The Development of Understanding of Evidence in Pre-University Biology Education in the Netherlands

Ensuring the quality of investigations requires the understanding of procedures by which empirical evidence is obtained. This can be interpreted as becoming aware of and using criteria for evidence in one's mental structure. The question is whether this process can be observed in practice. In two schools for pre-university education where 11th grade students were working in small groups on open investigations in biology, all conversations in class -with or without the teacher participating- of eight groups (17 students) were audio-taped and transcribed. All utterances concerning the quality of... Mehr ...