The Learning Benefits of Being Willing and Able to Engage in Scientific Argumentation

Engaging in science as an argumentative practice can promote students’ critical thinking, reflection, and evaluation of evidence. However, many do not approach science in this way. Furthermore, the presumed confrontational nature of argumentation may run against cultural norms particularly during the sensitive time of early adolescence. This paper explores whether middle-school students’ ability to engage in critical components of argumentation in science impacts science classroom learning. It also examines whether students’ willingness to do so attenuates or moderates that benefit. In other words, does one need to be both willing and able to engage critically with the discursive nature of science to receive benefits to learning? This study of middle-school students participating in four months of inquiry science shows a positive impact of argumentative sensemaking ability on learning, as well as instances of a moderating effect of one's willingness to engage in argumentative discourse. Possible mechanisms and the potential impacts to educational practices are discussed.     

The Effects of Prior-knowledge and Online Learning Approaches on Students’ Inquiry and Argumentation Abilities

This study investigated the effects of students’ prior science knowledge and online learning approaches (social and individual) on their learning with regard to three topics: science concepts, inquiry, and argumentation. Two science teachers and 118 students from 4 eighth-grade science classes were invited to participate in this research. Students in each class were divided into three groups according to their level of prior science knowledge; they then took either our social- or individual-based online science learning program. The results show that students in the social online argumentation group performed better in argumentation and online argumentation learning. Qualitative analysis indicated that the students’ social interactions benefited the co-construction of sound arguments and the accurate understanding of science concepts. In constructing arguments, students in the individual online argumentation group were limited to knowledge recall and self-reflection. High prior-knowledge students significantly outperformed low prior-knowledge students in all three aspects of science learning. However, the difference in inquiry and argumentation performance between low and high prior-knowledge students decreased with the progression of online learning topics.     

Commenting on Written Arguments as a Part of Argumentation Skills — comparison between students engaged in traditional vs on‐line study

The use of computer‐mediated communication (CMC) has increased in the area of education. This article reports a study whose aim was to improve the argumentation and scientific thinking skills of university students through argumentative on‐line studying. The research problems dealt on the one hand with learning outcomes in terms of subject content and on the other hand with argumentation skills. The results were compared between on‐line students and students who studied in a traditional way. The results indicated that the traditional group got better learning outcomes than the on‐line students who, by contrast, succeeded better in the tasks of argumentation skills. The findings suggest that the argumentative on‐line studying method would be suitable when trying to improve argumentation skills.     

Explaining Variation in How Classroom Communities Adapt the Practice of Scientific Argumentation

Research and practice has placed an increasing emphasis on aligning classroom practices with scientific practices such as scientific argumentation. In this paper, I explore 1 challenge associated with this goal by examining how existing classroom practices influence students' engagement in the practice of scientific argumentation. To do so, I present discourse data from 2 middle school classes engaged in argumentation activities. For each class, I compare existing classroom practices to a discussion designed to facilitate argumentation. My analysis reveals that the existing classroom practices influenced the way in which students responded to the disparate ideas being discussed and that the immediate learning environment influenced the frequency with which students justified their ideas and directly responded to one another. This study suggests that the goal structures that aligned with the existing classroom practices carried over to students' argumentative interactions, influencing how they responded to the disparate ideas. However, the immediate learning environment—including activity structure, software tools, and teaching strategies—seemed to foster student-to-student interactions and justification of ideas.     

Training Interventions to Foster Skill and Will of Argumentative Thinking

Argumentative thinking requires not only the skill to apply argumentative strategies such as supporting theories with evidence but also the will to apply these strategies by considering argumentative thinking to be both reasonable and worthwhile. Focusing on direct instruction for the initial acquisition of both skill and will, we developed a new short-term computer-based training intervention. We tested its effects on learning processes and learning outcomes in an experimental study with 147 German high school students. Our intervention fostered facets of both skill (i.e. a declarative knowledge about argumentation) and will (i.e., epistemic orientation, intellectual values, and epistemic knowledge). We gained additional insights into learning mechanisms, such as the mediating effects of the learners' self-explanation activities and the advantage of addressing will before skill.     

