Developing a Test to Classify the Reasoning Related to the Biological Phenomena Explanations in the Context of Evolution Concepts

1) In the context of explaining biological phenomena, effective tools are essential to determine whether learning approaches can reduce ontological reasoning, which is scientifically illegitimate, and promote legitimate scientific reasoning. 2) However, tools to classify ontological and epistemological reasoning are currently lacking. This study aimed to create and develop the two-tier judgment task to classify nonscientific (NSR), ontological (OR), epistemological (EPR), and scientific reasoning (SR) in aspects of etiological (ETO), constitutive (CON), and contextual (CTX) explanations within the context of evolutionary concepts as well as evaluate the quality of the tool. 3) The process involved question design, validation using the index of item objective congruence (IOC) by experts, test development, and trying out with thirty students via simple random sampling. The index of difficulty, discrimination, and reliability were assessed. 4) Each question had an IOC index of 1.0. The difficulty and discrimination ranged from 0.20–0.80 and 0.25–0.88, respectively. The reliability scores for tier 1, tier 2, and overall were 0.75, 0.71, and 0.85, respectively. Five items were selected from an initial set of eight. In the first tier, students chose up to six explanations they agreed with from six options. The second tier required them to provide reasoning aligned with their first-tier selections. 5) This task categorized students into NSR dominant, OR dominant, EPR dominant, and SR only groups, allowing for the assessment of reasoning changes in response to different learning approaches. The tool provided insights into the reasoning processes of students and the effectiveness of instructional methods in fostering scientific reasoning.