Sense‐making and argumentation are two common ways to frame student discourse. The former emphasizes the process of students coming to an understanding, the latter the logical and rhetorical structure of the product. When we investigated the discourse of two groups of preservice science teachers in an environment that fosters productive disciplinary engagement, we found that elements of both sense‐making and argumentation pervaded the discourse as the preservice teachers engaged in the scientific practice of developing an explanation of a complex phenomenon. We have developed a framework based on, but extending that of Toulmin that allowed us to capture the to‐and‐fro nature of the development of an explanation by using elements of argumentation and sense‐making as well as transactivity. Using the framework we were able to characterize almost all utterances of the 40‐min discourse of both groups. Both groups arrived at a similar point of conceptual convergence, even though the interactions that took place during the activity were of quite a different nature. We detail the affordances of our framework and contrast them with those of purely argumentation‐based frameworks.
This study presents the findings from a systematic review of literature (1990–2020) of mathematics and science transition from primary to secondary education. The purpose of this review was to explore factors that influence students’ experiences of mathematics and science transition from primary to secondary school, implications of these experiences and measures that have been used to support students during these transitions. In total, 73 publications related to mathematics transition and 47 publications related to science transition were analysed. Synthesis of findings identified three factors, namely student self-regulation, school and academic related, and social factors that contribute to shaping students’ positive or negative experiences of mathematics and science transitions. The review findings suggest that no single factor can be attributed to influence students’ experiences of mathematics and science transition and an interplay between various factors contributes to these experiences. The implications of difficult transition experiences were identified as shifts in students’ academic achievement, attitudes towards mathematics and science and constructs related to identity development. Recommendations for future research are proposed to address gaps identified in current literature.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.