America tries to think

• From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:
Blinding Them With Science

American college freshmen know fewer facts about science than do their Chinese counterparts, according to a new study, but both groups have a comparably poor ability to reason scientifically.

The original research, published in this week’s issue of Science, suggests that educators in both countries must not simply change what they teach in the classroom but how they teach it if they hope to improve their students’ ability to reason. Lei Bao, the study’s lead author and director of Ohio State University’s Physics Education Research Group, said this runs contrary to the commonly held belief that reasoning skills develop as students are “rigorously taught the facts.”
…
After taking the Force Concept Inventory — which tests basic knowledge of mechanics — the Chinese students had an average score of nearly 86 percent, and the American students had an average score of around 49 percent….
…
After taking the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment — testing more theoretical and complicated concepts — the Chinese students had an average score of almost 66 percent, and the American students averaged nearly 27 percent. Bao noted that the American students performed so poorly that their average score is just better than the “chance level” of 20 percent, as if they had chosen their answers at random.
…
Following these two tests of physics knowledge, the participants were given the Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning, in which they consider scientific hypotheses and propose a solution using deductive reasoning. The Chinese students had an average score of nearly 75 percent, and the American students averaged about 74 percent….