The study's purpose was to evaluate the quality of argumentations presented by students in relation to local socioscientific issues (SSIs). The participants, 36 seventh‐grade students from state schools, were divided into three learning groups—outdoor group, newspaper group, and presentation group. Five local environment‐related SSIs were selected: an artificial lake, chicken coops, leather tanneries, base stations, and hydroelectric power plants (HPPs). Different data sources were provided to each group pertaining to their SSIs. The outdoor group learned through field trips, the newspaper group acquired information through newspapers, and the presentation group learned via presentations. Each group gathered data from their unique learning sources, which then formed the basis of their arguments. After a pilot study, each group experienced the same argumentation practice within smaller groups. The recorded discussions were transcribed, and the qualities of 582 argumentation episodes chronicled over a period of 10 weeks were evaluated using an analytical assessment tool. It emerged that the quality of argumentations of each group varied by the data sources and the contexts of the SSIs. While the newspaper group displayed the best performance in 4 out of 5 issues, the outdoor group had the lowest performance overall. In terms of generating high‐quality argumentations about the artificial lake, chicken coops, and base stations, the newspaper group ranked top, followed by the presentation group, and then the outdoor group. HPPs proved to be the most challenging context for students across all groups. The study sums up with discussions of the differences between the quality of argumentations of the various groups and the implications of the study's conclusions.
Practices such as astrology or crystal healing can be defined as pseudoscience. Against pseudoscience, one of the major responsibilities of science education must be to develop science-literate individuals who are able to understand what science is, how science is undertaken, how scientific knowledge is constructed, and how it is justified, then they will be able to determine whether a claim is valid and be alert to practices which fall outside the realms of science, especially those in the area of pseudoscience. For this reason, the ability of recognizing flawed process and claims of pseudoscience is referred to one of the crucial parts of science literacy. The present study aimed to uncover middle school students' understanding of the inherent aim of pseudoscientists and pseudoscientific applications related to crystals and to reveal their judgments and justifications regarding the effectiveness and scientific basis of these applications. The present study was qualitative in nature. The results of the study showed that the students were very gullible about the aim, effectiveness, and scientific basis of pseudoscientific practices and in particular the use of crystals. Furthermore, similar to pseudoscientists, the students generally used weak reasoning to evaluate the presented claims and research designs about crystals and crystal healing.
-The purpose of this study was to determine reasoning modes of different groups of people while they were making a decision about Hydroelectric Power Plants (HPP). Twenty people from each group (member of environmental organizations, local people, distant people) and 7 officials participated in the study. Data were collected by a questionnaire which consisted of general knowledge about HPP, its advantages and disadvantages, and a question asking if they think that construction of HPP should be terminated or not. Coding scheme in Liu, Lin, and Tsai (2010) was applied. Reasoning modes were coded into four categories: ecological, scientifictechnological, socio-economical, and ethical-esthetical. Most of the participants decided on terminating the construction of HPP and their reasoning modes were mostly socio-economical and ecological. Ethical-esthetical and scientific-technological reasoning were less. The people who decided on continuing HPP mostly reasoned from socio-economical and scientific-technological modes. Ethical-esthetical reasoning was rare and ecological reasoning was less than the other group.
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