STRAND 7 Discourse and Argumentation in Science

PART 7: STRAND 7 Discourse and Argumentation in Science Education Co-editors: Maria Andrée & Jouni Viiri

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CONTENTS Chapter 102

Title & Authors Introduction

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Maria Andrée & Jouni Viiri 103

Skills that Pre-Service Primary Teachers’ Consider Important in Argumentation Approach

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Carolina Martín-Gámez, Teresa Prieto & María del Carmen Acebal 104

Capacity of Evaluation of Preservice Elementary Science Teachers in an 920 Argumentation Task Daniel Cebrián-Robles, Antonio Joaquín Franco-Mariscal & Ángel Blanco-López

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Dialogic Teaching to Establish Consensus in Argumentation

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Ying-Chih Chen & Xue Qiao 106

Strategies and Resources for a Fifth-Grade Science Teacher's Uncertainty Management in Argumentation

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Xue Qiao & Ying-Chih Chen 107

Some Conceptions About Argumentation of In-Service Science Teachers in Córdoba (Argentina)

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Leticia Garcia Romano, María Eugenia Condat, Maricel Occelli, Marina Masullo, & Nora Valeiras 108

Teacher Beliefs About Argumentation in Japanese In-Service Teachers

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Tomokazu Yamamoto & Shinichi Kamiyama 109

Tracing Students' Quality of Argumentation in Simulated Parliament Activities

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Zacharoula Smyrnaiou, Evangelia Petropoulou, Eleni Georgakopoulou & Menelaos Sotiriou 110

Testing Hypotheses in Inquiry-Based Science Education - Does Scaffolding Foster Evidence-Based Reasoning in Primary Science Teaching?

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Hanna Grim, Christin Robisc & Kornelia Möller 111

Critical Thinking in German-Speaking Biology Curricula of Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland Susanne Rafolt, Suzanne Kapelari & Kerstin Kremer

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112

An Investigation in to Main Goals of STEM Outreach Programmes in Ireland

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Laurie Ryan, Denise Croker, Peter Childs & Sarah Hayes 113

Visitor Participation: An Instrument for Enhancing Scientific Literacy

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Wiebke Rössig, Bianca Herlo, Alexandra Moormann, Julia Diekämper, Lisa Jahn & Astrid Faber 114

Students' Critique of Epistemic Decisions in Scientific Inquiry

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Yann Shiou Ong, Richard A. Duschl, & Julia D. Plummer 115

Inquiry as a Vehicle to Promote the Use of Scientific Language

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Naomi Attard Borg & Suzanne Gatt 116

Accessing Science Through Classroom Talk When Adopting a CLIL Approach

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Laura Tagnin, Máire Ní Ríordáin & Mary Fleming 117

Shifting to Student-Centered Science Inquiry: Investigating Classroom Talk

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Carol Rees, Raymond Mba & Michael Roth 118

ALCESTE Software Usage in the Identification of Speeches Found in Written Texts About The Digestive System Michele D. F. Medeiros, Anne C. Freitas, Marcelo T. Motokane, Marcelo Pereira, Bruce S. P. de Freitas & Rafael Gil de Castro

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STRAND 7: INTRODUCTION DISCOURSE AND ARGUMENTATION IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Strand 7 Discourse and argumentation in science education includes research on the understanding, supporting and promoting use of evidence and argumentation discourse in science education. The strand also includes research on scientific practices related to knowledge evaluation and communication, supporting the development of critical thinking, discourse analysis, meaning making in science classrooms and talking and writing science in the classroom. In this E-proceedings there are sixteen contributions to strand 7 Discourse and argumentation in science education. Most of them concern different aspects of argumentation. Some of them are more focussed on the design of teaching and interactional analyses of classroom talk. In common is that all research is highly relevant to the field of research as well as for advancing science teaching practices. The combined picture of the research is that there are lessons to be learnt from across the world as well as across the educational system. For example, in comparing how teachers struggle to incorporate argumentation in science education teaching in different countries, we find that the struggles share some characteristics but is to some extent slightly different in different educational contexts. A common conclusion, however, is that teacher education needs to be research-based and designed to include argumentation. A thematic overview of the papers on discourse and argumentation Incorporating argumentation as part of the professional repertoire of teachers – This is a major theme in the contributions to this proceeding. Martín-Gámez, Prieto and Acebal investigated skills pre-service primary teachers consider important for them in order to be able to support argumentation in science classrooms and what skills they believe students can develop when they participate in science classroom argumentation. Cebrián-Robles, Franco-Mariscal and Blanco-López have in a similar vein studied the capacity of pre-service primary school teachers to evaluate argumentation. Their results show that teachers struggle the most to identify and evaluate evidence and justification. Both studies indicate that there is a need for designing specific training programs to support becoming primary school science teachers in developing their capacity to work with and include argumentation practices in science education. Chen and Qiao contributes to the proceedings with two studies focussing the interactional processes of science argumentation classroom practices in the US. Chen and Qiao conducted a qualitative interactional analyses on how a fifth-grade teacher framed dialogic teaching to establish consensus. In the study “Strategies and resources for a fifth-grade science teacher’s uncertainty management in argumentation”, Qiao and Chen conceptualize the teacher-student interactions in a science classroom as a process of uncertainty management. Both studies provide insights into how teachers may embrace uncertainty as part of argumentation in science classroom practices through dialogic moves e.g., asking questions to challenge students’ arguments, inviting more students to join the critique process.

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Two papers focus on in-service teacher training teachers’ conceptions or beliefs concerning argumentation. In the paper “Some conceptions about argumentation of in-service science teachers in Córdoba (Argentina)” Romano, Condat, Occelli, Masullo and Vleiras studied inservice secondary science teachers’ conceptions about argumentation. In their study they characterize two points of conflict between the conceptions of argumentation and the teaching practices implemented. When defining argumentation, teachers would underline the idea of providing evidence, and de-emphasize the rhetorical components. In their teaching practices, however, they would emphazise the role of the debate. Also, the Argentinian teachers associated argumentation mainly with the idea of submitting ”evidence that proves knowledge”, but the most frequently used resources in classes were books and films. In other word, the teachers stressed the epistemic dimension of argumentation and its potential for critical thinking but omitted aspects related to the scientific practices and the nature of science. The study of Yamamoto and Kamiyama on Japanese teachers’ beliefs about argumentation is a quantitative study showing that in-service teachers in Japan are largely positive in relation to the value of and need for argumentation instruction but that the majority were not fully confident in their own abilities to provide effective instruction concerning argumentation. Designing science education practices for engagement in argumentation – This theme concerns the design of formal and informal educational practices for engagement in argumentation. Smyrnaiou, Petropoulou, Georgakopoulou and Sotiriou report on the use of Toulmin’s Argument Pattern (TAP) approach as a tool for tracing the quality of argumentation in science teaching and exploring its effective application in enhancing students’ cognitive knowledge. Their findings show that there was significant improvement in the quality of students' argumentation and cognitive development regarding their critical approach to scientific concepts. Grimm, Robisch and Möller have investigated the potentials of working with the testing of hypotheses as part of inquiry-based science education in German primary school for fostering evidence-based reasoning. Their results point to the possibility for successfully promoting evidence-based reasoning in primary science education. Argumentation in curricula and educational policy – In the paper “Is there anything such as alternative facts: critical thinking in biology curricula”, Rafolt, Kremer and Kapelari analysed how German, Swiss and Austrian life science curricula address issues of critical thinking as an educational objective. Results show that biology curricula neither mention the term “critical thinking” explicitly, nor do they provide a clear definition of the concept or teaching instructions. Science education research needs to put more emphasis on finding out how essential research outcomes find their way into classroom teaching. Two contributions concern the aims and goals of informal science education practices and point to that aims of critical reasoning and argumentation may also be of major importance in informal practices. Ryan, Croker, Childs and Hayes investigated the main goals of STEM outreach programmes in Ireland. Their results point to that there is a wide variety of formats, goals and pedagogies used when designing outreach programmes for schools with varying goals for the outreach providers in Ireland. Rössig, Herlo, Moormann, Diekämper, Jahn and Faber report on the project ‘Visitor participation at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin’ where they have used a co-design-process to develop new participatory tools and strategies together with staff members and visitors. The outcome of the co-design-process pointed towards integrating multiple perspectives into 911

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research and exhibitions and debating actual social problems related to scientific work at the museum and an added emphasis to the promotion of science literacy and critical thinking. Quality in argumentation – This is a theme where researchers seek to advance the discussion of how the quality in argumentation is perceived in research and science educational practices. Based on a study of an intervention focused on critiquing the work of peers, Ong, Duschl and Plummer stress the importance to shift from a focus on argumentation frameworks (e.g., TAP) towards a consideration of epistemic criteria used by the scientific community. Interpreting scientific argumentation as practice, implies that student participation in processes of argumentation and critique becomes more important than the use of argumentation frameworks. They assume that this could support students in the development of a more robust critical stance of critiquing their own work. They also found that the way teachers interact with students plays an important role in students’ engagement with epistemic tasks. Analysis of classroom interaction/discourse – this theme is slightly different from the above themes where argumentation is focussed as part of science education curricula. This theme concerns detailed analyses of interaction in different types of classroom practices. Borg and Gatt report on an action research study where they examine whether adopting inquiry-based learning strategies in the Physics classrooms may contribute to more proficient use of scientific language appropriately among bilingual students in Malta. Their study shows how focus on language during inquiry has the potential to promote both understanding as well as students’ proficiency in talking science. Tagnin, Ríordáin and Fleming report on a study on science learning in a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) classroom setting at upper secondary level. Their study focusses on what language practices emerged and what opportunities for learning are established. The findings point to that some of these practices, such as language focus, code-switching and exploratory talk provide linguistically challenging situations may contribute to generating opportunities beneficial for science learning. An additional key finding was the dominance of an authoritative communicative approach to classroom talk potentially hinders student learning. In a similar vein, Rees, Mba and Roth report on a project seeking to support the transition to a more student-centred approach to scientific inquiry. In this study they analysed teacher-student interactions using conversation analysis of video recordings that were collected at intervals throughout a period of one year. The results point to three prominent discourse patterns, two teacher-centred and one more student-centred pattern. The findings suggest that the student-centred discourse pattern became more common as the class transitioned to more student-centred scientific inquiry and the authors suggest that the co-teaching format could be of value to teachers wishing to make a shift to a more student-centered teaching practice. Linguistical analyses of student texts – this last theme is represented by only one contribution – that of Medeiros, Freitas, Motokane, Pereira, de Freitas and de Castro. Medeiros and her colleagues argue that incorporation of text production in science teaching is an action that may help students in understanding the specificities of scientific discourse and to grasp scientific culture. In their study they seek to analyse the effectiveness of actions that promotes scientific writing in elementary school science education by using a specific software for statistical analysis of repetitions and successions of words. The use of the software made it possible to 912

