ANALOGICAL REASONING AND GLOBAL CHANGE LITERACY

Instructional approaches designed to enhance learning about global change often include the tacit assumption that learners, placed in appropriate situations and given adequate support, can already or will learn how to reason like scientists. When learners fail to produce response that look like those scientists create, is it because they do not understand the content, reason differently from scientists, or both? Human reasoning is an area of active scientific research. This research demonstrates that recognizing similarities based on shared causation is a fundamental aspect of human reasoning in general and scientific reasoning in particular. Recognition of causal similarity is common in both revolutionary scientific discovery (sensu Kuhn) and everyday science as exemplified by studies of the geology of Mars. The NRC’s draft Framework for Science Education recognizes analogies, which are a specific type of similarity, as key elements of scientific reasoning. To test the hypothesis that recognizing similarities based on shared causation is a function of both content knowledge and scientific training, a wide range of science and non-science majors were asked to complete statements such as, “A balloon rising in the air is similar to…because…” Prior to instruction, only 26% of non-science majors (n=182) cited causal similarities in response, despite explicit instructions asking for causal relationships. In contrast, 96% of a group of senior level science majors (n=26) responded with causal relationships, even though they were not prompted to describe causal similarities. After instruction, 55% of the non-science majors responded with causal relationships. Both groups’ responses to similar statements about convection, subduction and degassing of CO₂ from seawater demonstrates that science majors are more likely to cite causal relationships as a basis for similarity, while non-science majors tend towards non-causal descriptors. These results are consistent with the idea that both implicit and explicit instruction about scientific reasoning may increase students’ ability to reason like scientists.