2021 Volume 61 Issue 3 Pages 515-526
The purpose of this study is to clarify the challenges of the deductive reasoning process in the learners’ hypothesis verification stage of independent inquiry activities. For this purpose, university students were asked to describe their hypothesis verification and reasoning processes in an independent inquiry activity, and the results were analyzed from a logical perspective. The results of our analysis revealed that some of the university students were unable to adequately reason about the factor, X, which causes phenomenon B in situation A. Moreover, some of the participating students could not reason either “if A then X” or “if X then B”, or both. This outcome suggests that further study is needed as to how the education system can better equip students with the necessary deductive reasoning skills.
