The relationships between high school students' cognitive structures regarding nuclear power and their informal reasoning on nuclear power usage

Abstract

This study was conducted to explore the relationships between 44 eleven-grade students’ cognitive structures regarding nuclear power and their informal reasoning on nuclear power usage. The data about participants’ cognitive structures were collected with tape-recorded interviews, and the interview narratives were transcribed into the format of ‘fl ow maps’. The students’ informal reasoning on nuclear power usage was assessed with an open-ended questionnaire developed in the previous study, and their responses were analyzed with an integrated framework developed in the previous study. The results showed that the students, having more extended as well as more integrated cognitive structures, were more oriented to utilize multiple reasoning modes; those who, more frequently used higher-order information processing modes in organizing concepts, also tended to utilize multiple reasoning modes. Moreover, the more extended as well as the more integrated the students’ cognitive structures were, the more they were oriented proceed higher-level reasoning; the more frequently an individual learner tended to utilize higher-level information processing modes in organizing concepts, the more he/she was oriented to achieve a higher reasoning level. In conclusion, this study showed some evidence that students’ conceptual understanding regarding a socio-scientifi c issue was related to their informal reasoning on this issue.