Linking Scientific Literacy, Scientific Argumentation, and Democratic Citizenship

Abstract

Argumentation can develop individuals' epistemologies to acknowledge the multiplicity of the ideas and propose, justify, and evaluate the knowledge claims by coordinating them with appropriate evidence. This paper aims to examine how and why argumentation should be incorporated into science instruction addressing various contexts to promote student learning, active engagement, and democratic citizenship. In particular, the socio-scientific contexts can enhance learners' scientific literacy, scientific reasoning, critical thinking, and knowledge of the nature of science about complex scientific issues related to the political, economic, and social aspect of the society. This paper argues for the relationship between scientific literacy, scientific argumentation, and socio-scientific issues to enhance students' thinking about societal problems. The paper examines the historical perspectives related to science teaching and learning and the concept of scientific literacy and addresses the significance of scientific argumentation to promote learners' engagement in the scientific processes and democratic citizenship.

Metacognitive Argument-Driven Inquiryin Teaching Antimicrobial Resistance: Effects on Students Conceptual Understanding and Argumentation Skills

“…Argumentation is described as a rational and logical discursive process that aims at establishing relationships between ideas and evidence (Duschl, Scweingruber, & Shouse, 2007). Essential to this process, students generate evidence-based explanations, critique each other's explanations, and improve their explanations (Sengul, 2019). It offers avenues to view science as a dynamic process in which ideas are investigated, questioned, and often changed or revised (Diehl, 2000).…”

The Development of a STEAM Program about Global Energy with a Focus on Democratic Citizenship

“…Teacher experts who participated in the validation process responded that equipping students with the competencies of DC is critical and it was very helpful to learn DC in science education is and to understand how DC can be included in the classroom. Thus, it would also be reasonable to teach the DC components to students through more explicit methods rather than implicit (Barrué & Albe, 2013;Bell et al, 1998;Khishfe, 2013;Sengul, 2019).…”

“…We face global issues that must be solved for the next generation. For example, climate change is a serious and well-known issue by students and citizen (Choi et al, 2011;Levinson, 2010;Sengul, 2019;Zeidler et al, 2019) and it is clear that all citizens around the world should recognize that climate change is no longer an issue to be addressed but a challenge to be solved through action. Alternative renewable energy is drawing attention as a solution to climate change (Binkley et al, 2010;Mun et al, 2012;Kolstø, 2008).…”

Pensamiento científico en la educación secundaria: acercamiento al estado de la cuestión

“…Por último, las investigaciones teóricas incluyeron revisiones sobre la relación entre pensamiento científico y conceptos como: la naturaleza de las ciencia y las implicaciones en la educación científica (García-Carmona y Acevedo- Gasparatou, 2017;Lampert, 2020;Taber, 2017), la competencia científica (Gardinier, 2021;Gómez y Suárez, 2020), la alfabetización científica (Costa et al, 2021), los estilos de razonamiento y pensamiento (Murphy et al, 2017;Osborne, 2013; Vitti Rodrigues y Emmeche, 2021), el fascismo y los movimientos autoritarios (Galamba y Matthews, 2021), las explicaciones científicas escolares y los soportes pedagógicos (Brigham et al, 2011;Cabello y Sommer Lohrmann, 2020), el método científico (Fernández Mateo, 2020), el control de variables (Kuhn, 2016), la argumentación en la enseñanza de las ciencias (Sengul, 2019), la educación científica y el pensamiento crítico (Vázquez-Alonso y Manassero-Mas, 2018), la gamificación de la ciencia (Morris et al, 2013) y la curiosidad (Jirout, 2020;Lindholm, 2018). En el contexto nacional se destacan las revisiones sobre el currículo y enseñanza de las ciencias naturales en Colombia de Torres Martínez y Guerrero Romero (2018) y Alcocer Tocora y Hernández Hernández (2020), respectivamente.…”