This article offers a review of the major literature about attitudes to science and its implications over the past 20 years. It argues that the continuing decline in numbers choosing to study science at the point of choice requires a research focus on students' attitudes to science if the nature of the problem is to be understood and remediated. Starting from a consideration of what is meant by attitudes to science, it considers the problems inherent to their measurement, what is known about students' attitudes towards science and the many factors of influence such as gender, teachers, curricula, cultural and other variables. The literature itself points to the crucial importance of gender and the quality of teaching. Given the importance of the latter we argue that there is a greater need for research to identify those aspects of science teaching that make school science engaging for pupils. In particular, a growing body of research on motivation offers important pointers to the kind of classroom environment and activities that might raise pupils' interest in studying school science and a focus for future research.

ABSTRACT:Basing its arguments in current perspectives on the nature of the scientific enterprise, which see argument and argumentative practice as a core activity of scientists, this article develops the case for the inclusion and central role of argument in science education. Beginning with a review of the nature of argument, it discusses the function and purpose of dialogic argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge and the interpretation of empirical data. The case is then advanced that any education about science, rather than education in science, must give the role of argument a high priority if it is to give a fair account of the social practice of science, and develop a knowledge and understanding of the evaluative criteria used to establish scientific theories. Such knowledge is essential to enhance the public understanding of science and improve scientific literacy. The existing literature, and work that has attempted to use argument within science education, is reviewed to show that classroom practice does provide the opportunity to develop young people's ability to construct argument. Furthermore, the case is advanced that the lack of opportunities for the practice of argument within science classrooms, and lack of teacher's pedagogical skills in organizing argumentative discourse within the classroom are significant impediments to progress in the field. We should not assume that mere contact with science, which is so critical, will make the students think critically. (Rogers, 1948, p. 7) Correspondence to: J. Osborne; e-mail: jonathan.osborne@kcl.ac.uk *Deceased DRIVER, NEWTON, AND OSBORNE OVERVIEWThis study presents the rationale for a research program in the area of argument in science -an area to which science education has only given scant attention. As argument is a central feature of the resolution of scientific controversies (Fuller, 1997; Taylor, 1996), it is somewhat surprising that science teaching has paid so little attention to a practice that lies at the heart of science. It is our contention that this significant omission has led to important shortcomings in the education that is provided about science. It has given a false impression of science as the unproblematic collation of facts about the world, hence making controversies between scientists, whether historical or contemporary, puzzling events (Driver, Leach, Millar, & Scott, 1996;Geddis, 1991). Such a disregard for the practice of argument has also failed to empower students with the ability to critically examine the scientific claims generated by the plethora of socioscientific issues that confront them in their everyday lives (Norris & Phillips, 1994;Solomon, 1991).Science in schools is commonly portrayed from a "positivist perspective" as a subject in which there are clear "right answers" and where data lead uncontroversially to agreed conclusions. This is a view perhaps most aptly expressed by Schwab who argued that science is "taught as a nearly unmitigated rhetoric of conclusions in which the current and t...

The research reported in this study focuses on the design and evaluation of learning environments that support the teaching and learning of argumentation in a scientific context. The research took place over 2 years, between 1999 and 2001, in junior high schools in the greater London area. The research was conducted in two phases. In phase 1, working with a group of 12 science teachers, the main emphasis was to develop sets of materials and strategies to support argumentation in the classroom, and to support and assess teachers' development with teaching argumentation. Data were collected by video‐ and audio‐recording the teachers' attempts to implement these lessons at the beginning and end of the year. During this phase, analytical tools for evaluating the quality of argumentation were developed based on Toulmin's argument pattern. Analysis of the data shows that there was significant development in the majority of teachers use of argumentation across the year. Results indicate that the pattern of use of argumentation is teacher‐specific, as is the nature of the change. In phase 2 of the project, the focus of this paper, teachers taught the experimental groups a minimum of nine lessons which involved socioscientific or scientific argumentation. In addition, these teachers taught similar lessons to a comparison group at the beginning and end of the year. The purpose of this research was to assess the progression in student capabilities with argumentation. For this purpose, data were collected from 33 lessons by video‐taping two groups of four students in each class engaging in argumentation. Using a framework for evaluating the nature of the discourse and its quality developed from Toulmin's argument pattern, the findings show that there was improvement in the quality of students' argumentation. This research presents new methodological developments for work in this field. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 994–1020, 2004

This paper reports some methodological approaches to the analysis of argumentation discourse developed as part of the two-and-a-half year project titled "Enhancing the Quality of Argument in School Science" supported by the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom. In this project researchers collaborated with middle-school science teachers to develop models of instructional activities in an effort to make argumentation a component of instruction. We begin the paper with a brief theoretical justification for why we consider argumentation to be of significance to science education. We then contextualize the use of Toulmin's Argument Pattern in the study of argumentation discourse and provide a justification for the methodological outcomes our approach generates. We illustrate how our work refines and develops research methodologies in argumentation analysis. In particular, we present two methodological approaches to the analysis of argumentation resulting in whole-class as well as small-group student discussions. For each approach, we illustrate our coding scheme and some results as well as how our methodological approach has enabled our inquiry into the quality of argumentation in the classroom. We conclude with some implications for future research in argumentation in science education.

The science that is encountered by adults, whether through the media or through work contexts, typically presents questions, decisions and the need for prioritisation. There is

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Basing its arguments in current perspectives on the nature of the scientific enterprise, which see argument and argumentative practice as a core activity of scientists, this article develops the case for the inclusion and central role of argument in science education. Beginning with a review of the nature of argument, it discusses the function and purpose of dialogic argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge and the interpretation of empirical data. The case is then advanced that any education about science, rather than education in science, must give the role of argument a high priority if it is to give a fair account of the social practice of science, and develop a knowledge and understanding of the evaluative criteria used to establish scientific theories. Such knowledge is essential to enhance the public understanding of science and improve scientific literacy. The existing literature, and work that has attempted to use argument within science education, is reviewed to show that classroom practice does provide the opportunity to develop young people's ability to construct argument. Furthermore, the case is advanced that the lack of opportunities for the practice of argument within science classrooms, and lack of teacher's pedagogical skills in organizing argumentative discourse within the classroom are significant impediments to progress in the field.

No abstract