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analyse the discourse produced by the students after the application of a specifically designed teaching sequence. The findings indicate that the student texts produced mirror a scientific discourse. Maria Andrée and Jouni Viiri

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SKILLS THAT PRE-SERVICE PRIMARY TEACHERS’ CONSIDER IMPORTANT IN ARGUMENTATION APPROACH Carolina Martín-Gámez, Teresa Prieto and María del Carmen Acebal University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain Argumentation as a form of scientific discourse is a powerful tool that allows students questioning, justifying, and evaluating their and others’ claims. In science education, transmissive teaching predominates and this leads to difficulties in students’ construction of arguments and highlights limitations in teachers' pedagogical abilities in the management of this type of activities. Also, teachers' beliefs and perceptions have a big influence in the way they teach. Thus, the purpose has been to investigate pre-service primary teachers’ beliefs of what would be the skills they need as a core to support argumentation in science classrooms, and what skills students can develop when participate in science lessons based in argumentation. Results show that Pre-service Teachers of Primary pay little attention to the skills they will need in order to manage different methodological strategies as debate, pair work or pair discussion, that support the argumentation approach. Moreover, they lack of awareness about what is a good argument and its components, besides scientific knowledge. These results are significant because they indicate a need in designing specific training programs to support teachers in acquiring knowledge and skills about argumentation. Keywords: argumentation, pre-service primary teachers, skills.

INTRODUCTION Contemporary science education places a great emphasis on scientific literacy. Driver, Newton & Osborne (2000) and Sadler (2006) highlight the importance of students’ active participation in discourse in a science classroom to develop of their scientific literacy. This means introducing in science teaching some of the processes and situations that occur in the social context, which favor the involvement of students in organizational processes of thinking, communicating ideas, adopting positions, and promote their confidence in the arguments supporting their own choices while developing respect for others (Kolstø, 2001; Ratcliffe and Grace, 2003). Argumentation is a form of scientific discourse (Erduran & Jimenez-Aleixandre, 2012; Jimenez-Aleixandre, Rodriguez & Duschl, 2000; Von Aufschnaiter, Erduran, Osborne, & Simon, 2008) and a powerful tool that allows students questioning, justifying, and evaluating their and others’ claims (Duschl & Osborne, 2002; Erduran, Dilek & Yakmaci-Guzel, 2006). However, in science education, transmissive teaching predominates, offering few opportunities for students to engage in dialogic argumentation (Duschl & Osborne, 2002). This leads to difficulties in students’ construction of arguments (Duschl & Osborne, 2002; Newton, Driver & Osborne, 1999) and highlights limitations in teachers' pedagogical abilities in the management of this type of activities (Martin-Gámez & Erduran, 2016; Newton, Driver & Osborne, 1999).

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On the other hand, researches show that teachers' beliefs and perceptions have a big influence in the way they teach (Porlán et al., 2010). For these reasons, it is necessary to identify their thoughts on argumentation to design specific programs of teacher training in order to promote the knowledge and awareness they need to modify their beliefs.

METHODOLOGY Sample and research questions The participants of this study have been 72 pre-service Primary teachers at a Spanish university. The group consisted of 50 women and 22 men that were organized in 15 work groups from 4 to 6 members. Their ages varied from 43 to 19 years old. These students were studying the third course of the Grade of Primary Teachers and until this course, they had only had some exposure to science education in a Practicum period during three weeks. The main purpose has been to investigate the Primary teachers’ perceptions about what would be the skills they need as a core to support argumentation in science classrooms. Specifically, we want to answer the following research questions: 

What skills do they think are fundamental in conducting science lessons based in argumentation?



What skills do they think students can develop when they participate in science lessons based in argumentation?

An activity was proposed to the work groups at the beginning of the subject “Science Education” module of the first semester when they still hadn't got any contact with the role of discourse and argumentation in the science classroom. Activity The activity was developed to investigate the pre-service primary teachers’ perceptions about skills would be need to support argumentation in science classrooms and consists in reflecting about a Primary activity based in argumentation (Appendix A) that was adapted of the PED (2013). Its purpose was to set a context for participants to reflect about: a) why argument is important in teaching science; b) skills needed to conduct lessons based in argumentation; c) what techniques and resources could support argumentation. After reading it, each work group should think over and reach a consensus in their answers to the following questions: Q1.

Would you use such strategies in your future lessons? Why?

Q2.

Do you think this kind of lesson is common in the Primary school? If not, why?

Q3.

What skills are mainly required to use this approach?

Q4.

What knowledge is mainly required to use this approach?

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Data analysis approach A qualitative approach was applied with the objective of systematically describing the meaning of the written Pre-service Primary Teachers’ responses (Schreirer, 2012). The process began with every author of this work making an individual analysis of the data, in order to determine emergent aspects (Creswell, 1998). The results of each one were compared and framed in the work of Osborne, Erduran & Simon (2004). Then, a consensus was reached to describe a set of non-excluding categories to each question.

RESULTS The analysis shows that 11 of work groups would use this kind of activities in their science classrooms. Their reasons are collected in Table 1. Only one of the groups wouldn’t use argumentation activities because they consider that this kind of activities wouldn't motivate the students. The others 3 groups would use them depending on cognitive level of students. Table 1. Categories and frequencies in affirmative answers Q1. Categories To encourage questioning of ideas To encourage understanding of scientific knowledge To encourage ideas’ justification To encourage inquiry’ skills To allow to debates in classroom

Frequency 9 3 2 4 1

As it shows on Table 2, after their Practicum period, all the work groups, except one, consider that these kind of activities are infrequent in Primary (Q2) because at science classroom predominates memory learning (7 groups), the kind of textbooks activities (6 groups) or because these activities consume a lot of time classroom (2 groups). Table 2. Categories and frequencies in answers Q2. Categories Predomination of memory learning Predomination of textbooks activities Argumentation activities consume a lot of time classroom

Frequency 7 6 2

Table 3 presents the frequencies of the work groups’ answer to question 3 (Q3). Eight groups mention only one teachers’ skill: skill to transmit scientific knowledge or skill to encourage the participation. The other 7 groups propose a minimum of 2 or 3 skills, highlighting the one of encouraging reflection and participation. Table 3. Categories and frequencies in answers Q3. Categories Skill to transmit scientific knowledge Skill to arouse interests Skill to encourage participation Skill to encourage argumentation Skill to encourage reflection

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Frequency 5 4 7 4 6

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On the other hand, answers to question 4 (Q4) show that a majority of groups (12) think that teachers only need scientific knowledge to use argumentation approach. The knowledge about components of a good argument and about methodological strategies to encourage argumentation are only added by 3 work groups (Table 4). Table 4. Categories and frequencies in answers Q4. Categories Scientific knowledge Components of a good argument Methodological strategies

Frequency 15 2 2

CONCLUSIONS The results presented, that focus on Pre-service Teachers of Primary’s perceptions about skills could be developed in students and about skills would be need to support argumentation in science classrooms, are a part of a wide study. The results show that most of these Pre-service Primary Teachers relate the argumentation approach to develop students’ skills of questioning of ideas. However, they don’t consider that this kind of approach will help students to develop inquiry skills and ideas justification. In addition, no one manifest that it could be a good way to promote understanding of scientific knowledge and students' learning to evaluate their own and the others ideas (Erduran, Dilek & Yakmaci-Guzel, 2006). Furthermore, results suggest that participants think that the argumentation approach in Primary science classroom is not frequent because teachers encourage memory learning and textbooks activities. In no case they mention the specific formation that teachers should have to use this kind of approach (Newton Driver, & Osborne, 1999). So, it seems that Pre-service Teachers of Primary don’t consider that teachers need acquire some skills to manage different methodological strategies as debate, pair work or pair discussion, among others, that support the argumentation approach. Moreover, data point out that they are not aware that this approach needs also the knowledge about what is a good argument and its components, besides scientific knowledge. The importance of identifying these perceptions lies in the influence they may have on the future teaching practices (Porlán and Martín del Pozo, 2004). Specifically, this ignorance could be translated into a teaching-learning approach in the science classroom that does not empower future students to develop these processes that are so necessary for the creation of solid and quality arguments, and thus in against what would correspond to a good way to promote the understanding of scientific knowledge (Erduran, Dilek and Yakmaci-Guzel, 2006; JiménezAleixandre, 2010). So, these results are significant because they indicate the need in designing specific training programs to support teachers in acquiring knowledge and skills about argumentation. Then, Primary Teachers will be able to help to their future students to construct good arguments in Science Education.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This study is part of the project “La argumentacıón como estrategıa metodológıca para el desarrollo de competencıas profesıonales docentes.” [Argumentation as a methodological strategy for the

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development of professional teacher competences] (PIE15-74) funded by the University of Málaga in the assembly of 2015-2017.

