Examining Arguments Generated by Year 5, 7, and 10 Students in Science Classrooms

A critical component of science is the role of inquiry and argument in moving scientific knowledge forward. However, while students are expected to engage in inquiry activities in science classrooms, there is not always a similar emphasis on the role of argument within the inquiry activities. Building from previous studies on the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH), we were keen to find out if the writing structure used in the SWH approach helped students in Year 5, 7, and 10 to create well constructed arguments. We were also interested in examining which argument components were important for the quality of arguments generated by these students. Two hundred and ninety six writing samples were scored using an analysis framework to evaluate the quality of arguments. Step-wise multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine important argument components. The results of this study suggest that the SWH approach is useful in assisting students to develop reasonable arguments. The critical element determining the quality of the arguments is the relationship between the student’s written claims and his or her evidence.

[1]  Gregory J. Kelly,et al.  Students’ reasoning about electricity: combining performance assessments with argumentation analysis , 1998 .

[2]  D. Kuhn.  Education for Thinking , 1986, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[3]  J. Fleiss,et al.  Intraclass correlations: uses in assessing rater reliability. , 1979, Psychological bulletin.

[4]  J. Emig.  Writing as a Mode of Learning. , 1977 .

[5]  J. Osborne,et al.  The place of argumentation in the pedagogy of school science , 1999 .

[6]  Brian Hand,et al.  Using a Science Writing Heuristic to enhance learning outcomes from laboratory activities in seventh‐grade science: quantitative and qualitative aspects , 2004 .

[7]  G. Wiggins,et al.  Understanding by Design , 1998 .

[8]  Jeannett Martin,et al.  Writing Science: Literacy And Discursive Power , 1993 .

[9]  Carolyn W. Keys.  Language as an indicator of meaning generation: An analysis of middle school students' written discourse about scientific investigations , 1999 .

[10]  A. Ahlgren,et al.  Science for all Americans , 1990 .

[11]  Gail Richmond,et al.  Making meaning in classrooms: Social processes in small‐group discourse and scientific knowledge building , 1996 .

[12]  Carolyn S. Wallace.  Evidence from the Literature for Writing as a Mode of Science Learning , 2004 .

[13]  Carolyn W. Keys.  Revitalizing instruction in scientific genres: Connecting knowledge production with writing to learn in science , 1999 .

[14]  W. Sandoval,et al.  Explanation-Driven Inquiry: Integrating Conceptual and Epistemic Scaffolds for Scientific Inquiry , 2004 .

[15]  R. Osborne,et al.  Learning science: A generative process , 1983 .

[16]  Joseph J. Schwab.  The Teaching of Science as Inquiry , 1958 .

[17]  L. Yore,et al.  Examining the literacy component of science literacy: 25 years of language arts and science research , 2003 .

[18]  William A. Prothero,et al.  The epistemological framing of a discipline: Writing science in university oceanography , 2000 .

[19]  M. Scardamalia,et al.  The psychology of written composition , 1987 .

[20]  L. Rivard,et al.  A review of writing to learn in science: Implications for practice and research , 1994 .

[21]  J. Osborne,et al.  Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms , 2000 .

[22]  M. Jiménez-Aleixandre,et al.  Argument in High School Genetics. , 1997 .

[23]  Brian Hand,et al.  Writing‐to‐learn Strategies in Secondary School Cell Biology: A mixed method study , 2006 .

[24]  Nancy J. Fellows.  A window into thinking: Using student writing to understand conceptual change in science learning , 1994 .

[25]  Perry D. Klein,et al.  Elementary Students' Strategies for Writing-to-Learn in Science , 2000 .

[26]  David Wray,et al.  Extending Literacy: Children Reading and Writing Non-Fiction , 1997 .

[27]  J. Lemke.  Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values , 1990 .

[28]  D. Zeidler.  The central role of fallacious thinking in science education , 1997 .

[29]  D. Kuhn.  Science as argument : Implications for teaching and learning scientific thinking , 1993 .

[30]  Vaughan Prain,et al.  Examining the effect of multiple writing tasks on Year 10 biology students’ understandings of cell and molecular biology concepts , 2007 .

[31]  S. Toulmin,et al.  An introduction to reasoning , 1979 .

[32]  William A. Sandoval,et al.  Conceptual and Epistemic Aspects of Students' Scientific Explanations , 2003 .

[33]  Melanie M. Cooper,et al.  Chemists' Guide to Effective Teaching , 2005 .

[34]  Carolyn W. Keys.  The development of scientific reasoning skills in conjunction with collaborative writing assignments: An interpretive study of six ninth‐grade students , 1994 .

[35]  G. J. Kelly,et al.  Assessment of Evidence in University Students' Scientific Writing , 2003 .

[36]  Stanley B. Straw,et al.  The effect of talk and writing on learning science: An exploratory study , 2000 .

[37]  Vaughan Prain,et al.  Writing and Learning in the Science Classroom , 2004 .

[38]  Paul H. Connolly,et al.  Writing to learn mathematics and science , 1989 .

[39]  Gregory J. Kelly,et al.  How Students Argue Scientific Claims: A Rhetorical‐Semantic Analysis , 2003 .

[40]  Vaughan Prain,et al.  Using the science writing heuristic as a tool for learning from laboratory investigations in secondary science , 1999 .

[41]  Vaughan Prain,et al.  Students' Perceptions of Writing for Learning in Secondary School Science. , 1999 .

[42]  R. Duschl,et al.  "Doing the Lesson" or "Doing Science": Argument in High School Genetics , 2000 .

[43]  D. Kuhn.  THE SKILLS OF ARGUMENT , 2008, Education for Thinking.

[44]  Shirley Simon,et al.  Enhancing the quality of argumentation in school science , 2004 .

[45]  Jonathan Osborne,et al.  Language and Literacy in Science Education , 2001 .

[46]  J. Shea.  National Science Education Standards , 1995 .

[47]  M. Linn,et al.  Scientific arguments as learning artifacts: designing for learning from the web with KIE , 2000 .