Pre-setting Stances for Students During Collaborative Argumentation: Parallel Thinking Versus Adversarial Thinking

Abstract

Though we have advocated explicit argumentation instruction in science classes for decades, daily instructions are still found insufficient in improving students' argumentation competence. It is therefore important to explore effective instructional strategies through classroom research. This paper compares instructional strategies for classroom argumentation. We report on a quasi-experiment conducted with tenth-grade students (n = 92) that compares adversarial and parallel argumentation designs for the topic genetic inheritance, an inquiry-based socio-scientific issue (SSI) unit. The instruction was conducted through the online platform, Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE). In the parallel design, student dyads were assigned to the same initial stances and were asked to change to multiple perspectives together, while in the adversarial design, students were assigned to opposite stances, and a debate was launched between the two sides. Students' overall argumentation performance improved significantly in both cases, yet the progress was greater in terms of counterarguments for students in the parallel design. Such findings highlight the value of parallel thinking in developing students' argumentation competence, especially in producing counterarguments. Suggestions on instructional design for scientific argumentation activities are proposed accordingly.

Knowledge Integration in Science Learning: Tracking Students' Knowledge Development and Skill Acquisition with Cognitive Diagnosis Models

“…Such diagnostic information might support instructors in identifying students' scientific learning gaps, enabling them to more accurately improve their instructions and provide more focused teaching feedback to students in the next teaching stage. Second, previous research has utilized the framework of the traditional elements of scientific inquiry progression, such as hypothesis development, developing experimental designs, conducting experiments and collecting evidence, and evaluating and demonstrating, to measure students' inquiry learning abilities after they have taken courses based on KI design (Yang et al., 2021), but not in KI assessment. It would contravene the principle of continuity in teaching and evaluation (Kavaliauskienė, 2008).…”

“…It is helpful to students' comprehensive understanding of scientific knowledge (Acharya et al., 2022). Therefore, several courses based on the KI framework were designed by Lin and her colleagues (Chang & Linn, 2013; Seethaler & Linn, 2004; Varma & Linn, 2012), and these courses have been well recognized and widely used by a large number of science teachers and researchers (Yang et al., 2021).…”

Problem-based learning with metacognitive prompts for enhancing argumentation and critical thinking of secondary school students

“…Successful teaching approaches that provide students with a PBL environment can aid students in their argumentation training on ill-structured problems (Voss, 2005). Moreover, PBL substantially helps students' argumentation learning by fostering in-depth discussions, thereby allowing students to develop evidence-based explanations and arguments (Nielsen, 2013;Yang et al, 2021). Sadler and Donnelly (2006) suggested that developing the quality and quantity of argumentation in a socioscientific context can promote scientific concept learning and CT.…”

The European Conference on Education 2022: Official Conference Proceedings

“…None of the described herein requires any mathematical knowledge. Playing the game comes with an intuitive understanding of probability calculus, strategic reasoning, risk fluctuation, and the ability for reflective calculations and parallel thinking (Yang, X., Zhao, G., Yan, X., Chao, Q., Zhao, X., Lu, T., & Dong, Y. (2021)).…”