Mad City Mystery: Developing Scientific Argumentation Skills with a Place-based Augmented Reality Game on Handheld Computers

While the knowledge economy has reshaped the world, schools lag behind in producing appropriate learning for this social change. Science education needs to prepare students for a future world in which multiple representations are the norm and adults are required to “think like scientists.” Location-based augmented reality games offer an opportunity to create a “post-progressive” pedagogy in which students are not only immersed in authentic scientific inquiry, but also required to perform in adult scientific discourses. This cross-case comparison as a component of a design-based research study investigates three cases (roughly 28 students total) where an Augmented Reality curriculum, Mad City Mystery, was used to support learning in environmental science. We investigate whether augmented reality games on handhelds can be used to engage students in scientific thinking (particularly argumentation), how game structures affect students’ thinking, the impact of role playing on learning, and the role of the physical environment in shaping learning. We argue that such games hold potential for engaging students in meaningful scientific argumentation. Through game play, players are required to develop narrative accounts of scientific phenomena, a process that requires them to develop and argue scientific explanations. We argue that specific game features scaffold this thinking process, creating supports for student thinking non-existent in most inquiry-based learning environments.     

The Effect of Task Instructions on Students’ Use of Repetition in Argumentative Discourse

The reasoning belief of argumentum ad nauseam assumes that when someone repeats something often enough, he or she becomes more convincing. The present paper analyses the use of this strategy by seventh-grade students in an argumentation task. Sixty-five students (mean age: 12.2, SD?=?0.4) from a public school in a mid-sized urban environment took part in the study. The students were asked to either argue to convince an opposing partner or argue to reach consensus with an opposing partner on three dilemmas that dealt with energy sources. Data were gathered according to a between-groups design that included one independent variable (argumentative goal: to convince vs. to reach consensus) and one dependent variable (the degree of argumentative repetitions). We predicted that in the condition to convince their partner, the students would use the repetition strategy more often in their attempts to be persuasive. Our findings show that the mean number of argumentative repetitions was significantly higher for the persuasion group for both of the most frequent argumentative structures (claim and claim data). The mean percentage of repeated claims for the persuasion condition was 86.2 vs. 69.0 for the consensus condition. For the claim data, the mean percentage for the persuasion group was 35.2 vs. 24.3 for the consensus group. Also, students in the persuasion group tended to repeat one idea many times rather than repeating many ideas a few times within the same argumentative structure. The results of our study support the hypothesis that the goal of the argumentative task mediates argumentative discourse and, more concretely, the rate of repetitions and the conceptual diversity of the statements. These differences in rates of repetition and conceptual diversity are related to the amount of learning produced by the instructional goal. We apply Mercer's idea that not all classroom argumentation tasks promote learning equally.     

Science Teaching and Argumentation: One-sided versus dialectical argumentation in Chilean middle-school science lessons

Since the late 1990s, there has been consensus among educational researchers that argumentation should play a central role in science education. Although there has been extensive relevant research, it is not clear enough how oral argumentation spontaneously occurs in science teaching. This is particularly important with regard to the empirical evidence suggesting the effect of discussion of contradictory views on scientific learning. In order to contribute to the research on argumentation in science teaching, we conducted a study that aims to sketch a panoramic view of the uses of oral argumentation in Chilean middle-school science teaching. A total of 153 videotaped science lessons were observed, involving students aged 10–11 and 12–13. Whole-class argumentative discourse was analysed as a function of thematic episodes and teachers' and students' utterances. Results suggest that argumentative discourse in which contradictory points of view are discussed is scarce but when it occurs it does so predominantly within discourse among students. On the contrary, argumentation aimed at justifying points of view is widely used, even more so when students are older.     

Professional development in classroom discussion to improve argumentation: Teacher and student outcomes

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a year-long professional development program in classroom discussion designed to improve students' argumentation skills in language arts classes. Twenty-six fifth-grade teachers and their 471 students at two research sites participated: 14 teachers in the experimental condition, who received the professional development, and 12 teachers in the comparison condition. Results showed that the professional development led to statistically significant improvements in the quality of teachers' facilitation and student argumentation during discussions, and in students' performance on individual argumentative reading and writing tasks following the discussions, at the end of the year. Findings suggest that the professional development for teachers resulted in strengthened student abilities to connect positions with relevant reasons and evidence, and that argumentation skills acquired in the discussions may have transferred to students’ individual argumentation, at least for reading outcomes.     

Examining Science Teachers’ Argumentation in a Teacher Workshop on Earthquake Engineering

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the quality of science teachers’ argumentation as a result of their engagement in a teacher workshop on earthquake engineering emphasizing distributed learning approaches, which included concept mapping, collaborative game playing, and group lesson planning. The participants were ten high school science teachers from US high schools who elected to attend the workshop. To begin and end the teacher workshop, teachers in small groups engaged in concept mapping exercises with other teachers. Researchers audio-recorded individual teachers’ argumentative statements about the inclusion of earthquake engineering concepts in their concept maps, which were then analyzed to reveal the quality of teachers’ argumentation. Toulmin’s argumentation model formed the framework for designing a classification schema to analyze the quality of participants’ argumentative statements. While the analysis of differences in pre- and post-workshop concept mapping exercises revealed that the number of argumentative statements did not change significantly, the quality of participants’ argumentation did increase significantly. As these differences occurred concurrently with distributed learning approaches used throughout the workshop, these results provide evidence to support distributed learning approaches in professional development workshop activities to increase the quality of science teachers’ argumentation. Additionally, these results support the use of concept mapping as a cognitive scaffold to organize participants’ knowledge, facilitate the presentation of argumentation, and as a research tool for providing evidence of teachers’ argumentation skills.     

