Scientific Reasoning Skills in Physics Education: A Preliminary Analysis of High School Students’ Competence in Temperature and Heat

Scientific reasoning skills play a crucial role in understanding physics concepts through cause–effect analysis and evidence-based reasoning. However, physics learning that remains predominantly focused on problem-solving tasks has resulted in students being less accustomed to engaging in systematic scientific thinking. This study aims to analyze and describe the level of scientific reasoning skills of high school students on the topic of temperature and heat as an initial effort to map their scientific reasoning profiles. The research employed a quantitative descriptive method with 36 twelfth-grade students from a public senior high school in Tasikmalaya as participants. The research instrument consisted of a two-tier multiple-choice test developed based on Lawson’s six indicators of scientific reasoning, namely conservation reasoning, proportional reasoning, control of variables, probability reasoning, correlation reasoning, and hypothetical-deductive reasoning. The results indicate that students’ scientific reasoning skills are still within the moderate category, with an average score of 51.85, suggesting that their scientific thinking skills have not yet developed optimally. The indicator-based analysis shows the highest achievement in control of variables and the lowest in correlation reasoning and hypothetical-deductive reasoning, indicating that students are more capable of engaging in concrete reasoning than in abstract and deductive reasoning. These findings emphasize the need for physics instruction that provides a greater opportunity for scientific reasoning activities. The Creative Problem Solving (CPS) model is recommended because it has the potential to facilitate critical, creative, and evidence-based thinking in solving physics problems.