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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Use of Premise-Reasoning-Outcome (PRO) in Structuring Students’ Answers for Open-Ended Questions
Author(s)
Ling Wee Lee, Goh Yinglun Allan
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DOI:10.17265/2161-6248/2017.04.003
Affiliation(s)
National Junior College (NJC), Singapore
ABSTRACT
This paper describes the efficacy of premise-reasoning-outcome
(PRO)—an instructional strategy to help students in scientific
explanations. Students generally find it hard to answer open-ended “explain”
type questions and it difficult to give a complete answer because of missing
components or links in their answers. We used PRO as a structure for Grades 9
and 10 students in National Junior College (NJC) in Singapore, to answer
open-ended questions. PRO stands for “premise” (the known facts, such as
scientific laws, principles, and information related to the given scenario), “reasoning”
(sequential chain of reasoning that links the “premise” to the “outcome”), and “outcome”
(phenomenon to be explained). The effectiveness of the PRO approach was evaluated
by using a survey of students’ perception on the usefulness of PRO and a
performance quiz on the efficacy of the PRO approach as a tool for students to
provide complete answers to open-ended questions. In the implementation, 70% of
the students have used the PRO structure in their explanations during a revision
quiz at the end of the study with 94% of the students being able to identify
the right premise(s) for the question. Students also responded positively to
the use of PRO in helping them to structure their answers and they felt that
the PRO structure is helpful for them.
KEYWORDS
teaching science, science instruction, constructing scientific explanation, instructional strategies
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