Learning Argumentation Skills Through Instruction in Socioscientific Issues: The Effect of Ability Level

Abstract

This article describes an effort to explore and enhance argumentation skills of Taiwanese grade 6 students through instruction in socioscientific issues. An experienced elementary school teacher was given 8 months of personalized instruction on argumentation skills and socioscientific issues, then subsequently implemented a 17-h classroom unit on the establishment of Ma-Guo National Park. His students learned to establish claims and warrants, construct counterarguments, offer supportive arguments, and provide evidence for each one. Data consisted of student responses to questionnaires and individual follow-up interviews. A multiple regression analysis revealed that success in learning argumentation skills was not substantially related to pre-instruction argumentation skills, but significantly related to the student ability levels. High-ability students were significantly better than low-ability students at generating complete arguments. Most students elaborated their arguments, and more highability students offered rebuttals after instruction. However, even these high achievers did not completely understand the meaning of evidence and often misused supplementary warrants as evidence.

Argument-DrivenInquiry (ADI): The Way to Develop Junior High School Student's Argumentation Skills in Science Learning

“…This is like the research that the students often deliver their argument only claim, data or claim with warrant [15]. The other reason, more than half lower students and several higher achiever students has difficulties to deliver the rebuttal against claim or counterclaim because rebuttal is harder than students' cognitive task for the most students [3].…”

“…In reality, the students' ability to make the argument still can't be develop because there are several teachers who did not provide an opportunity to the students to give the opinion of the knowledge that they have already got or give a comment and critique on what teachers explain especially in learning science [3]. So that the students only receive an explanation of the teachers without any comments whether that is given is the correct explanation or any information that is less accurate.…”

An investigation of prospective science teachers' socio-scientific argumentation processes in terms of metacognition: A causal-comparative study

“…After the scenarios were translated, views of three experts whose mother tongue was Turkish and who were specialized in English language teaching were taken in order to check the congruence between the English and Turkish texts. In the second phase, open-ended questions were generated from the related literature (Lin & Mintzes, 2010;Topcu et al, 2010) so as to evaluate the PSTs' ability to generate claims, justifications, counter-positions and rebuttals to the counter positions regarding the dilemmas provided in the scenarios. Both the scenarios and questions were checked by two field experts, and the required corrections were made in the light of their feedback.…”

“…Students face challenges in constituting their arguments in this process, which is also affected by the debates in the media and society (Simonneaux, 2007). It can be possible for students to make right decisions by actively participating in the decision-making and discussion process about socio-scientific issues by means of developing their argumentation skills about socio-scientific issues (Lin & Mintzes, 2010). Therefore, socio-scientific skills are considered as an important pathway to make scientifically-based decisions by evaluating the accuracy of the evidence about socio-scientific issues (Dawson & Venville, 2010;Newton et al, 1999).…”

“…Medya ve toplumdaki tartışmalardan da etkilenen bu süreçte öğrenciler kendi argümanlarını oluşturmada zorluklar yaşamaktadır (Simonneaux, 2007). Öğrencilerin sosyobilimsel konularla ilgili karar ve tartışma sürecine etkin bir şekilde katılarak doğru kararlar verebilmeleri ise sosyobilimsel konularla ilgili argümantasyon becerilerini geliştirmeleri ile mümkün olabilmektedir (Lin & Mintzes, 2010). Nitekim, argümantasyon becerisi sosyobilimsel konularla ilgili kanıtların doğruluğunu değerlendirerek bilgi temelli kararlar verebilmek için önemli bir yol olarak görülmektedir (Dawson & Venville, 2010;Newton et al, 1999).…”