REFERENCES Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. London: Sage. Driver, R., Newton, P., & Osborne, J. (2000). Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms. Science Education, 84, 287-312. Duschl, R. A., & Osborne, J. (2002). Supporting and promoting argumentation discourse in science education. Studies in Science Education, 38, 39-72. Erduran., S., & Jimenez-Aleixandre, J. M. (2012). Research on argumentation in science education in Europe. In, D. Jorde, & J. Dillon (Eds.), Science Education Research and Practice in Europe: Retrospective and Prospective, pp. 253-289. Sense Publishers. Erduran S., Dilek A., & Yakmaci-Guzel, B. (2006). Learning to teach argumentation: Case studies of pre-service secondary science teachers. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2(2), 1-14. Jimenez-Aleixandre, M., Rodriguez, A., & Duschl, R. (2000). “Doing the lesson” or “doing science”: Argument in high school genetics. Science Education, 84(6), 757-792. Kolstø, S. D. (2001). Scientific literacy for citizenship: Tools for dealing with the science dimension of controversial socio-scientific issues. Science Education, 85, 291-310. Martin-Gámez, C., & Erduran, S. (2016). Pre-service Primary Teachers’ perceptions and understanding of argumentation in science. In J. Lavonen, K. Juuti, J. Lampiselkä, A. Uitto & K. Hahl (Eds.), Electronic Proceedings of the ESERA 2015 Conference. Science education research: Engaging learners for a sustainable future, Part 7 (co-ed. M. Andrée & M. P. Jimenez-Aleixandre), (pp. 1018-1023). Helsinki, Finland: University of Helsinki. Newton, P., Driver, R., & Osborne, J. (1999). The place of argumentation in the pedagogy of school science. International Journal of Science Education, 21(5), 553-576. PED. (2013). Cuadernillos pruebas de evaluación de diagnóstico para Educación Primaria. [Books of diagnostic evaluation test to Primary Education]. Taken of http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/educacion/agaeve/biblioteca-cuadernillos-ped.html [Consulted 15/01/2016]. Osborne, J., Erduran, S., & Simon, S. (2004). Ideas, Evidence & Arguments. London: King’s College London. Porlán, R., & Martín del Pozo, R. (2004). The conceptions of inservice and prospective Primary school teachers about the teaching and learning of science. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 15, 39-62. Porlán, R., Martín del Pozo, R., Rivero, A., Harres, J., Azcárate, P., & Pizzato, M. (2010). El cambio del profesorado de ciencias I: marco teórico y formativo [The change of science teachers I: theoretical framework]. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 28(1), 31-46. Ratcliffe, M., & Grace M. (2003). Science Education for Citizenship: Teaching Socio-Scientific Issues. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Sadler, T. D. (2006). Promoting discourse and argumentation in science teacher education. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 17, 323-346. Von Aufschnaiter, C., Erduran, S., Osborne, J., & Simon, S. (2008). Arguing to learn and learning to argue: Case studies of how students' argumentation relates to their scientific knowledge. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(1), 101-131. Schreirer, M. (2012) Qualitative content analysis in practice. Londres: Sage.

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APPENDIX A Primary activity based in argumentation (adapted of PED, 2013) 1. Read this real new:

2. What consequences would a big change in the axis of rotation of the Earth? Observe the pictures, and then answer the questions below.

3. If the axis of rotation of the earth was vertical, 

Do you think the temperature would be the same in the both hemispheres?



Why do you think that?



Imagine that Alvaro and Claudia are discussing about what would happen if the situation was the second pictures. Alvaro say “There would be the same four seasons because the seasons only depends on the translation movement of the earth”. Do you agree with Alvaro?



Why?

Using the pieces of evidence given to you try to rewrite Alvaro’s argument so it is more convincing (Be careful, not all information is necessary useful). Follow the next diagram: Alvaro's Improved Argument I am agree/disagree with Alvaro because…. Another reason is that ……. Finally, I think that…….. Additional Evidence As the axis of the Earth is tilted, in a hemisphere the temperatures are somewhat higher than in another. As the axis of the Earth is tilted, there are four seasons and in some countries is summer and in others is winter. In summer, the day is longer than in winter. As the axis of the Earth is tilted, in each hemisphere there is a cold zone, temperate zone and hot zone. 919

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CAPACITY OF EVALUATION OF PRESERVICE ELEMENTARY SCIENCE TEACHERS IN AN ARGUMENTATION TASK Daniel Cebrián-Robles, Antonio Joaquín Franco-Mariscal and Ángel Blanco-López Universidad de Málaga, Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales, Málaga, Spain The growing importance of argumentation in science education must also be accompanied by examples showing both teachers in service and trainee-teachers how to implement and assess argumentation in class. In this line, this study is framed within a broader research study on argumentation competency, which involves the participation of Preservice Elementary Science Teachers (PESTs) from 3rd year of the Primary Education Teaching Degree from the University of Malaga (Malaga, Spain). Specifically, this paper shows an argumentation task that involves the participation of 98 Spanish PESTs, through production and peer assessment, in order for them to internalise the criteria of a good argument, thus improving their argumentation skills. The set task is drawn from a PISA 2006 test, which addresses the possibility of reducing the hardness of a lipstick by changing its composition. PESTs are required to conduct peer assessment, which will then be compared to teacher assessment, in order to analyse the ability of the former to identify and evaluate the elements of an argument. Results show different levels of capacity for analysis and evaluation of argumentation by PESTs. In particular, they struggle the most to identify and evaluate evidence and justification. Likewise, the peer assessment-teacher assessment comparison reveals an overestimation by PESTs in relation to evidence and justification. Keywords: argumentation, preservice elementary science teachers, peer assessment.

INTRODUCTION Nowadays, argumentation is considered one of the main scientific practices, thus a key element in science teaching (Duschl & Osborne, 2002; Erduran & Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2008; McNeill & Pimentel, 2010). McNeil & Knight (2013) consider it necessary to explicitly work out with future pre-service teachers and teachers in service the best way to address argumentation in class. De Sá Ibraim & Justi (2016) have recently contributed a work approach in order to improve the argumentation knowledge of pre-service teachers, so that, they can arrange and lead the teaching based on argumentation (De Sá Ibraim & Justi, 2016; Karışan, Tüzün, & Zeidler, 2017; Yaman, 2017). Different authors agree that, in order to understand and internalise the criteria for a good argument, one need to practice such criteria, by producing arguments and assessing those of others (Osborne et al., 2016). These activities should raise daily situations in appropriate contexts that allow understanding and using the discourse and scientific models, while making it possible by arguing science-related situations. These allow giving solutions and encourage the debates about authentic and interesting problems for the students (Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2002; Jiménez-Aleixandre, Rodríguez, & Duschl, 2000).

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In this way, the tasks presented to students in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) offer opportunities to address these contexts and develop diverse competences in young people (OECD, 2016). The ability to argue is one of the scientific competences evaluated (Bybee & McCrae, 2011). Tsai (2015) showed that one way to improve scientific competence is using online argumentation, and so to improve the score in PISA. His study took as a starting point some activities proposed in PISA to create the questions that are used to measure the argumentative capacity, since it is intended that pre-service teachers are prepared to develop these competences in adolescents. In order to design and evaluate argumentative activities, an appropriate model for understanding argumentation is needed being the Toulmin model (1958) the most suitable model for explaining the structure of an argument. This model has been simplified by JiménezAleixandre (2010) to facilitate the understanding of the essential elements that a good argument must have: evidence (E), justification (J) and conclusions (C). E is understood as the evidences necessary to support an affirmation of a certain C. J allows explaining the relationship between these E and C, while C must allow knowing the opinion and the content on a certain aspect. A number of research studies prove that students learn to assess when they actually assess to learn (Boud, Cohen, & Sampson, 1999; Cebrián-Robles, Serrano-Angulo, & Cebrián-de-laSerna, 2014). Boud et al. (1999) made some recommendations to conduct peer-assessments and thus achieve greater success in student learning. It is highlighted the next recommendations: the peer-assessment should be done either when the activity gives an extra motivation for the students in front of a traditional methodology or when it should not have more problems than the value that it contributes. In addition, peer-assessment and the activities should be designed in a careful manner so that assessment is not devalued, for instance, by evaluating many aspects of a single task. In general, the formative assessment significantly improves student scores once the course is finished (Black, Harrison, & Lee, 2003). Other studies argue that group work where each student can see and evaluate the argumentation of the other classmates, allows improving the quality of the arguments over time (Chin & Osborne, 2010; Evagorou & Osborne, 2013). In short, it is assumed that teaching the argumentation and assessment, the pre-service teachers are able to identify in the statement of an activity the essential elements of an argument and so to build an instrument to evaluate the arguments. For the assessment of activities some authors use questionnaires to assess the elements of an argument (Clark & Sampson, 2008), while others prefer rubrics (Deng & Wang, 2017; Osana & Seymour, 2004; Özçinar, 2015). Considering the above ideas, this study focuses on analysing the difficulties encountered by Pre-service Elementary Science Teachers (PESTs) to assess peers’ arguments, and on comparing these assessments to those conducted by the teacher.

METHOD This study is framed within a broader research study on argumentation competency (Osborne et al., 2016), which involves the participation of 98 PESTs from 3rd year of the Primary Education Teaching Degree from the University of Malaga (Malaga, Spain). Students belong to two different, randomly chosen, groups. The study shows the results of one of the tasks 921

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performed during a training programme aimed at teaching students to argue (Cebrián-Robles, Franco-Mariscal, & Blanco-López, 2018). More specifically, the task is performed after introducing Toulmin’s model and the elements of a good argument, plus presenting several examples of tasks on argumentation and evaluation. In this study the assessment capacity implies on the one hand to identify the elements of an argument, that is, to differentiate which are the E, the J and the C in a certain argument and on the other hand to evaluate the quality of each of these elements. The set task poses PESTs the possibility of reducing the hardness of a lipstick by changing its composition. This task was adapted and translated to Spanish from a science test by PISA 2006 (OECD, 2006, p.153) to demand in the statement the construction of a complete argument. PISA considers that “the context of cosmetics has everyday relevance for students of this age group, although it could be expected that this task would generate more interest among females than males” (OECD, 2006, p.154). The task was: “The table below (Table 1) contains two different recipes for cosmetics you can make yourself. The lipstick is harder than the lip gloss, which is soft and creamy. In making the lip gloss and lipstick, oil and waxes are mixed together. The colouring substance and flavouring are then added (Table 1). Question: The lipstick made from this recipe is hard and not easy to use. How would you change the proportion of ingredients to make a softer lipstick? Justify your answer using evidences to support it.” Table 1. Information provided in the statement of the argumentative task about the hardness of lipstick (OECD, 2006).

