Context Matters

Accounting for Item Features in the Assessment of Citizen Scientists’ Scientific Reasoning Skills

verfasst von
Till Bruckermann, Tanja Straka, Milena Stillfried, Moritz Krell
Abstract

Citizen science (CS) projects engage citizens for research purposes and promote individual learning outcomes such as scientific reasoning (SR) skills. SR refers to participants’ skills to solve problems scientifically. However, the evaluation of CS projects’ effects on learning outcomes has suffered from a lack of assessment instruments and resources. Assessments of SR have most often been validated in the context of formal education. They do not contextualize items to be authentic or to represent a wide variety of disciplines and contexts in CS research. Here, we describe the development of an assessment instrument that can be flexibly adapted to different CS research contexts. Furthermore, we show that this assessment instrument, the SR questionnaire, provides valid conclusions about participants’ SR skills. We found that the deep-structure and surface features of the items in the SR questionnaire represent the thinking processes associated with SR to a substantial extent. We suggest that practitioners and researchers consider these item features in future adaptations of the SR questionnaire. This will most likely enable them to draw valid conclusions about participants’ SR skills and to gain a deeper understanding of participants’ SR skills in CS project evaluation.

Organisationseinheit(en)
Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft
Externe Organisation(en)
Technische Universität Berlin
Leibniz-Institut für Zoo- u Wildtierforschung (IZW)
IPN - Leibniz-Institut für die Pädagogik der Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik
Typ
Artikel
Journal
Citizen Science: Theory and Practice
Band
6
Anzahl der Seiten
15
ISSN
2057-4991
Publikationsdatum
25.11.2021
Publikationsstatus
Veröffentlicht
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Allgemein
Elektronische Version(en)
https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.309 (Zugang: Offen)