All roads lead to Rome, an unexpected finding: High and low scientific thinking drive high scientific academic achievement through different pathways

Previous research has shown that scientific thinking (ST) is a significant positive predictor of scientific academic achievement (SAA), but the fact is that many students who lack ST also achieve high SAA. We hypothesize that there may be multiple pathways to high SAA and a complex interaction of multiple casual conditions, which are beyond the scope of conventional quantitative methods based on variance. This study explores the necessary conditions and sufficient pathways to the formation of SAA using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. In a public elementary school in southern China, 232 sixth-grade students completed test papers (measuring ST and SAA) and questionnaires (measuring other conditions such as learning strategies, extracurricular scientific activities, student-centered teaching, scientific capital, and parental involvement). The results of the necessary condition analysis indicated that no single condition was necessary to obtain high SAA. Sufficiency configuration/path analysis indicated that there were eight equivalent pathways that achieved SAA, including four high ST-driven paths, two low ST-driven paths, and two other-condition-driven pathways. Potential substitution relationships in similar paths were discussed, as well as the theoretical and practical implications of this study.