It is expected that in the PESTS’ responses would include as E that "the lipstick is hard; lip gloss is soft and creamy; and the ingredients' differences between the two products". The desired J should express the following idea: "The difference between lipstick and lip gloss are the ingredients of wax (bee and palm) that in the lipstick is presented in a greater concentration. As the lipstick is harder than the lip gloss, the hardness can be reduced if we modify the amount of wax". And finally, C should be raised in terms of "It is possible to make the lipstick softer". A basic rubric was used as a starting point for the argument's assessment of the three essentials elements of a good argument. This rubric was written in a general way to be able to adapt to 922

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the assessment of different tasks. A specific rubric (Figure 1) was designed using the basic rubric for peer assessment and teacher assessment of PESTs in the specific case of the task about the hardness of a lipstick. The rubric shows different response levels for each element of an argument, based on a 1 to 4-5 scale, where level 4 for E, level 5 for J and level 5 for C are the most desirable levels.

Figure 1. Specific rubric to assess the task on “hardness of a lipstick”.

Once the task has been answered, PESTs have to anonymously and randomly assess the responses of two other peers, through the CoRubric electronic rubric collaborative platform (Cebrián-Robles, 2016). Figure 2 shows how the PESTs were working on the classes assessing argumentations with CoRubric.

Figure 2. Assessing with CoRubric in classes

The teacher also gives feedback to the PESTs through the individual assessment of each of them. The assessment involves identifying three elements in arguments (E, J and C) in their peers’ answers and use rubrics to assess the quality of each argument. Similarly, teachers participating in the training programme (two of the authors of this paper) are required to assess PESTs’ answers. To do so, they are to agree on the scores assigned to each answer. 923

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An example of a response that is not well argued given by a PEST assessed by the teacher and another PEST is shown in Figure 3. In the following figures C is shown with solid lines. J and E are indicated in dashed lines, and dashed lines and dots, respectively.

(Yes, modifying the wax of palm or bee but in a small amount not reaching 0.2g) Figure 3. PEST A710K's answer to the argumentation task. Teacher's assessment: E (level 1), J (level 1), C (level 5). Assessment of another PEST: E (level 2), J (level 2), C (level 3).

The teacher's assessment of the previous response granted a level 5 to C; and the lowest level (level 1) for E and J because of the PEST had not really used them in his argument. However, another PEST evaluated the same answer at level 3 of C (Despite the correct answer, C is scientifically inaccurate or contains errors. For instance, wrong terms have been used), and level 2 for J and E, thinking that despite having given them, they were inadequate. The example in Figure 4 corresponds to a well-argued answer given by another PEST and assessed by both the teacher and two other PESTs (peer-assessment) at the maximum levels of the rubric. The coincidence in the assessment of PESTs and teacher shows how the PEST A567P reached the highest levels of achievement in all cases. Thus, it is in level 5 of C, having adequately expressed it scientifically; at level 4 of E, by indicating the present evidence needed to support the C; and in level 5 of J, since it links the C exhaustively in a correct way with the E.

(It could be modified the recipe to make the lipstick softer since the only difference between the two recipes is the amount of wax that is added, giving two results of different "hardness". On the one hand, lip gloss contains much less wax than lipstick and it is much softer and creamier, on the other hand, to obtain a softer lipstick, it would reduce the amount of wax as long as it was superior to that used in the lip gloss.) Figure 4. PEST A567P’s answer to the argumentation task. Assessment of the teacher and another PEST: E (level 4), J (level 5), C (level 5).

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RESULTS Peer-assessment Table 2 shows the mean of PESTs (%) in each achievement level of E, J and C; based on peerassessment and teacher assessment of PESTs. Table 2. Response rates per achievement level for E, J and C; assessed by PESTs and teacher. Peer Assessment (PESTs) Achievement Level (%) 5 Evidence (E)

3

2

Mean 1

Achievement Level (%)

Mean

5

4

3

2

1

---

29.9

35.1

6.2

28.9

2.66/4

40.5 40.5 11.8

7.3

3.14/4

Justifications (J) 22.3 34.1 26.4 12.7

4.5

3.57/5

15.3 20.4

17.3

20.4

26.5

2.77/5

Conclusions (C) 39.1 33.6 21.8

4.1

1.4

4.05/5

68.4 20.4

7.1

4.1

0.0

4.53/5

9.5

4.4

28.0 23.5

19.8

10.2

18.4

Total

---

4

Teacher Assessment

20.5 36.1 29.5

PESTs assessed E and C responses in the two highest levels (81% of E in levels 3-4 and 72% of C in levels 4-5). As for J, the response rate concentrated at low levels (60.5% in levels 3-4). Rates found in the lowest level for E, J and C did not exceed 7.3% in any case. In the case of PESTs, it was observed that the highest concentration of responses was between levels 3 and 4 with a mean of 3.14 out of 4 for E. However, for J the levels ranged between 3 and 4 with a mean of 3.57 out of 5. And, the highest concentration of answers was between 4 and 5 with a mean of 4.05 out of 5 for C. These results differ somewhat from the assessment made by the teacher, in which case J was more identified on the first levels. This may be due to the difficulty that PESTs present to identify what the J for a good argument are. However, E and C were similarly identified by PESTs and teacher. Differences between peer-assessment and teacher assessment The differences among the level of achievement assessed by the teacher and the levels of achievement of the PESTs for each of the elements of an argument were obtained and analyzed in order to delve into the differences between the PESTs' peer evaluations and the teacher's evaluation. The different levels were interpreted in this way: values above 0 mean that students assessed activity below the teacher's grade; values equal to zero reflect the same assessment to that of the teacher; and values less than 0 correspond with higher assessment than the teacher. For instance, if a student assessed J in 3 and the teacher scored 4, then the difference (teacher - student) is +1, that is, the teacher has assessed one level more than the one assessed in J by the PEST. The percentage of levels that differ for each of the elements of the argument, between teacher and PESTs assessments is represented in Table 3. Figure 5 represents the total percentage of scores of the PESTs, overvalued, equal and undervalued, with respect to those of the teacher. These results differ from teacher’s assessment, who consider fewer response rates in E and J to be in the highest levels (with 40% and 51% less, respectively), and only 9% more responses in line with a very appropriate conclusion. Finally, teacher assesses higher response rates at levels 1-2 in all cases except for C. 925

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Equal (%)

Undervalued assessment (%)

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

+1

+2

+3

+4

Evidence (E)

0.00

6.38

11.70

21.81

40.43

16.49

3.19

0.00

0.00

Justification (J)

2.66

9.57

15.96

22.87

29.26

16.49

2.66

0.53

0.00

Conclusion (C)

0.00

0.53

2.13

5.85

43.62

34.57

12.23

0.53

0.53

Figure 5. Percentage of scores of the PESTS overvalued, equal and undervalued with respect to the assessment of the teacher.

CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS FOR IMPROVEMENT This research study shows a type of argumentation in class that aims to bring PESTs closer to their daily lives contexts. The tasks can help increase their level of motivation for science while improving their argumentative competence (Osborne et al., 2016), not only by producing arguments but also by assessing and identifying the main elements of a good argument through peer assessment. Learning to assess is a good approach to practice argumentation in class, because the students can assess to learn (Folkes & Carmichael, 2006). The aforementioned results reveal that PESTs struggle to identify and assess E and J, which are often overvalued in relation to teacher assessment. Likewise, some PESTs undervalue C, by a difference of up to two levels. This could be due to PESTs’ difficulty to clearly differentiate the three elements in an argument. Results suggest the need to train PESTs in argumentation tasks, with special emphasis on the meaning and use of E and J in arguments, as has also been concluded by other authors (Larson, Britt, & Kurby, 2009; McNeil & Knight, 2013). The strategy of peer assessment used in this study seems to have been useful to improve PESTs’ argumentation skills, as not only it makes them participate in assessment but also makes them aware of their own argumentative level, which enables them to internalise, be critical and reflect about their own arguments as well as those of others. All of which helps improve self-regulated learning and the argumentative competence.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work is part of the ‘I+D Excelencia’ Project “Development and evaluation of scientific competences through context-based and modelling teaching approaches. Case studies.” (EDU201341952-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance through its 2013 research call.

REFERENCES Black, P., Harrison, C., & Lee, C. (2003). Assessment for learning: Putting it into practice. England: McGraw-Hill Education (UK). Boud, D., Cohen, R., & Sampson, J. (1999). Peer Learning and Assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 24(4), 413–426. Bybee, R., & McCrae, B. (2011). Scientific Literacy and Student Attitudes: Perspectives from PISA 2006 science. International Journal of Science Education, 33(1), 7–26. Cebrián-Robles, D. (2016). CoRubric. Retrieved from http://corubric.com Cebrián-Robles, D., Franco-Mariscal, A.J., & Blanco-López, A. (2018). Preservice elementary science teachers’ argumentation competence: Impact of a training programme. Instructional Science (in press). Cebrián-Robles, D., Serrano-Angulo, J., & Cebrián-de-la-Serna, M. (2014). Federated eRubric service to facilitate self-regulated learning in the European University model. European Educational Research Journal, 13(5), 575–584. Chin, C., & Osborne, J. (2010). Students’ questions and discursive interaction: Their impact on argumentation during collaborative group discussions in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(7), 883–908. Clark, D. B., & Sampson, V. (2008). Assessing dialogic argumentation in online environments to relate structure, grounds, and conceptual quality. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(3), 293– 321. Deng, Y., & Wang, H. (2017). Research on evaluation of Chinese students’ competence in written scientific argumentation in the context of chemistry. Chemical Education Research and Practice, 18(1), 127–150. De Sá Ibraim, S., & Justi, R. (2016). Teachers’ knowledge in argumentation: contributions from an explicit teaching in an initial teacher education programme. International Journal of Science Education, 38(12), 1996–2025. Duschl, R. A., & Osborne, J. (2002). Supporting and Promoting Argumentation Discourse in Science Education. Studies in Science Education, 38(1), 39–72. Erduran, S., & Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P. (2008). Argumentation in Science Education (vol. 35). Berlin: Springer. Evagorou, M., & Osborne, J. (2013). Exploring young students’ collaborative argumentation within a socioscientific issue. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50(2), 209–237. Folkes, C., & Carmichael, P. (2006). “Learning to assess” and “assessing to learn”: the construction of knowledge about Assistive Technology. Educational Action Research, 14(4), 535–545. Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P. (2002). Ciencia y cultura, cultura y evolución. Alambique, Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales, 32, 5-8. Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P. (2010). 10 Ideas Clave. Competencias en argumentación y uso de pruebas (vol. 12). Barcelona (Spain): Graó. Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P., Rodriguez, A. B., & Duschl, R. A. (2000). “Doing the lesson” or“ doing science”: Argument in high school genetics. Science Education, 84(6), 757–792. Karışan, D., Tüzün, Ö. Y., & Zeidler, D. L. (2017). Quality of preservice teachers argumentation in socioscientific issues context. Journal of Human Sciences, 14(4), 3504–3520. Larson, A. A., Britt, M. A., & Kurby, C. A. (2009). Improving students’ evaluation of informal arguments. Journal of Experimental Education, 77(4), 339–365. McNeil, K. L., & Knight, A. M. (2013). Teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of scientific argumentation: The impact of professional development on K–12 teachers. Science Education, 97(6), 936–972.

