The use of Lawson's test of formal reasoning in the Israeli science education context

Abstract Lawson's test of formal reasoning was used in the Israeli educational context in order to investigate the relationship between students' achievement in science and in mathematics, to compare the performance of boys and girls, and to compare the performance of Israeli and U.S. populations. It was found that, in general, boys outperform girls; there is only a small correlation between achievement in science and math and Lawson test; and that the Israeli population achieved significantly higher than the U.S. population on the Piagetian skills measured by the test: It was concluded that the future use of Lawson's test by the high school teacher is doubtful.