How can scientific evidence be evaluated?

Children are far more competent in their scientific reasoning than first suspected and adults are less so. Furthermore, there is great variation in the sophistication of reasoning strategies across individuals of the same age.

In general, children are less sophisticated than adults in their scientific reasoning. However, experience plays a critical role in facilitating the development of many aspects of reasoning, often trumping age.

Scientific reasoning is intimately intertwined with conceptual knowledge of the natural phenomena under investigation. This conceptual knowledge sometimes acts as an obstacle to reasoning, but often facilitates it.

Many aspects of scientific reasoning require experience and instruction to develop. For example, distinguishing between theory and evidence and many aspects of modeling do not emerge without explicit instruction and opportunities for practice.