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McNeill, K. L., & Pimentel, D. S. (2010). Scientific discourse in three urban classrooms: The role of the teacher in engaging high school students in argumentation. Science Education, 94(2), 203– 229. OECD. (2006). Assessing scientific, reading and mathematical literacy: A framework for PISA 2006. (OECD, Ed.). Brussels: OECD. OECD. (2016). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/ Osana, H. P., & Seymour, J. R. (2004). Critical Thinking in Preservice Teachers: A Rubric for Evaluating Argumentation and Statistical Reasoning. Educational Research and Evaluation: An International Journal on Theory and Practice, 10(4-6), 473–498. Osborne, J. F., Henderson, J. B., MacPherson, A., Szu, E., Wild, A., & Yao, S. (2016). The development and validation of a learning progression for argumentation in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(6), 821–846. Özçinar, H. (2015). Scaffolding computer-mediated discussion to enhance moral reasoning and argumentation quality in pre-service teachers. Journal of Moral Education, 44(2), 232–251. Toulmin, S. E. (1958). The uses of argument (2003 rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tsai, C.-Y. (2015). Improving students’ PISA scientific competencies through online argumentation. International Journal of Science Education, 37(2), 321–339. Yaman, F. (2017). Effects of the science writing heuristic approach on the quality of prospective science teachers’ argumentative writing and their understanding of scientific argumentation. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 1–22.

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DIALOGIC TEACHING TO ESTABLISH CONSENSUS IN ARGUMENTATION Ying-Chih Chen and Xue Qiao Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA Dialogic teaching, as opposed to monologue, not only provides opportunities for students to encounter others’ arguments but also creates a space to immerse students in negotiating ideas in order to establish consensus. Grounded in a qualitative, interpretative approach, this study explored how a fifth-grade teacher framed dialogic teaching to establish consensus through three harmonious goals while students learned about the human digestive system: social negotiation, epistemic engagement, and conceptual development. The data analysis led to the creation of a schematic model that explains the dialogic move toward consensus establishment. Central to the model is the intertwined, dynamic, and progressive nature of dialogic teaching with regard to the contexts in which teachers orchestrate these three goals to extend students’ conceptual understanding. Four themes for discussion and implications are identified from this study: (1) uncertainty creates a platform for students to discuss, debate, and debunk and further extends their knowledge, (2) comprehension is a necessary precursor to engaging students in the productive practice of constructing and critiquing arguments, (3) explicitly connecting students’ prior knowledge and everyday lived experience to developing concepts is a resource for developing “what counts as knowledge”, and (4) empowering students’ authority and accountability of knowledge is a foundation for productively framing dialogue. Keywords: argumentation, dialogue, uncertainty

INTRODUCTION Dialogic teaching in argumentation has received substantial attention by educators (e.g., Alexander, 2008). In science, Duschl (2008) argues (also supported by Manz, 2015) that dialogic teaching should include a three-part harmony of social goal (i.e., being able to communicate, critique, and construct ideas), epistemic goal (i.e., knowing what counts as claims and evidence), and conceptual goal (i.e., developing new knowledge and expanding current knowledge). This concept of three harmonious goals is promising not only because it addresses the structural features of scientific knowledge but also because it suggests the value of the social practices in which students construct and critique knowledge through the use of claim, evidence and reasoning in a community. Dialogic teaching creates a space for multiple voices to be discussed, debated, and debunked. The fundamental caveat of dialogic teaching is not only to elicit the interaction of disparate ideas but also to establish a consensus among individuals who may hold contradictory ideas (Alexander, 2008; Berland & Lee, 2012). This process of consensus establishment involves bringing together many individuals in dialogue, with the desire to cooperate in attempting to forge a mutual agreement through seeking and coconstructing the best explanation to a question. However, dialogic teaching toward consensus establishment remains a great challenge for teachers (Chen, Hand, & Norton-Meier, 2017; McNeill & Pimentel, 2010). Scott, Mortimer, and Aguiar (2006) claim that teachers have difficulty orchestrating varied opinions and thus avoid eliciting different ideas. Even while engaging students in eliciting ideas from one another, teachers lack the skills to challenge students’ ideas in order to help them discover the weaknesses and errors in their arguments, a 929

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process that can lead to establishing consensus. In this study, we seek to understand how the three harmonious goals of dialogic teaching can be simultaneously orchestrated in science classrooms. In discussing these three goals, we draw on research from linguistics and anthropology and have adopted the construct of framing to unpack how an experienced fifth-grade teacher facilitates student understanding of science core concepts about the human digestive system within dialogic inquiry through the three harmonious goals. At the end of the paper, we summarize the findings that led to a schematic model that illustrates how integrating the three goals in dialogic teaching establishes consensus.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Dialogic teaching is defined in this study as a social negotiated act in which individuals conceptually construct and critique claims supported by evidence for the sake of establishing consensus (Alexander, 2008; Chen, Park, & Hand, 2016; Dusch, 2008). Within this definition, dialogic teaching in science classrooms is conceptualized as three goals that are distinct but interdependent (see Figure 1): (1) social negotiation, students are encouraged to share, debate, and revise their ideas with teachers and peers in order to forge a consensus; (2) epistemic engagement, students use their understanding of what counts as good claim and evidence as a resource to construct their own arguments and to evaluate others’; and (3) conceptual development, students productively develop core concepts through extending their current knowledge. First, dialogue in science classrooms is a series of social negotiation events where students, with cognitive conflict toward the same issue and a need to work cooperatively as a community, try to achieve mutually acceptable consensus (Rahwan et al., 2004). Therefore, the goal of dialogic teaching is not only to get students to exchange/interact with ideas and convince peers, but also to build a consensus. The second goal of dialogic teaching is epistemic engagement, which refers to how students construct and critique ideas during social negotiation. Duschl (2008) and Sandoval (2014) suggest that dialogic teaching should not only focus on ontological practice about “what we know” (e.g., laws, theory), but should also emphasize epistemic engagement about “how we know what we know” and “why we believe” (e.g., explanation, justification). This goal of dialogic teaching requires students to develop understanding of what counts as a high-quality argument and how to apply this understanding to critique others’ arguments in dialogue (Chen, Hand, & McDowell, 2013; Sampson, Grooms, & Walker, 2011) and to judge peers’ critiques. The third goal of dialogic teaching is conceptual development. Once students epistemically engage in social negotiation, they are expected to make “intellectual progress that can be inferred by, amongst other things, an improvement in the quality and sophistication of arguments and the development of new ideas and disciplinary understandings” (Scott, Mortimer, & Aguiar, 2006, p. 607). Conceptual development in such dialogic contexts likely entails uncertainty, because the critique that students receive of their own knowledge claims makes them doubt, question, and re-examine how well their ideas explain particular phenomena. If students find better ways to improve their ideas, their knowledge grows and expands. 930

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Researchers increasingly argue that these three goals are mutually supportive of one another and are intertwined (Manz, 2015). For example, social negotiation is a resource to make students uncertain of their knowledge and to stimulate them to further examine the inconsistencies and weaknesses of that knowledge. With more sophisticated knowledge, students are able to provide more explanation for their arguments and to debate those arguments. On one hand, this process is driven by students’ epistemic understanding of what counts. On the other hand, the process drives students to develop their understanding of criteria for evaluating knowledge, that is, deciding what counts as good claims and evidence.

Figure 1 summarizes the relationship of the three goals in dialogic teaching toward establishing consensus.

METHODS This study was conducted in Mr. J’s classroom, where the Science Talk Writing Heuristic (STWH) approach (Chen, Benus, & Yarker, 2016) was utilized to create curriculum and instructional strategies that promote students in building disciplinary core ideas. The STWH was adapted from the Science Writing Heuristic approach that was originally developed by Keys, Hand, Prain, and Collins (1999) as a means to embed a variety of writing activities that engage students in learning the content of a topic (Klein & Boscolo, 2016). Instead of heavily focusing on writing, like the SWH approach, the STWH approach places importance on the integrated use of talk and writing as tools for the argumentative practice of social negotiation and epistemic engagement of an argument. The STWH approach consists of five phases: (1) exploring big idea--generating an inquiry question, (2) designing tests--observation to gather data, (3) engaging in social negotiation to debate claim/evidence, (4) reading to compare arguments with experts, and (5) reflecting through writing. Given the purpose of this study, 931

