Assessment tool for scientific thinking and reasoning skills: An inspiration for university graduates in natural sciences
Abstract
The competencies for the 21st century call for people with a broad and interrelated system of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes for the full application of an individual in personal and professional life. Education, including higher education, focuses therefore not only on the development of knowledge but also on inquiry, critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem solving and decision making.
All these skills are often labeled as scientific thinking and reasoning skills. Our long-term research shows that employers from manufacturing and services firms in natural sciences may expect these abilities from their job applicants.
However, they often do not find them at the university/high-school graduates seeking for a job. The students have a good domain-specific knowledge of content and basic procedures (in chemistry and biology, among other fields), but they are not able to apply scientific thinking and reasoning skills such as asking precisely formulated questions, drawing conclusions considering all evidence or communicating conclusions properly.
This may be due to the fact that they do not have many opportunities to practice such tasks. In order to support both participants/sides, we have developed several tasks for specific positions in companies, such as quality control analyst, quality assurance specialist, or validation specialist.
These tasks can serve as a tool for companies to evaluate the skills of scientific thinking and reasoning of employees, as well as tasks that will give the university graduate a clearer idea of the scientific thinking and reasoning skills they must demonstrate during the job interview. A qualitative research study with representatives of manufacturing and services firms in natural sciences was performed: the data collected in structured interviews resulted in a scientific and reasoning framework.
This framework and other information from the interviews served as a basis for creating specific tasks. The content and construct validity of the tasks were approved by an expert panel (representatives of the companies) and through pilot testing with a small sample of employees and students.
Selected tasks will be presented and discussed in the context of scientific and reasoning skills.