Auto-scoring discovery and confirmation bias in interpreting data during science inquiry in a microworld

Many students have difficulty with inquiry and difficulty with interpreting data, in particular. Of interest here is confirmation bias, i.e., when students won't discard a hypothesis based on disconfirming results, which is in direct contrast to when students make a discovery, having originally made a scientifically inaccurate hypothesis. The goal of the present study is to better understand these two data interpretation patterns and autoscore them. 145 eighth grade students engaged in inquiry with a state change microworld. Production rules were written to produce model-tracing in order to identify when students either made a discovery or engaged in confirmation bias. Interesting to note was an emerging pattern wherein many of the same students made discoveries across the four inquiry tasks. These data are important for performance assessment of inquiry and suggest that students may need adaptive scaffolding support while engaging in data interpretation.