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i.e., to help students engage in constructing and critiquing arguments through social negotiation, my analysis focused on the third phase. Twenty-two students were in Mr. J’s class. This study took place during a unit on the human digestive system which lasted four weeks (Chen & Steenhoek, 2014). Students were expected to understand the big idea of “how the human digestive system and human body system work together”. Given the focus of this study on exploring how Mr. J framed whole-class dialogue to balance the three harmonious goals, six 50-minute whole-class discussion sessions were videotaped. In these discussions, Mr. J orchestrated students’ presentation of their arguments, scaffolded students building stronger arguments, and further helped students develop core concepts of the unit. Data analysis consisted of four stages: (1) dividing whole-class discussion into episodes of group presentations, (2) identifying events within group presentations (episodes), (3) describing what happened, what consensus was achieved, and what the teacher did in each event, and (4) analyzing each event and summarizing events in each group utilizing a qualitative interpretative approach (Wolcott, 1994) based on the three harmonious goals. To analyze social negotiation, I focused on how the practice of construction and critique was framed by Mr. J. Construction refers to any action students and teachers take to express, explain, elaborate, and reason ideas. Critique refers to any action students take to seek errors, weaknesses, deficiencies, and inconsistences in an argument through challenging, debating, and defending ideas. Forman and Ford (2014) note that authority and accountability play important roles during the practice of construction and critique. Authority refers to students’ active voice or agency (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006) in elaborating, defending, challenging, and justifying ideas when they present their group arguments. Therefore, students are authors of knowledge they construct and have ownership of it. Accountability refers to students’ responsibility for securitizing knowledge they construct and for critiquing, improving, and revising peers’ arguments through seeking the weaknesses and errors of those arguments. To access epistemic engagement, I focused my analysis and interpretation on how Mr. J framed students’ understanding of “what counts as good argument” and scaffolded them to apply that understanding to social negotiation so that they could develop high-quality arguments. Our previous studies (Chen et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2016) found high quality of argument can refer to the coherence or strong relationships of argument components (claim, evidence, and reasoning), appropriate interpretation or explanation of the relationship of data to evidence, and how effectively the argument addresses the research question. To study conceptual development, I focused on how students expressed their uncertainty about their existing knowledge, how Mr. J challenged students’ existing knowledge to make them reevaluate that knowledge, and how Mr. J managed and fostered students to solve their uncertainty and thus extended their knowledge. In this study, uncertainty refers to any action students use to explicitly express, demonstrate, and generate ideas that are tentative, questioned, and doubted within a community (Jordan & McDaniel Jr, 2014). Uncertainty can result from peer critique (Radinsky, 2008) and self-awareness of limited knowledge to explain a certain situation or complete a task (Babrow & Mathias, 2009). By examining each Event from all groups, one group was identified as representative; this group had the most Events and longest discussion, which provided rich and diverse instances 932

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across the two rounds of social negotiation. We then focused on this group to develop in-depth narratives through which to explore how the group developed its conceptual understanding over time when epistemically immersed in social negotiation facilitated by Mr. J’s framing. This analytical move was utilized because this study attempts to capture the complex characteristics of a teacher’s framing from a particular theoretical framework, as well as the relationship between the teacher’s framing and the development of students’ understanding of science practice and concepts. As Varelas, Kane, and Wylie (2012) noted, such narrative chronological analysis is a new methodological area, and it is necessary to examine a few cases in depth in order to unpack the relationship between the discourse and time within a particular environment. RESULTS The interpretive analysis led to the formation of a schematic model (Figure 2) that conceptually captures the intertwined, dynamic, and progressive nature of framing the three goals. First, the findings add to current literature (e.g., Cavagnetto & Hand, 2012; Ford & Wargo, 2012; Manz, 2015) by suggesting that the three goals in Mr. J’s framing were intertwined. Students developed their understanding of disciplinary core ideas through discussing the quality of evidence and claim as well as debating the relationship among question, claim, and evidence. In turn, they also developed knowledge of “what counts” when engaging in debating relevant concepts.

Figure 2. A schematic model of the dialogic move that conceptually captures the immersive, dynamic, and progressive nature of framing the three goals.

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Second, the findings suggest that framing the three goals is dynamic. The dynamics were influenced by and influenced how students negotiated, the aspects of epistemic engagement they practiced, and the degree of their understanding of developing concepts. For example, as students acquired sufficient understanding of target concepts, they engaged more in searching for the inconsistencies in peer arguments and took authority and accountability for discussion. In contrast, when students lacked understanding, Mr. J took a leader role to scaffold them to comprehend the concepts before re-engaging in critiquing peer arguments. This dynamic framing heavily depended on Mr. J’s in-the-moment recognition of students’ conceptual and epistemic understandings within social acts, decisions about the degree of authority and accountability he and students took, and enactment of his plan to reach the three goals. Third, Mr. J’s framing of dialogic teaching was progressive and spiral (gradual, as opposed to rushed). That is, Mr. J gradually framed students’ understanding of the three goals and revisited each goal with more sophisticated discussion than had occurred in previous events. For example, as Mr. J framed students’ conceptual understandings, he helped them to understand the function of the human digestive system in earlier episode and revisited the concepts in detail by connecting students’ prior knowledge and everyday experience to those concepts in later episode. As Mr. J framed students’ epistemic engagement, he let them understand the difference between data and evidence before engaging in social negotiations, therefore fostering students to engage in critiquing the coherence of question, claim, and evidence earlier episode, and scaffolded students to understand what counts as solid evidence with appropriate explanation in later episode.

DISCUSSION Four themes for discussion and implications are identified from this study: (1) uncertainty creates a platform for students to discuss, debate, and debunk and further extends their knowledge: This study demonstrated that Mr. J continuously framed dialogue around uncertainty by supporting students to search for errors in arguments, eliciting a diversity of ideas, and asking ambiguous questions. When uncertainty emerged in conjunction with social negotiation, it consequently created a platform for negotiation. Students then engaged in collaborating to solve the uncertainty. Once the uncertainty was removed, students’ knowledge was expanded and elevated to another level. (2) comprehension is a necessary precursor to engaging students in the productive practice of constructing and critiquing arguments: This study shows that students socially engaged in what Ford and Forman (2006) call “core scientific practice”—critiquing and co-constructing acceptable arguments within the classroom community. However, this study found that only when students could comprehend each other’s arguments and obtain sufficient knowledge could they engage in a high-quality practice of critique and construction. We suggest that unless students can comprehend peers’ arguments and the target concepts, there is little opportunity for them to engage in the high-quality practice of critique that leads to establishing mutual consensus.

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(3) explicitly connecting students’ prior knowledge and everyday lived experience to developing concepts is a resource for developing “what counts as knowledge”: This study found evidence to support the connection of students’ prior knowledge and everyday lived experience to the discussion issues as epistemic resources, thereby scaffolding the development of core concepts (Hammer & Elby, 2002). The results of this study suggest that a broad set of evidence, including students’ lived experience and previous knowledge, can be framed to help them shape their reasoning process related to what and how evidence is used and explained. In other words, those resources may play critical roles for fostering students to shape raw data into evidence with explanation. (4) empowering students’ authority and accountability of knowledge is a foundation for productively framing dialogue: students were positioned as stakeholders responsible for their contributions to the construction and critique of knowledge. Even when teachers adopt I-R-E structured questions, those questions function to empower students to generate ideas through social negotiation and to hold them accountable to those ideas.

SELECTED REFERENCES Alexander, R. J. (2008) Towards dialogic teaching: Rethinking classroom talk, 4th ed. York: Dialogos. Berland, L. K., & Lee, V. R. (2012). In Pursuit of Consensus: Disagreement and legitimization during small-group argumentation. International Journal of Science Education, 34(12), 1857-1882. Cavagnetto, A., & Hand, B. (2012). The importance of embedding argument within science classrooms. In M. S. S. Khine (Ed.), Perspectives on Scientific Argumentation (pp. 39-53): Springer Netherlands. Chen, Y.-C., Benus, M. J., & Yarker, M. B. (2016). Using models to support argumentation in the science classroom. The American Biology Teacher, 78(7), 549-559. Chen, Y.-C., Hand, B., & McDowell, L. (2013). The effects of writing-to-learn activities on elementary students’ conceptual understanding: Learning about force and motion through writing to older peers. Science Education, 97(5), 745-771. Chen, Y.-C., Hand, B., & Norton-Meier, L. (2017). Teacher roles of questioning in early elementary science classrooms: A framework promoting student cognitive complexities in argumentation. Research in Science Education, 42(2), 373-405. Chen, Y.-C., Park, S., & Hand, B. (2016). Examining the use of talk and writing for students' development of scientific conceptual knowledge through constructing and critiquing arguments. Cognition & Instruction, 34(2), 100-147. Chen, Y.-C., & Steenhoek, J. (2014). Arguing like a scientist. The American Biology Teacher, 76(4), 231-237. Duschl, R. (2008). Science education in three part harmony: Balancing conceptual, epistemic, and social learning goals. Review of Research in Education, 32, 268-291. Ford, M. J., & Forman, E. A. (2006). Redefining Disciplinary Learning in Classroom Contexts. Review of Research in Education, 30, 1-32. Ford, M. J., & Wargo, B. M. (2012). Dialogic framing of scientific content for conceptual and epistemic understanding. Science Education, 96(3), 369-391. Hammer, D., & Elby, A. (2002). On the form of a personal epistemology. Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing, 169-190. Jordan, M. E., & McDaniel Jr, R. R. (2014). Managing uncertainty during collaborative problem solving in elementary school teams: The role of peer influence in robotics engineering activity. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 23(4), 490-536. Keys, C. W., Hand, B., Prain V., & Collins, S. (1999). Using the science writing heuristic as a tool for learning from laboratory investigations in secondary science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36(10), 1065-1084.

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Klein, P. D., & Boscolo, P. (2016). Trends in Research on Writing as a Learning Activity. Journal of Writing Research, 7(3), 311-350. Manz, E. (2015). Resistance and the development of scientific practice: Designing the mangle into science instruction. Cognition and Instruction, 33(2), 89-124. McNeill, K. L., & Pimentel, D. S. (2010). Scientific discourse in three urban classrooms: The role of the teacher in engaging high school students in argumentation. Science Education, 94(2), 203229. Norton-Meier, L., Hand, B., Hockenberry, L., & Wise, K. (2008). Questions, claims, and evidence: The important place of argument in children's science writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Radinsky, J. (2008). Students’ roles in group-work with visual data: A site of science learning. Cognition and Instruction, 26, 145–194. Sampson, V., Grooms, J., & Walker, J. P. (2011). Argument-driven inquiry as a way to help students learn how to participate in scientific argumentation and craft written arguments: An exploratory study. Science Education, 95(2), 217-257. Sandoval, W. (2014). Science education's need for a theory of epistemological development. Science Education, 98(3), 383-387. Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (pp. 97-118). New York: Cambridge University Press. Scott, P. H., Mortimer, E. F., & Aguiar, O. G. (2006). The tension between authoritative and dialogic discourse: A fundamental characteristic of meaning making interactions in high school science lessons. Science Education, 90(4), 605-631. Varelas, M., Kane, J. M., & Wylie, C. D. (2012). Young Black children and science: Chronotopes of narratives around their science journals. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 49(5), 568596. Wolcott, H. F. (1994). Transforming qualitative data: Description, analysis, and interpretation: Sage.

