Editorial

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the quality of scientific arguments developed by pre-service physics teachers.

Sample: The participants were 171 pre-service physics teachers recruited from two universities: 86 from University A and 85 from University B.

Design and method: Participants were prompted to develop a written argument to either support or challenge the Turkish government’s decision to invest in nuclear power plants. Data consist of written arguments developed by the participants and information on participants’ knowledge of the topic, their confidence in their knowledge and the source of their knowledge related to the topic. Data were analyzed using the CER framework.

Results: The results show that participants did not perform at the expected level. The majority of students failed to develop strong scientific arguments. While almost all of the participants provided evidence to justify their claims, they failed to effectively coordinate evidence, claim and theory to develop an argument. Students struggled the most in the warrant/reasoning category of the CER framework. We also identified several misconceptions that students held related to nuclear power plants.

Conclusions: In our discussion we problematize college science teaching and advocate integration of instructional strategies such as argumentation that can effectively engage students in construction, evaluation and justification of knowledge.     

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.     

从《殷卜辞中所见先公先王考》看王国维的治学方法

《殷卜辞中所见先公先王考》是王国维运用“二重证据法”取地下之宝物与纸上之遗文互相释证研究古史的经典论著,运用新材料和新方法,由考证文字到阐释制度文化,将传统考据与逻辑论证相结合,多闻而阙疑,在治学方法上给予后学众多启示。     

课堂争论对学生深度学习的影响:基于交互论证分析

课堂话语互动与学习辩证地联接在一起。学习科学的新发展要求不应仅仅研究课堂话语互动环境与结果,更需要实时分析课堂话语互动过程。交互论证分析超越了传统的静态的图尔敏论证模式,能够动态地实时分析课堂话语互动。基于此,本研究聚焦于争论这一典型的课堂话语互动形式,借助交互论证分析,对研究案例进行三步骤分析,不但揭示了学生话语互动中所运用的交互形式,阐明了话语互动质量,而且清晰地描绘了课堂话语互动如何促进个体的深度学习,学生个体的意义构建如何影响小组论断形成,以及作为机构代表的教师如何促进学生的学习。研究表明课堂争论有效促进了学生的深度学习,同时也进一步指出构建新型的教师角色的必要性。     

Learning of argumentation skills in networked and face-to-face environments

In a teaching experiment 16 face-to-face and 11 e-mailFinnish university students studied academic debatingin an argumentation course. The 19 students of thecontrol group did not engage in the course. The courseinvolved two lectures, exercises with argumentativetexts, and face-to-face or e-mail seminar discussionsbased on these texts. Free debate, role play,problem-solving and panel discussion were the devicesused in organizing the course. The level of thestudents' argumentation skills were measured in apretest before the course and in a post-test after it.The results were compared between and within thegroups. The results indicated that during the e-mailstudies the students learned to identify and chooserelevant grounds, while the face-to-face studentsimproved in putting forward counterargumentation. Thecontrol group did not improve in these skills. Thestudy suggests that argumentation skills can bepromoted by short-term e-mail and face-to-faceteaching, and that practising argumentation indifferent learning environments develops differentkinds of argumentation skills.     

哈贝马斯、卢曼、阿列克西的法律论证理论比较

在学理上,将法律论证作为一种理论进行研究是近几十年的事情。西方法学界对法律论证理论的研究。以英美与欧陆为泾渭,其中欧陆法学对法律论证的研究又以德国最具特色。通过对哈贝马斯、卢曼以及阿列克西等三位当代法哲学大家的法律论证理进行比较,从而得到一些有益的启示。     

Chemical rationales: another triplet for chemical thinking

ABSTRACT

One of the central goals of modern science and chemistry education is to develop students’ abilities to understand complex phenomena, and productively engage in explanation, justification, and argumentation. To accomplish this goal, we should better characterise the types of reasoning that we expect students to master in the different scientific disciplines. This analysis is needed to support the design of instructional tasks, teaching strategies, and assessments that foster those ways of thinking. This essay contributes in this direction by characterising the major types of rationales built and applied by experts when analysing chemical systems and processes. The term ‘chemical rationale’ is used to refer to any product of reasoning that uses chemical knowledge to build explanations, justifications or arguments. Three main types of rationales are identified and discussed: Phenomenological, Mechanical, and Structural. Difficulties associated with learning how to build each type of rationale are highlighted, and implications for research and practice of this other chemistry ‘triplet’ are discussed.     

Engaging Chinese ideas through Australian education research: using chéngyŭ to connect intellectual projects across ‘peripheral’ nations

The increasing number of higher degree research students from China in the universities of multicultural Australia as elsewhere has added to the mounting interest in pedagogies of postgraduate supervision. This paper explores the proposition that efforts to articulate Chinese ideas through research in, for and about Australia have to negotiate positions that would allow or disallow their embedding in the Australian education research community. To do so, the literature on higher degree research supervision in multicultural contexts is reviewed. Then the co-operative approach used to document a higher degree research student's experiences of integrating knowledge from her Chinese intellectual heritage into her research is explained. The third section illustrates a research intervention whereby Chinese knowledge was articulated through research in, for and about teacher education in Australia. The fourth section presents evidence of three different responses to this move to embed Chinese ideas in the Australian education research community. Specifically, the responses of Australian academics to her use of chéngy? to theorise her evidence is explored.     

Who Benefits From a Foundational Logic Course? Effects on Undergraduate Course Performance

Being able to understand and evaluate arguments in different modalities and in different disciplines is thought to be a key component of students’ academic success in college. However, many students do not receive explicit instruction in the basic concepts and rules of argumentation. Using a difference-in-differences approach with a multicohort longitudinal data set of almost 15,000 undergraduates beginning in health and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related fields at a research university, we examined changes in relative performance of students after enrolling in an introductory logic course. We find that students improved their grade point average (GPA) after taking the course, especially if they begin college with low academic achievement (Cohen’s d?=?0.18). Our results are consistent with the idea that acquiring foundational skills, in particular general skills in argumentation, prepares STEM students for future learning.