Fostering Model-Based School Scientific Argumentation Among Prospective Science Teachers

The paper aims both to foster and to assess ＂school scientific argumentation＂ among secondary science teachers during their pre-service education. For these purposes, the paper uses the recta-scientific construct of＂theoretical model＂ （proposed by the so-called semantic view of scientific theories from contemporary philosophy of science） in three different and complementary conceptual levels. Firstly, the paper suggests teachers to argue using theoretical models （as opposed to propositional items） from science as a key component of their arguments. Secondly, the paper tries to scaffold teachers＇ argumentation practices modeling them with paradigmatic exemplars （which the author calls ＂epitomes＂）. And thirdly, the paper uses a four-component model of school scientific argumentation as an analytical tool to inspect how science teachers argue. The teachers＇ argumentative texts that are discussed in the paper arise from their participation in teaching-learning sequences designed to improve their argumentation skills via three synergic model-based operations： analyzing epitomes of arguments, （co-）constructing new arguments, and meta-theoretically reflecting upon them.