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STRATEGIES AND RESOURCES FOR A FIFTH-GRADE SCIENCE TEACHER’S UNCERTAINTY MANAGEMENT IN ARGUMENTATION Xue Qiao and Ying-Chih Chen Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA This study investigated how a fifth grade science teacher managed uncertainty that emerged in students’ argumentation. The analysis focused on how the teacher used epistemic engagement and social negotiation as resources to manage uncertainty as students engaged in argumentative environments across three different science units-ecosystem, astronomy, and human body systems. Conceptualizing science education as a balance between conceptual, epistemic, and social learning goals (Duschl, 2008), we analyzed transcripts of whole class discussions during the public negotiation phase of the Science Talking-Writing Heuristic approach. Our results showed that 1) when epistemic engagement served as a resource for uncertainty management, the teacher resolved students’ uncertainty through his emphasis on coherence of argument and coherence of knowledge; 2) when social negotiation served as a resource for uncertainty management, the teacher resolved students’ uncertainty through critiquing their arguments. As our study conceptualizes the teacher-student interactions in a science classroom as a process of uncertainty management, it provides insights for science teachers into how uncertainty management through dialogic moves facilitates the development of students’ conceptual knowledge and the improvement of arguments. Keywords: argumentation, uncertainty, dialogue

INTRODUCTION Recent research and reform documents on science education have been emphasizing the role of argumentation in students’ development of scientific knowledge. Argumentation is defined in this study as a social negotiated act in which individuals conceptually construct and critique claims supported by evidence for the sake of establishing consensus (Berland, 2011; Chin & Osborne, 2010; Chen, Park, & Hand, 2016; Ford, 2012). As a learner makes claims and organizes evidence to tentatively explain a scientific phenomenon within a specific community, his/her argument will also be socially negotiated by others, that is, the argument will be evaluated, challenged, defended, debated, and strengthened. Through the social negation process, arguments become epistemically valid and accepted by a community and a consensus among learners is achieved (Ardasheva, Norton-Meier, & Hand, 2015; Nussbaum & Edwards, 2011). Uncertainty is an individual’s subjective experience of doubting, wondering about, or being unsure about the future, the present, and the past (Jordan & McDaniel, 2014). Jordan and her colleagues (Jordan, 2010; Jordan & McDaniel, 2014) propose that the experience of uncertainty is likely to be common and important for content learning and collaborative learning tasks, as learners struggle with new disciplinary understandings and participate in new social practices. Argumentation also involves uncertainty because social negotiation makes students doubt, question, and re-examine how well their ideas explain particular phenomena (Manz, 2015). Thus, argumentation can be seen as a process of uncertainty management: as a teacher or 937

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students themselves deal with uncertainty during argumentation, students’ conceptual knowledge increases and improves. Studies on uncertainty in science education have investigated the cultural tools used by scientists and elementary students to identify and resolve uncertainty (Kirch, 2010); peer responses to individuals’ uncertainty management strategies in collaborative learning tasks in engineering (Jordan & McDaniel, 2014); students’ articulation of uncertainty in argumentation tasks (Buck et al, 2017; Lee et al, 2014); and what kind of classroom discourse can help students identify uncertainty in scientific arguments (Ford & Forman, 2015). Given the limited number of studies on uncertainty in science education, the topic of uncertainty and its relationship with the learning and teaching of science needs further exploration. Furthermore, although these studies have looked at the management of uncertainty across collaborative learning and argumentative contexts, they have not delved into the process of resolving uncertainty and how the resolution of uncertainty enhances students’ understanding of conceptual knowledge. To address this gap in literature, our study asks the following research question: How does a fifth-grade science teacher manage uncertainty that emerges during argumentation through the resources of epistemic engagement and social negotiation?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Defining uncertainty in science education By and large, uncertainty refers to an individual’s experience of doubting and feeling unsure. Jordan and McDaniel (2014) defines uncertainty as “an individual’s subjective experience of doubting, wondering about, or being unsure about who the future will unfold, what the present means, or how to interpret the past” (p. 492). Kirch (2010) conceptualizes uncertainty as “the psychological condition of being without conviction or of being in doubt” as well as “a mathematical object; that is, when the degree of confidence in a statement or assertion can be calculated” (p. 309). There are various sources of uncertainty, and scholars have identified two types of uncertainty according to their roots: personal uncertainty and scientific uncertainty. Personal uncertainty pertains to the individual’s level of skills and knowledge. In argumentative contexts, students’ articulation of uncertainty reveals that their conception of uncertainty is heavily influenced by their confidence in their own skills, knowledge, or selfefficacy (Buck et al, 2017). Scientific uncertainty is directed towards the tentative nature of science, coming from the conduct of investigation and the interpretation of data. Buck et al (2017) conceptualize scientific uncertainty as consisting three spheres: empirical, signal, and conceptual uncertainty. Similarly, Metz’s (2004) investigation of children’ conceptualization of uncertainty in scientific inquiry identified five spheres of uncertainty: 1) how to achieve the desired outcome as uncertain; 2) data as uncertain (i.e., empirical uncertainty); 3) trend identified in the data as uncertain (i.e., signal uncertainty); 4) generalizability of this trend as uncertain (i.e., signal uncertainty); and 5) the theory that best explains the trend as uncertain (conceptual uncertainty). The search of scientific uncertainty plays an important role in argumentation, which involves construction and critique of arguments. According to Ford and Forman (2015), 938

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critique is motivated by a purposeful and imaginative search for uncertainty. The search is “purposeful because at any stage of understanding, one experiences some degree of coherence and satisfaction, which must be self-consciously challenged. It is imaginative because the potential sources of uncertainty must be found and articulated. This search includes all levels of the chain of reasoning behind a scientific claim” (Ford & Forman, 2015, p. 144). Scholars have also investigated the management of uncertainty by students and teachers in the science classroom (Ford & Forman, 2015; Jordan & McDaniel, 2014; Kirch, 2010). For example, Kirch (2010) reveals that scientists and teachers and students in the elementary classroom adopted similar cultural tools such as asking clarification questions and establishing collective understanding through conversation, to identify and resolve uncertainty in generating, observing, and interpreting data. However, different from scientists, the achievement of collective understanding of an interpretation within the elementary science classroom is complicated due to the roles that teachers and students take and the power imbalance among the roles. To facilitate students’ identification of uncertainty in the science classroom, Ford and Forman (2015) propose that instead of using an authoritarian voice which demands full compliance of students, teachers should share authority with the students. Though these studies view interpersonal interaction as the means for expressing, managing, and resolving uncertainty, there is a lack of research on the role of teachers in resolving students’ uncertainty and the resource that teachers use to resolve uncertainty. Importantly, students’ conceptual development that accompanies the resolution of uncertainty seems to be overlooked by previous research. Balancing conceptual, epistemic and social learning goals Duschl (2008) points out that science education should pay special attention to “the conceptual structures and cognitive processes used when reasoning scientifically, the epistemic frameworks used when developing and evaluating scientific knowledge, and the social processes and contexts that shape how knowledge is communicated, represented, argued, and debated” (p. 277). Duschl (2008) emphasizes the role that conversations play in science learning and conceptualizes classrooms as epistemic communities: “the conversations should mediate the transitions from evidence to explanations, or vice versa, and thereby unfold discovery and inquiry” (p. 280). Informed by these propositions, we argue that the identification and resolution of uncertainty are realized through dialogic interaction among the teacher and students and that the resolution of uncertainty leads to the development of students’ conceptual knowledge. Conceptualizing science teaching as a balance between conceptual, epistemological, and social learning goals, we posit that social negotiation and epistemic engagement can serve as resources for resolving uncertainty. Given students’ limited scientific knowledge and capability to resolve uncertainty on their own, we emphasize the science teacher’s role in resolving uncertainty.

METHODS Our study was conducted in a fifth grade science classroom with 22 students in an elementary school in a Midwestern state in the United States. The participating teacher, Mr. J (pseudonym), had 10 years of teaching experience and implemented an argument-based inquiry approach-the 939

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Science Talking-Writing Heuristic (STWH) approach (Chen, Benus, & Yarker, 2016) -to teach three different science units: ecosystem (germination), astronomy (the day and night cycle), and human body systems (the digestive system and the respiratory system). In the STWH approach, the students were immersed in an argumentative context to learn what counts as good arguments and used this understanding to generalize research questions, gather data from investigations, use evidence to support claims, and develop knowledge through debates. The STWH approach consists of five phases: (1) exploring big idea--generating an inquiry question, (2) designing tests--observation to gather data, (3) engaging in social negotiation to debate claim/evidence, (4) reading to compare arguments with experts, and (5) reflecting through writing. We focused only on the third phase of the STWH approach because this phase yielded an abundance of classroom discourse data and uncertainty was very likely to emerge when students were negotiating their arguments with each other. Over the course of 16 weeks, we observed and videotaped whole-class discussions across the three different units. The videotapes of a total of 15 lessons, each including a 50-minute whole-class discussion, were transcribed. Our data analysis went through three steps: 1) dividing each class session into events; 2) initial coding and constructing narrative descriptions of events; 3) pattern coding. In Step 1, we divided each class session into several ‘events’. We defined events as excerpts of conversation that began with uncertainty (i.e., expression of doubt) about an idea, a scientific concept, or an argument and ended with a consensus among members in the classroom community. During Step 2, we coded Mr. J’s inputs and subsequent responses from the students to interpret the process of uncertainty being reduced through Mr. J’s use of resources of epistemic engagement and social negotiation. The unit of analysis was an utterance. We used both a priori codes (i.e., propagated stuff, free creating, fabricated stuff, direct perception) and emergent codes (i.e., coherence between the big question and argument, difference between data and evidence, evidentiary justification, need for improvement, counterevidence, making a claim, using evidence, using data, challenging, defending, reflecting, changing ideas clarification, seeking agreement) to capture elements in the two resources for uncertainty management-epistemic engagement and social negotiation-in the same unit of analysis. Then, based on the codes assigned to utterances in each event, we constructed a narrative description for each event. For Step 3, we compared events across our database, checking for consistency and inconsistency with respect to the process of reducing uncertainty and modifying our initial codes and descriptions as necessary. We clustered codes into potential themes concerning how epistemic engagement and social negotiation served as resources for uncertainty reduction.

FINDINGS We found that 1) when epistemic engagement served as a resource for uncertainty management, the teacher resolved students’ uncertainty through his emphasis on coherence of argument and coherence of knowledge; 2) when social negotiation served as a resource for uncertainty management, the teacher resolved students’ uncertainty through critiquing their arguments.

