The Effects of Project-Based Learning on Students' Scientific Reasoning Abilities and Credibility : A Teachers' Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the impact of project-based learning on students' scientific reasoning skills and credence. The study's pre-exam and post-exam model was single group. 40 students from a public-school 8th grade students participated in the study during the spring 2021-2022 school year. The "Scientific Reasoning Exam Skills - SRES" was used to gauge the scientific reasoning abilities of the students before “Life science and Physical Science” course was taught using the research-project based learning approach and the SRES as a final progress check results. The 26 elements in this test are divided into 6 sub-categories Project-based learning is a student-centred approach that promotes active learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving through the exploration of scientific phenomena. This was accomplished in order to have a very solid result which will help schools to re-think in their curriculum design to make it more student-centered rand pee to peer rather than teacher centered. The results of the study's sub-problems can be summarized as follows: according to the sub-categories of proportional thinking, Hypothetical thinking, Probabilistic thinking and correlative thinking a significant difference was found between the SRES pre-exam total scores and post-exam total scores in favor of the pre-exam total scores. According to the sub-dimensions controlling variables and combinational thinking, there was no statistically significant difference in the pre-exam total scores. Between the SRES pre-exam and post-exam total scores of boys and girls students, there was no discernible difference. Only the combinational Thinking and correlative thinking sub-dimension showed a significant difference in the total scores of the SRES sub-dimensions.