Investigating the Development of Reasoning Abilities among Bruneian Physics Students after 1 Year Exposure to Cambridge International Advanced Level Program

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the development of different reasoning abilities among Bruneian physics students after undergoing one year of Cambridge International Advanced level ('A' level) programme. This particular study administered pre and post questionnaires, namely, verbal critical reasoning, spatial ability and abstract reasoning. These questionnaires were distributed among 'A' level physics students from four out of six, sixth form centres. There were 173 students (73 male and 100 female students) who participated in the study. Non-parametric tests (i.e. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test and Mann Whitney U) were conducted on the pre-test and post-test scores of verbal critical reasoning, spatial ability and abstract reasoning and their corresponding gain scores due to violation of normality and presence of outliers in the data. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test revealed that there were significant differences in the spatial reasoning score and abstract reasoning score from pre-test to post-test. Meanwhile Mann Whitney U test indicated that male students outperformed female students in abstract reasoning during pre-test and post-test. Thus for this particular sample, there is an increase in students' abstract reasoning abilities and spatial reasoning abilities. A further investigation might be needed in exploring the reasoning abilities scores of the students with their 'A' level results to make a stronger claim for this study.