Research

Evidentiary reasoning in biology

Current Project:

Exploring Biological Evidence: Helping Students Understand the Richness and Complexity of Evidentiary Constructs in Biology. (2017-2020) NSF # 1661124 (PI: Ala Samarapungavan; Co-PIs: Stephanie Gardner, Nancy Pelaez, and Kari Clase, Purdue University).

This collaborative project aims to reveal the features of high school and college students reasoning with evidence in the context of biology (e.g., constructing explanations, designing investigations, drawing conclusions from data). Specifically, we aim to understand how different scaffolding within student learning tasks impacts the quality and types of student reasoning.

People:

• Sharleen Flowers
• Eryn Sale (currently at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center)
• Nouran Amin
• Gabrielle Rump (former undergrad researcher)

Relevant Publication:

Samarapungavan, A., Clase, K., Pelaez, N., Gardner, S., Misra, C., Duncan, R., ... Sandoval, W. (2018). Unpacking dimensions of evidentiary knowledge and reasoning in the teaching and learning of science. Proceedings of International Conference of the Learning Sciences, ICLS, 2(2018-June), 1251-1258.