Learning Effects of Explicitly Teaching ‘Cause-Effect Thinking’ in Lower Secondary Science Education.

Abstract

This study will focus on the evaluation of the learning effects of the educational material based on the guidelines from the Kennisbasis. The Kennisbasis is a curriculum framework for lower secondary education in the Netherlands that describes the science- and technology subjects in terms of three dimensions: core ideas, crosscutting practices and crosscutting concepts education in the Netherlands. The core ideas describe the knowledge students should have, crosscutting practices describe the skills scientists and engineers need in their daily work and crosscutting concepts are ways of reasoning that have proved helpful in generating research questions and approaches and providing a deeper insight in science. The study asks what the learning effects are of explicitly teaching the crosscutting concept cause-effect thinking in lower secondary science education. This question will be answered by qualitatively analysing three lessons in the subjects biology and physics in which cause-effect thinking is explicitly taught. During the lesson students make a scheme in which the main cause and effect and all the variables that will connect the main cause and effect to each other; a Cause-Effect Schemes (CES) The analysis of the lessons will consist of student survey questions, teacher interviews, lesson observations, analysing student assessment and categorising CES into the categories of Hennessey. Results of this analysis show that when students are taught about cause-effect thinking via CES, students become more competent in making a CES and in the skill cause-effect thinking. Another learning effect is that approximately half of all students and the teachers involved find that cause-effect thinking helps students in their learning. Students and teacher both see differences in cause-effect thinking between the subjects physics and biology.