The use of wikis in a science inquiry-based project in a primary school

This study explored the use of wikis in a science inquiry-based project conducted with Primary 6 students (aged 11–12). It used an online wiki-based platform called PBworks and addressed the following research questions: (1) What are students’ attitudes toward learning with wikis? (2) What are students’ interactions in online group collaboration with wikis? (3) What have students learned with wikis in a science inquiry-based project in a primary school context? Analyses of the quantitative and qualitative data showed that with respect to the first research question, the students held positive attitudes toward the platform at the end of the study. With respect to the second research question, the students actively engaged in various forms of learning-related interactions using the platform that extended to more meaningful offline interactions. With respect to the third research question, the students developed Internet search skills, collaborative problem solving competencies, and critical inquiry abilities. It is concluded that a well-planned wiki-based learning experience, framed within an inquiry project-based approach facilitated by students’ online collaborative knowledge construction, is conducive to the learning and teaching of science inquiry-based projects in primary school.     

Teachers' knowledge in argumentation: contributions from an explicit teaching in an initial teacher education programme

Many researchers have highlighted the important role of teachers in creating and managing argumentative, as well as the need for teachers, during their training, to have opportunities to develop knowledge about arguments, enabling them to work from the perspective of argumentation. This study investigates to what extent a context of explicit teaching of argumentation contributed to developing this knowledge. The data sources include video records of explicit teaching of argumentation, collection of materials produced and used by pre-service teachers, and field notes. Analysis of the data indicates that the explicit teaching of argumentation influenced the conceptual learning of pre-service teachers concerning the elements interwoven into argumentative practice, especially evidence and justifications, and the development of pedagogical aspects in the context of argument. Although the pre-service teachers had expressed some teaching knowledge of argumentation in classroom discussion situations, the use of this approach in teaching situations still appears to be challenging for these teachers. The findings of this study highlight contributions to the area of teacher education in argumentation in terms of knowledge that is essential to plan and conduct argumentation-based teaching, and also to the structure of the initial teacher training programmes directed at teaching in argumentation.     

‘Does it answer the question or is it French fries?’: an exploration of language supports for scientific argumentation

ABSTRACT

Reform initiatives around the world are reconceptualising science education by stressing student engagement in science practices. Yet, science practices are language-intensive, requiring students to have strong receptive and productive language proficiencies. It is critical to address these rigorous language demands to ensure equitable learning opportunities for all students, including English language learners (ELLs). Little research has examined how to specifically support ELL students’ engagement in science practices, such as argumentation. Using case-study methodology, we examined one middle school science teacher's instructional strategies as she taught an argumentation-focused curriculum in a self-contained ELL classroom. Findings revealed that three trends characterized the teacher’s language supports for the structural and dialogic components of argumentation: (1) more language supports focused on argument structure, (2) dialogic interactions were most often facilitated by productive language supports, and (3) some language supports offered a rationale for argumentation. Findings suggest a need to identify and develop supports for the dialogic aspects of argumentation. Furthermore, engaging students in argumentation through productive language functions could be leveraged to support dialogic interactions. Lastly, our work points to the need for language supports that make the rationale for argumentation explicit since such transparency could further increase access for all students.     

Supporting collaborative inquiry during a biology field trip with mobile peer-to-peer tools for learning: a case study with K-12 learners

This study explores how collaborative inquiry learning can be supported with multiple scaffolding agents in a real-life field trip context. In practice, a mobile peer-to-peer messaging tool provided meta-cognitive and procedural support, while tutors and a nature guide provided more dynamic scaffolding in order to support argumentative discussions between groups of students during the co-creation of knowledge claims. The aim of the analysis was to identify and compare top- and low-performing dyads/triads in order to reveal the differences regarding their co-construction of arguments while creating knowledge claims. Although the results revealed several shortcomings in the types of argumentation, it could be established that differences between the top performers and low performers were statistically significant in terms of social modes of argumentation, the use of warrants in the mobile tool and in overall participation. In general, the use of the mobile tool likely promoted important interaction during inquiry learning, but led to superficial epistemological quality in the knowledge claim messages.