Scientific reasoning abilities are already developing in elementary-school-aged children and enable them to understand the world around them. The goal of the current study was to develop a new instrument for 8- to 10-year-old children in Grades 3 and 4 to measure their understanding of the steps of the scientific inquiry cycle (SIC). Such an understanding is essential for scientific reasoning as well as for inquiry-based learning approaches and, above all, for scientific practice. We developed and applied 15 items in a sample of 878 third- and fourth-grade students (n = 434, Grade 3; n = 435, Grade 4). As confirmed by item response theory (IRT) modeling, the items produced reliable scale scores. Furthermore, we explored the relations between children’s SIC performances, cognitive abilities, and epistemic beliefs. As expected, intelligence, text comprehension, experimentation strategies, and sophisticated epistemic beliefs were positively associated with children’s SIC performance, a finding that helps to establish initial evidence for the construct validity of the SIC test scores.

中文翻译：

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小学生的科学推理：探究周期的评估

小学生的科学推理能力已经在发展，使他们能够理解周围的世界。当前研究的目标是为 8 至 10 岁的 3 至 4 年级儿童开发一种新工具，以衡量他们对科学探究周期 (SIC) 步骤的理解。这种理解对于科学推理以及基于探究的学习方法，尤其是科学实践至关重要。我们在 878 名三年级和四年级学生（n = 434，3 年级；n = 435，4 年级）的样本中开发并应用了 15 个项目。正如项目反应理论 (IRT) 模型所证实的，这些项目产生了可靠的量表分数。此外，我们探讨了儿童 SIC 表现、认知能力和认知信念之间的关系。正如预期的那样，情报，