From Novice to Expert: An Assessment to Measure Strategies Students Implement While Learning to Read Primary Scientific Literature

Primary Scientific Literature (PSL) has been used in undergraduate classrooms as a way to engage students with the research process and to increase science literacy. Most curricula lack any formal training for undergraduates to critically read PSL even though most undergraduate science courses require students to engage with PSL at some level. In addition, there are limited studies exploring the process by which expertise in reading PSL develops in undergraduates. In this study, we adapted behaviors that expert and novice PSL readers exhibit into a quantitative assessment tool, the PSL Reading Strategies Assessment, to evaluate undergraduates' development of reading strategies when learning to read PSL. Factor analysis and reliability measures were implemented to determine the structure of our assessment tool. Our results show the PSL Reading Strategies Assessment is sensitive enough to measure differences among student populations, suggesting that it can be used as a diagnostic tool to guide instructors and researchers as they change curricula, implement new teaching strategies, and strive to develop students' science literacy. Moreover, our data show that developing expert-like reading strategies in students learning to read PSL is not easy. Simply reading a PDF does little to promote the development of reading strategies in students learning to read PSL.