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Values Use in Undergraduate Students’ Socio‐Hydrological Reasoning: A Comparative Study
Author(s) -
Petitt Destini N.,
Forbes Cory T.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
natural sciences education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2168-8281
DOI - 10.4195/nse2018.09.0016
Subject(s) - developing country , value (mathematics) , scientific reasoning , quality (philosophy) , mathematics education , psychology , identification (biology) , ecology , mathematics , statistics , biology , philosophy , epistemology
Core Ideas Socio‐scientific issues prepare students for real‐world experiences. Socio‐hydrological reasoning involves the use of values. Value identifications differ between developing and developed countries. Value use frequency differs between developed and developing countries.Growing human populations place increasing demands on our planet, resulting in an array of challenges with both scientific and non‐scientific dimensions. These challenges are collectively known as socio‐scientific issues (SSIs). It is essential to understand how students learn to use values to reason about SSIs, particularly when dealing with water‐related challenges. This research strives to better understand undergraduate students’ reasoning to provide instructors with insights into ways to implement innovative instruction about socio‐hydrological issues. With 96% of behavioral research involving participants from developed countries, this study strives to better understand socio‐hydrologic reasoning (SHR) of students from developing countries. We investigate questions focusing on values undergraduate students from developed and developing countries identify with, how those values are used in SHR, and if reasoning differs between the two groups. Results show a significant difference between the two groups’ value identification, as well as the use of those values in their SHR. There is a significant difference in the quality of reasoning between the two groups, with students from developing countries reasoning at a higher quality than their developed country counterparts. This study begins to shed light on how students use their values to reason, which can afford educators the opportunity to provide students with the support needed to increase the quality of their reasoning.