The research reported in this paper focussed on the design of learning environments that support the teaching and learning of argumentation in a scientific context. The research took place over two years between 1999 and 2001 in junior high schools in the greater London area. The research was conducted in two phases. In the first developmental phase, working with a group of 12 science teachers, the main emphasis was to develop sets of materials and strategies to support argumentation in the classroom and to assess teachers‘ development with teaching argumentation. Data were collected by videoing and audio recording the teachers attempts to implement these lessons at the beginning and end of the year. During this phase, analytical tools for evaluating the quality of argumentation were developed based on Toulmin‘s argument pattern. Analysis of the data shows that there was significant development in the majority of teachers use of argumentation across the year. Results indicate that the pattern of use of argumentation is teacher specific, as is the nature of the change. In the second phase of the project, teachers taught the experimental groups a minimum of nine lessons which involved socioscientific or scientific argumentation. In addition, these teachers taught similar lessons to a control group at the beginning and end of the year. Here the emphasis lay on assessing the progression in student capabilities with argumentation. Hence data were collected from several lessons of two groups of students engaging in argumentation. Using a framework for evaluating the nature of the discourse and its quality, the findings show that there was an improvement in the quality of students‘ argumentation. In addition, the research offers methodological developments for work in this field.

http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/28363/mod_resource/content/1/Enhancing%20the%20Quality%20of%20Argumentation%20in%20School%20Science.pdf

Enhancing the quality of argumentation in school science

Socioscientific issues encompass social dilemmas with conceptual or technological links to science. The process of resolving these issues is best characterized by informal reasoning which describes the generation and evaluation of positions in response to complex situations. This article presents a critical review of research related to informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues. The findings reviewed address (a) socioscientific argumentation; (b) relationships between nature of science conceptualizations and socioscientific decision making; (c) the evaluation of information pertaining to socioscientific issues, including student ideas about what counts as evidence; and (d) the influence of an individual's conceptual understanding on his or her informal reasoning. This synthesis of the current state of socioscientific issue research provides a comprehensive framework from which future research can be motivated and decisions about the design and implementation of socioscientific curricula can be made. The implications for future research and classroom applications are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 513–536, 2004

Informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues: A critical review of research

The purpose of this article is to review recent research on self-regulated learning and discuss the implications of this research for science education. We draw on examples of self-regulated learning from the science education literature to summarise and illustrate effective instructional methods and the development of metacognitive understanding (Gunstone; 1999a; Rickey & Stacy, 2000; White & Mitchell, 1994). We also focus on the crucial role that metacognition plays in self-regulation (Baird & White, 1996; Nichols, Tippins, & Wieseman, 1997; White, 1998). We divide our discussion into two main parts. The first focuses on three components of selfregulated learning, including cognition, metacognition, and motivation. We relate these aspects of self-regulation to current practices in science education. The second section focuses on six general instructional strategies for improving self-regulation in the science classroom. We focus on the use of inquiry based learning, the role of collaborative support, strategy and problem solving instruction, the construction of mental models, the use of technology to support learning, and the role of personal beliefs such as self-efficacy and epistemological world views. These instructional strategies are selected because they reflect extensive research agendas over the last decade within the science education literature and are essential to metacognition and self-regulation (Butler & Winne, 1995; Gunstone, 1999b).

Promoting Self-Regulation in Science Education: Metacognition as Part of a Broader Perspective on Learning

Informal science is a burgeoning field that operates across a broad range of venues and envisages learning outcomes for individuals, schools, families, and society. The evidence base that describes informal science, its promise, and effects is informed by a range of disciplines and perspectives, including field-based research, visitor studies, and psychological and anthropological studies of learning. Learning Science in Informal Environments draws together disparate literatures, synthesizes the state of knowledge, and articulates a common framework for the next generation of research on learning science in informal environments across a life span. Contributors include recognized experts in a range of disciplines--research and evaluation, exhibit designers, program developers, and educators. They also have experience in a range of settings--museums, after-school programs, science and technology centers, media enterprises, aquariums, zoos, state parks, and botanical gardens. Learning Science in Informal Environments is an invaluable guide for program and exhibit designers, evaluators, staff of science-rich informal learning institutions and community-based organizations, scientists interested in educational outreach, federal science agency education staff, and K-12 science educators.

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Learning science in informal environments : people, places, and pursuits

This meta-analysis summarizes teaching effectiveness studies of the past decade and investigates the role of theory and research design in disentangling results. Compared to past analyses based on the process–product model, a framework based on cognitive models of teaching and learning proved useful in analyzing studies and accounting for variations in effect sizes. Although the effects of teaching on student learning were diverse and complex, they were fairly systematic. The authors found the largest effects for domainspecific components of teaching—teaching most proximal to executive processes of learning. By taking into account research design, the authors further disentangled meta-analytic findings. For example, domain-specific teaching components were mainly studied with quasi-experimental or experimental designs. Finally, correlational survey studies dominated teaching effectiveness studies in the past decade but proved to be more distal from the teaching–learning process.

