Breaking Down the Concept of Students' Thinking and Reasoning Skills for Implementation in the Classroom

Various skills related to critical thinking, reasoning, and scientific reasoning are defined as essential for students in policy documents and curricula around the world as essential both in school and in everyday life. However, these concepts are often too vaguely defined and explained for a clear implementation in the classroom. In this conceptual article, the authors propose the following questions: (1) How are the concepts of thinking and reasoning as defined in policy documents reflected in curriculum descriptions across different disciplines? (2) To what extent do reasoning activities and processes overlap across different disciplines? (3) How can reasoning skills (particularly: analysis, evaluation, and creation) be described based on reasoning activities or processes and the outputs or products? Based on the literature review, it is concluded that researchers in various science disciplines have defined the aspects of reasoning that are typical for their respective disciplines, considering content, procedural knowledge, and epistemic knowledge. Meanwhile, looking from the perspective of cognitive psychology, it is concluded that reasoning processes (deductive, inductive, and analogical reasoning) are activated in the mind while students engage in reasoning activities (such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis). Thus, similar cognitive processes occur in the mind, despite a student working in different disciplines. A conceptual framework is offered in this article showing (1) how reasoning processes and activities manifest themselves in different study domains both from a theoretical perspective and in everyday classroom work; and (2) what kind of outputs could be expected from students based on various reasoning activities. The importance of interdisciplinary collaboration is justified so that students develop their reasoning skills holistically, not fragmentarily.