We should dispense with use of the confusing term "null hypothesis" in educational research reports. To explain why the term should be dropped, the nature of, and relationship between, scientific and statistical hypothesis testing is clarified by explication of (a) the scientific reasoning used by Gregor Mendel in testing specific…

Confusion persists concerning the roles played by scientific hypotheses and predictions in doing science. This confusion extends to the nature of scientific and statistical hypothesis testing. The present paper utilizes the "If/and/then/Therefore" pattern of hypothetico-deductive (HD) reasoning to explicate the nature of both scientific and…

Children personally construct explanations of natural phenomena, some of which differ from currently accepted scientific explanations. The replacement of personal explanations with scientific explanations, as well as the development of concrete, formal, and post-formal reasoning patterns, requires self-regulation in which alternative explanations…

Disagreements exist among textbook authors, curriculum developers, and even among science and mathematics educators/researchers regarding the meanings and roles of several key nature-of-science (NOS) and nature-of-mathematics (NOM) terms such as proof, disproof, hypotheses, predictions, theories, laws, conjectures, axioms, theorems, and…

Investigates Korean and U.S. college students' scientific reasoning skills involving hypothesis-testing skills and tests the hypothesis that hypothesis-testing skills are more advanced than other scientific reasoning skills. The study involves (n=774) Korean and (n=568) U.S. students and uses the Test of Scientific Reasoning (TSR). (Contains 24…

Tests the hypothesis that a fifth stage of intellectual development characterized by the ability to test alternative explanations involving unseen theoretical entities exists. This hypothesis is tested in the context of a nonmajor college-level biology course in which the assumption is made that some students have acquired Stage 5 reasoning…

Presents a model of creative and critical thinking in which analogical reasoning is used to link planes of thought and generate ideas that are then tested by employing an "if/and/then" pattern of reasoning. Presents data suggesting that such thinking skills develop first in familiar and observable contexts before they can be used in less familiar…

A long-standing and continuing controversy exists regarding the role of induction and deduction in reasoning and in scientific inquiry. Given the inherent difficulty in reconstructing reasoning patterns based on personal and historical accounts, evidence about the nature of human reasoning in scientific inquiry has been sought from a controlled…

This article offers five research criteria and their rationale to help researchers avoid problems and to help them improve research. Improving research should improve the quality of science teaching. The treatment of causal hypotheses is stressed. (Author/CW)

This study hypothesized that subjects who display proportional responses on the Pouring Water Task have developed the ability to comprehend logical arguments of the form referred to as "reasoning to a contradiction," while subjects who display additive responses on the same task have not. To test this hypothesis, 100 additive and…

Two selection and nine evaluation hypothesis testing tasks varying systematically with respect to causality, response alternatives, and context continuity were administered to two samples of adults (N=35; N=32). It was to determine effects of these variables and the degree to which subjects reasoned with material conditional, biconditional,…

Tests the hypothesis that two general developmentally-based levels of hypothesis-testing skills exist. Finds a positive relationship between level of hypothesis-testing skill and performance on a transfer problem involving the test of a hypothesis based on unobservable entities. Also finds a positive relationship between level of…

Working from the 1970s to the early 1990s, Walter Alvarez and his research team sought the cause of the mass extinction that claimed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The present paper discusses that research in terms of eight puzzling observations, eight episodes of hypothetico-predictive reasoning, enumerative induction, and Jung's…

Investigates the responses of a sample of preservice biology teachers enrolled in a teaching methods course to a casual question about why water rose in a jar inverted over a burning candle placed in a pan of water by formulating and testing six hypotheses. (Contains 43 references.) (Author/YDS)

Students (N=387) in grades 8, 10, 12, and college were administered eight reasoning items to test hypothesis that the basic logic utilized in individuals in scientific hypothesis testing is the biconditional and that the biconditional is a precondition for development of formal operations. Results and implications for science instruction are…