Beginning in the 1980s, most science educators stressed the need for teaching scientific thinking skills. They has considered these skills as the scientific literacy. Because scientific knowledge is the product of human mind and these human mind is sc...
Beginning in the 1980s, most science educators stressed the need for teaching scientific thinking skills. They has considered these skills as the scientific literacy. Because scientific knowledge is the product of human mind and these human mind is scientific thinking skills.
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the scientific thinking processes of gifted high school students in science project class.
Qualitative research method is mainly used and quantitative research method supports this qualitative methods. Data were collected by four gifted students’ semi-structured interviews, field notes, programming assignments, and students’ field notes during the implementation of the computer program.
Seven major types of scientific thinking skills have been classified from the literature review, (1) induction, (2) deduction, (3) analogy (4) hypotheses generation, and (5) hypotheses testing (6)causal explanation (7) scientific concept framework. Exerting the causal network model between these scientific thinking skills and influencing factors such as personality, motivation, and confirmation bias through the previous six tests was the main purpose of this study.
Data also were collected using the results of logical thinking skills test, motivation and self-regulation test; student’s concept of the gravitation and oscillation; each student was asked about the Newton’s law of universal gravitation and Kepler’s Laws and harmonic motion. In summary, Subjects took six tests (1) GALT(Group Assessment of Logical Thinking) (2) MSLQ(Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire) (3) scientific thinking's test (4) scientific concepts' test (5) working memory test (6) Wason's task, through the project period.
They were analyzed using content analysis method, Atlas.ti 5.6 program, and SPSS 15.0 program.
The main factors that is influencing students' scientific thinking process are the personality and motivation of student, the instruction strategies implemented by teacher. In the course of scientific thinking processes, there are combining scientific thinking skills. And there is also the difference of science problem solving processes between expert and novice.
Substantially, students’ use of the thinking skills were strongly influenced by student's concept framework and teacher's caring. And there was also students' scientific thinking framework. The paper gives detailed explanations of the factors and process of students thinking.
Then, it founded that scientific concept framework and scientific thinking framework played major roles in influencing student’s scientific thinking.