The effects of instructional intervention on improving proportional, probabilistic, and correlational reasoning skills among undergraduate education majors

The main purpose of this study was to test the effect of instruction to imp rove the reasoning skills of undergraduates majoring in the field of educat ion. The results of this investigation demonstrate the lack of proficiency in formal reasoning by undergraduate education majors in the areas of propo rtional, probabilistic, and correlational reasoning. However, after receivi ng three specifically planned interventions, students in the experimental g roup showed improvement in all three areas of reasoning (p less than or equ al to 0.05). Also, it was noted that students with science and/or math in t heir backgrounds performed significantly (p less than or equal to 0.05) bet ter in all three areas of reasoning on both pre- and post-tests than did st udents with no science or math in their backgrounds. This study is among th e first to show that background knowledge obtained from college level scien ce and math courses correlates with better reasoning skills. Data from this study also demonstrated that interventions focusing on probability and pro portionality improved the correlational reasoning skills of students. The r esults of this investigation indicate that deficiencies in reasoning abilit ies in the areas of proportionality, probability, and correlational reasoni ng can be successfully addressed even with limited classroom intervention. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.