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.

Flexibility to Change the Solution: An Indicator of Problem Solving That Predicted 9th Grade Students' Academic Achievement during Distance Learning, in Parallel to Reasoning Abilities and Parental Education.

The relation between academic achievement and various measurements of cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills and self-managed learning has been established in the research before the COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning. The aim of the current research was to analyze the extent to which these aspects predicted the educational achievement of 9th grade students (mean age 15.4 years) during distance learning, when students had to do relatively more tasks independently, organize their daily learning and deal with problems on their own.