Teaching Effectiveness Research in the Past Decade: The Role of Theory and Research Design in Disentangling Meta-Analysis Results

This study examined the criteria that middle school students, nonscientist adults, technicians, and scientists used to rate the validity of conclusions drawn by hypothetical students from a set of evidence. The groups' criteria for evaluating conclusions were considered to be dimensions of their epistemological frameworks regarding how knowledge claims are justified, and as such are integral to their scientific reasoning. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that the responses of students and nonscientists differed from the responses of technicians and scientists, with the major difference being the groups' relative emphasis on criteria of empirical consistency or plausibility of the conclusions. We argue that the sources of the groups' differing epistemic criteria rest in their different spheres of cultural practice, and explore implications of this perspective for science teaching and learning. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 663–687, 2001

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Comparing the Epistemological Underpinnings of Students' and Scientists' Reasoning about Conclusions.

The objective of this study was to explore the ideas and reasoning students use to make a collaborative environmental management decision. Eight groups of 8th-grade students (n = 24) considered ecological and economic information about an invasive aquatic species to make a management recommendation. In addition to discussing the exact information they were given, the groups made a variety of interpretations, elaborations, and inferences concerning ecological structure and dynamics and practical aspects of the management scenario. Value judgments and concerns with uncertainty also appeared in students' discussions, to differing degrees. The students' discussions were compared with scientists' guidelines for making environmental management decisions, and with one expert's analysis of the particular management scenario the students considered. A major finding was that whereas across groups students touched on all of the themes that scientists consider to be important for making environmental management decisions, within most groups students focused more narrowly on particular themes, giving cursory treatment to other dimensions of the problem. The results point to a need to foster students' ecological background knowledge and integrative, systems thinking skills for making principled decisions about complex environmental issues. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 341–368, 2002

Small Groups' Ecological Reasoning While Making an Environmental Management Decision.

This study addressed the question of how to increase students' competencies for regulating their co-construction of knowledge when tackling complex collaborative learning tasks which are increasingly emphasized as a dimension of educational reform. An intervention stressing the metacognitive, regulatory, and strategic aspects of knowledge co-construction, called Thinking Aloud Together, was embedded within a 12-week science unit on building mental models of the nature of matter. Four classes of eighth graders received the intervention, and four served as control groups for quantitative analyses. In addition, the interactions of 24 students in eight focal groups were profiled qualitatively, and 12 of those students were interviewed twice. Students who received the intervention gained in metacognitive knowledge about collaborative reasoning and ability to articulate their collaborative reasoning processes in comparison to students in control classrooms, as hypothesized. However, the treatment and control students did not differ either in their abilities to apply their conceptual knowledge or in their on-line collaborative reasoning behaviors in ways that were attributable to the intervention. Thus, there was a gap between students' metacognitive knowledge about collaborative cognition and their use of collaborative reasoning skills. Several reasons for this result are explored, as are patterns relating students' outcomes to their perspectives on learning science. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 1085–1109, 1999.

Thinking Aloud Together: A Test of an Intervention to Foster Students' Collaborative Scientific Reasoning

This study addresses the question of how to represent students' thinking about a complex topic in a way that is most useful to guide curriculum development, instructional decisions, and assessment of student learning. The development of a coding scheme that represents students' ideas along two dimensions, compatibility with expert propositions and elaboration of ideas, is described and applied to the analysis of interviews with four pairs of urban fifth- and sixth-grade students. Results indicate that decomposition is a linchpin concept for building an understanding of nutrient cycling, and that ideas which relate to children's natural framework theories provide a generative foundation for further learning. Finally, it is suggested that the elaboration dimension of the bidimensional coding scheme provides an indication of students' possession of valuable scientific habits of mind. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Representing students' thinking about nutrient cycling in ecosystems: bidimensional coding of a complex topic

Publisher Summary A major goal of education is to help students think effectively with the knowledge they have. In science classrooms, this goal becomes manifest by engaging students in scientific reasoning. The emphasis on thinking and reasoning processes in assessments in science classrooms communicates messages about the nature of science. Knowledge and thinking are inextricably linked. A well-structured knowledge base can sustain higher levels of reasoning than poorly structured knowledge. Students use reasoning processes whenever they work to make sense of things while learning. Reasoning can occur in science classes while students listen to a lecture, read a text, do labs, run computer simulations, search library or Internet sources, participate in debates, do applied projects, prepare and give public exhibitions of their work, and so on. Verbal data gathered in interactive settings can provide a useful, but undertapped source of information about students' reasoning as they do science. Scientific reasoning fundamentally is a dialogic process, whether undertaken independently or with others. Using interactive protocols to assess students' reasoning can be quite time consuming and so, it can be especially challenging for teachers who must fit assessment activities into days filled with many other responsibilities. One practical suggestion is to hand over responsibility for interactive reasoning assessments largely to students.

Kathleen Hogan

Papers

Comparing the Epistemological Underpinnings of Students' and Scientists' Reasoning about Conclusions.

Small Groups' Ecological Reasoning While Making an Environmental Management Decision.

Thinking Aloud Together: A Test of an Intervention to Foster Students' Collaborative Scientific Reasoning

Representing students' thinking about nutrient cycling in ecosystems: bidimensional coding of a complex topic

Dialogue as Data: Assessing Students' Scientific Reasoning with Interactive Protocols