LAWSON CLASSROOM TEST OF SCIENTIFIC REASONING AT ENTRANCE UNIVERSITY LEVEL

The Lawson classroom test of scientific reasoning is a quite popular and widely used tool that measures the level and development of the student's scientific reasoning skills. In this contribution, the results of this test for the N=446 students of the Faculty of Science Palacký University Olomouc from the years 2018–2020 at the beginning of their study were analysed. Calculation of the standard characteristics of the test items (difficulty index, discrimination index and point biserial coefficient) confirms that the test meets the required criteria for the included questions and its overall consistency. Performing the Mann-Whitney rank test with a standard significance level α = .05, the statistically significant difference between males and females was found, on the other hand, no statistically significant difference between the students preparing for their prospective teacher careers and those with technical specializations in chemistry or physics was identified. This contradicts a common belief that students choosing teacher preparation programmes are generally worse in scientific performance and technical subjects. The results also show that about a quoter of the students come to university with a low level of their scientific reasoning skills which should be therefore supported and further developed in lecturing and teaching. Keywords: scientific reasoning, test evaluation, Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning