THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COGNITIVE STRUCTURE ANALYSIS IN ASSESSING STUDENTS’ KNOWLEDGE OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Abstract

Assessing students on their knowledge has been a key part of education, aiding in determining how much students have learned certain concepts. In the past, assessments have focused on whether students give the correct answer to problems, implying that the number of correctly-answered test items is a valid measure of how much students know. However, this emphasis on correct answers has resulted in negligence of assessments that could potentially provide diagnostic feedback to teachers and educators as to what concepts students have mastered, where the gaps in their knowledge are and how to remediate them. Having this framework could greatly benefit classrooms and day-to-day teaching practices. The present paper describes an assessment technique called Cognitive Structure Analysis that is derived from John Leddo’s integrated knowledge structure framework (INKS-Leddo et al., 1990) that combines several prominent knowledge representation frameworks in cognitive psychology. While this framework has been used to determine its usefulness to mathematics, it has not been tested in other disciplines. The current paper is determined to test whether this framework can be utilized when it comes to testing students’ knowledge in science by assessing them on a specific scientific topic: the scientific method. Using a Google Form, students were assessed on four types of knowledge considered the basis of mastery of scientific method concepts: factual, procedural, strategic, and rationale. Students gave responses to queries, and their results were measured where each type of knowledge was scored and a combined knowledge score was created. Students were then given real Advanced Placement style problems to solve, which generated a problem-solving score. Correlations between each knowledge component score