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Project

Teaching scientific reasoning and argumentation in secondary psychology education: The role of epistemological beliefs

Scientific reasoning and argumentation (SRA) are complex thinking skills and can be defined as the ability to understand and appropriately use scientific concepts, methods, and findings when solving or explaining problems in a specific discipline (Fischer et al., 2014). SRA are highly domain-specific skills, referring to the epistemological nature of the discipline in which SRA are implemented and the (meta)concepts of the discipline (Chinn et al., 2011; Engelmann et al., 2018; Goldman et al., 2018; Kuhn et al., 2000; van Boxtel & van Drie, 2018a). Fostering SRA has been intensively studied in the domains of science education (Engelmann et al., 2016) and history education (van Boxtel & van Drie, 2018b). Consequently, both domains have developed and discussed disciplinary frameworks about the content and approaches of SRA in their curricula and the effects of these approaches. Research on SRA in psychology education is still largely lacking, making psychology an underrepresented discipline in SRA research. Considering that SRA are domain-specific skills (Fischer et al., 2018) and that attention to SRA may help students to cope with the epistemological characteristics of psychological science as an ill- structured and non-paradigmatic discipline (Klopp & Stark, 2022; von Glasersfeld, 2001), it is interesting to further explore SRA in psychology education. Therefore, the current dissertation project aims to explore, understand, and elaborate the challenges of teaching SRA in secondary psychology education. The kind of SRA we focus on is SRA to generate theory-based explanations for core scientific psychological phenomena. To achieve this overall research goal, three studies will be conducted. A first study explores the scene and identifies important issues regarding the teaching of SRA in upper secondary psychology education. Results show that teachers struggle with the epistemological dimension of SRA, referring to the epistemological features that shape SRA in psychology and that are intrinsic to SRA. This is particularly reflected in teachers' reported difficulties in determining assessment criteria for students' SRA. The results further suggest that teachers' epistemological beliefs may be related to these reported difficulties. Therefore, a second study examines the relationship between teachers' epistemological beliefs about psychology as a scientific discipline and teachers' determination and use of assessment criteria for written SRA tasks. A third study examines the effects of an intervention study on teachers' epistemological beliefs and their ability to identify and apply assessment criteria for SRA tasks.

Date:1 Oct 2020 →  Today
Keywords:Subject-matter, Pedagogical content knowledge, Didactics, Teaching, Instructional design, School subject, Secondary education, Behavioral sciences, Social sciences
Disciplines:Humanities and social sciences curriculum and pedagogics, Didactics of school subjects, Secondary education
Project type:PhD project