Use of types of justifications in everyday, scientific, and pseudo-scientific contexts

Abstract

This paper studies how students justify everyday, scientific, and pseudo-scientific propositions, and whether they recognize the type of justifications they use. For this purpose, we work with 54 students in the 3rd year of compulsory secondary education in the subject of biology and geology, in which two learning activities designed to work on the evaluation of propositions are implemented. The results provide information on the students' preference for using habits and explanations in the evaluation of everyday propositions, and expert testimony and personality traits in the evaluation of scientific and pseudoscientific propositions, as well as the inability to acknowledge explanations and personality traits. These results provide us with useful background for reflecting on how to work on epistemic cognition in the classroom and thus broaden the conceptual frameworks on epistemic cognition.