Claims, evidence and reasoning in the introductory mechanics Lab

Introductory mechanics is classified as a general education laboratory science at many colleges and universities. General education outcomes often include the ability to reason from evidence or justify claims with evidence. These skills are also central components of the Next Generation Science Standards for K-12 education. In contrast to this mandate to focus on evidence-based reasoning, both the teaching and the assessing of the ability to reason from evidence are often implicit rather than explicit parts of the introductory mechanics laboratory curriculum. This article reports the first results of an ongoing attempt to scaffold the learning of reasoning from evidence and to make the assessment of this skill explicit by employing the “Claim, Evidence and Reasoning” framework in a college-level introductory mechanics laboratory.