Assessing Scientific Reasoning and Argumentation in Psychology: Teacher Criteria and Consistency

Fostering scientific reasoning and argumentation (SRA) is widely regarded as a core educational goal. However, evaluating students’ SRA remains challenging, particularly in psychology, given the discipline's non-paradigmatic and multi-perspectivist nature. This study analyses SRA assessments by 20 secondary psychology teachers in Flanders, Belgium. In a mixed-methods design, teachers ranked five student responses to a theory-choice task from highest quality to lowest quality using their own assessment criteria. Results revealed low agreement among teachers regarding response quality and inconsistent alignment with expert consensus. Qualitative analysis of the assessment criteria formulated by the teachers indicated that they prioritised procedural aspects and argumentation quality (e.g., clarity) over epistemic criteria (e.g., relevance and explanatory power). Furthermore, no relationship was found between ranking accuracy and the presence of epistemic criteria. The findings raise questions about psychology teachers’ discipline-specific epistemic knowledge and highlight the difficulty of SRA assessment. This suggests further research and a need for professional development focused on establishing shared standards for valid SRA assessment in psychology.