect to students' learning outcomes on the regulation facet of metacognition, results indicate that all conditions improved over time. Students in the COOP+META condition exhibited highest mean scores at posttest measures, but again, results were not significant. Implications for integrating metacognitive instructions into science classrooms are discussed.

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