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Epistemic engagement as a resource for uncertainty management We identified two themes regarding how epistemic engagement contributes to Mr. J’s uncertainty management: 1) coherence of argument; 2) coherence of knowledge. Coherence of argument refers to the coherence at two levels within the structure of an argument. First, students should support the claims they make with evidence. Second, evidence should include both data and reasoning that shows their interpretation of the data and why they use the data as part of their evidence. At the first level, Mr. J emphasized evidentiary justification in his instruction, and it had become a shared practice and norm of the classroom community to use evidentiary justification as an important criterion to judge the quality of each other’s arguments. Therefore, when Mr. J used coherence of argument to deal with uncertainty that emerged in whole-class conversations, it facilitated the classroom community to reach a consensus. For example, in Event 2 in Lesson 3 of the astronomy unit, students expressed doubt about the function of the axis for causing day and night in the presenting group’s argument. Noah, a member of the presenting group, was not convinced of the importance of explaining the role of the axis that they mentioned in their claim. It seemed to her that the earth’s being a sphere and its rotation, which causes the half of the earth to face the sun and to face away from the sun, could adequately explain the phenomenon of day and night (i.e., “That's part of our reasoning, because if it was a disc, it wouldn't work.”). In response, Mr. J asked a series of questions to direct students’ attention to the lack of justification for the group’s claim that the earth’s rotation on its axis results in the day and night cycle (see Table 1): Table 1. Excerpt illustrating Mr. J reducing uncertainty in Event 2, Astronomy Lesson 3

Mr. J:

You're saying that the day is caused by the earth rotating on its… now it's axis, not axle?

Noah:

Yeah.

Mr. J:

You're saying you know that. How do you know that's happening? What is this axis? Where does it go? If it's imaginary, how do you know that it's there? What does it do? How does that cause day and night? Is that what you meant by show, don't tell? You told us that day is caused by earth rotating on its axis, but you didn't show us how that actually happens.

Micah:

Well, you're saying that you got it from past experiences. I mean, for example, how do we actually know that you learned this from past experiences?

… Cessly: Well they're saying what they know about it, they're not saying what's true. They're saying what they know about it. I think you could maybe explain axle and…

In this excerpt, following Mr. J’s critique, Micah and Cessly challenged the credibility of this claim. Later in the conversation, Mr. J’s continuous critique about coherence of argument encouraged more students to share their critiques about the group’s argument. For example, Lexi commented, “The point for claim and evidence is to explain what you know, not what the experts know.” This collective request for an explanation of axis by Mr. J and his students led the presenting group to agree on the importance of researching about the axis. The second level of coherence of argument is that students need to use reasoning to turn data into evidence and to make connections between evidence and claims. Reasoning involves the 941

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scientific principles that explain why certain data support a claim. Thus, clarifying these scientific principles could help students interpret the data they have and reduce uncertainty about why a particular claim is made based on the data. For example, during Event 3 in Lesson 2 of the ecosystem unit, students expressed disagreement over and uncertainty about whether germination requires sunlight or darkness. To resolve this uncertainty, Mr. J explained the meaning of “requirements” to the students, “Ok, it's (let’s) think we're having a language issue. We're talking about requirements in order to germinate, as in it has to have it or it will not germinate. So, what does a seed have to have in order for it to germinate?” While Mr. J was framing students’ problem as stemming from “a language issue”, he was also clarifying the underlying scientific principle that connected the data that seeds germinated in both sunlight and darkness in the experiment to the claim: that the seed needs something means that without it germination will not happen. Coherence of knowledge refers to the process of constructing new knowledge from students’ prior knowledge and using existing concepts to learn new concepts. When connections are made between prior knowledge and new knowledge, student’ uncertainty could be efficiently reduced. Throughout the unit, Mr. J had been encouraging students to seek evidence from daily life, past experiences, and their experiments and to build knowledge about the needs of seeds from what they knew. For instance, when student argued about and showed uncertainty around whether water could provide energy for seeds, Mr. J made several connections to everyday knowledge about human bodies to help students reach the agreement that water does not provide energy for living things: 1) humans try to get energy when they need food; 2) body changes food into energy; 3) humans can burn a cracker or bread and convert it into energy. Social negotiation as a resource for uncertainty management The social negotiation process of argumentation involves both construction of knowledge and critique of knowledge claims. As an essential component of negotiation, critique allows all learners in a specific community to advance to a more scientific understanding of a concept through defending and debating ideas (Ardasheva et al, 2015). We argued that critiquing students’ arguments as a resource for Mr. J’s uncertainty management because when the teacher challenged an argument presented by the students, he not only highlighted the weaknesses of the argument but established the expected model of dialogical interaction in the classroom community and scaffolded the students to critique their peers’ arguments. When the students could critique with the teacher’s encouragement, the teacher’s critique turned into the collective critique by the classroom community. For example, in Event 2 in Lesson 2 of the respiratory system subunit, Mr. J initiated uncertainty by expressing doubt over the sufficiency of evidence in the presenting group’s argument. He took the lead in challenging the presenting group’s argument, asking “How do you know that there's actually muscles and bones that work with the respiratory system?” As the presenting group failed to justify their claim, Mr. J invited more students to elaborate and extend existing critiques. The lack of adequate evidence in the proposed argument eventually became an agreement among students.

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DISCUSSION Our study investigated how an elementary science teacher’s uncertainty management, through the resources of epistemic engagement and social negotiation, facilitated the construction of knowledge and improvement of argumentation. Although we presented our results regarding these two types of resources separately, they could work simultaneously when the teacher resolved uncertainty. For example, when Mr. J was critiquing students’ arguments (i.e., social negotiation served as a resource), he also focused on the lack of coherence of argument. Our findings confirmed Ford and Forman’s (2015) conclusion that students need support from the teacher to identify uncertainty and to “know how to use their intellectual authority for supporting progress in learning” (p. 152), but we also discovered that students require support to resolve uncertainty too. In addition, our data showed that students voiced more empirical uncertainty (i.e., evidence as a source for uncertainty; Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000) than personal uncertainty (i.e., limits of one’s knowledge) during whole-class discussions. Buck et al (2017) found that the threshold between personal uncertainty and empirical uncertainty was thin. We added to their findings that the teacher’s emphasis on empirical uncertainty can lead to students’ personal uncertainty and therefore drive them to find more evidence to support their claims and improve the quality of their arguments. Previous research on social interaction in science classrooms has rarely focused on teachers’ uncertainty management strategies. An important implication of our study for teaching practices is that science teachers could facilitate students’ learning by engaging them in the negotiation of the meaning of each other’s ideas and dealing with uncertainty through dialogic moves (e.g., asking questions to challenge students’ arguments, inviting more students to join the critique process).

REFERENCES Berland, L. K. (2011). Explaining variation in how classroom communities adapt the practice of scientific argumentation. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 20(4), 625–664. Buck, Z. E., Lee, H., & Flores, J. (2014). I Am Sure There May Be a Planet There: Student articulation of uncertainty in argumentation tasks I Am Sure There May Be a Planet There: Student articulation of uncertainty in argumentation tasks. International Journal of Science Education, 36(14), 2391-2420. Chen, Y.-C., Benus, M. J., & Yarker, M. B. (2016). Using models to support argumentation in the science classroom. The American Biology Teacher, 78(7), 549-559. Chen, Y.-C., Park, S., & Hand, B. (2016). Examining the use of talk and writing for students' development of scientific conceptual knowledge through constructing and critiquing arguments. Cognition & Instruction, 34(2), 100-147. Chin, C., & Osborne, J. (2010). Students’ questions and discursive interaction: Their impact on argumentation during collaborative group discussions in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(7), 883–908. Driver, R., Newton, P., & Osborne, J. (2000). Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms. Science education, 84(3), 287-312. Duschl, R. (2008). Science education in three-part harmony: Balancing conceptual, epistemic, and social learning goals. Review of research in education, 32(1), 268-291. Ford, M. J. (2012). A dialogic account of sense-making in scientific argumentation and reasoning. Cognition and Instruction, 30(3), 207–245. Ford, M. J., & Forman, E. A. (2015). Uncertainty and scientific progress in classroom dialogue. In L. B. Resnick, C. S. C. Asterhan, & S. N. Clarke (Eds.), Socializing intelligence through academic talk and dialogue. AERA: Pittsburgh.

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Jordan, M. E. (2010). Collaborative robotics engineering projects: Managing uncertainty in multimodal literacy practice in a fifth-grade class. Yearbook of the National Reading Conference, 59, 260– 275. Jordan, M. E., & McDaniel, R. R. (2014). Managing Uncertainty During Collaborative Problem Solving in Elementary School Teams: The Role of Peer Influence in Robotics Engineering Activity. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 23(4), 490–536. Kirch, S. A. (2010). Identifying and resolving uncertainty as a mediated action in science: A comparative analysis of the cultural tools used by scientists and elementary science students at work. Science Education, 94(2), 308-335. Lee, H. S., Liu, O. L., Pallant, A., Roohr, K. C., Pryputniewicz, S., & Buck, Z. E. (2014). Assessment of uncertainty‐infused scientific argumentation. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51(5), 581-605. Manz, E. (2015). Representing student argumentation as functionally emergent from scientific activity. Review of Educational Research, 85(4), 553-590. Metz, K. E. (2004). Children's understanding of scientific inquiry: Their conceptualization of uncertainty in investigations of their own design. Cognition and Instruction, 22(2), 219-290. Nussbaum, E. M., & Edwards, O. V. (2011). Critical questions and argument stratagems: A framework for enhancing and analyzing students' reasoning practices. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 20(3), 443-488.

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SOME CONCEPTIONS ABOUT ARGUMENTATION OF INSERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS IN CÓRDOBA (ARGENTINA) Leticia Garcia Romano1,2, María Eugenia Condat1, Maricel Occelli1,2, Marina Masullo1, and Nora Valeiras1 1

Science and Technology Teaching Department, National University of Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina 2 National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Córdoba, Argentina

Argumentation bears significant importance in science teaching and learning. In this paper, the conceptions about argumentation held by in-service secondary science teachers are characterised through the analysis of the data obtained by means of a semi-structured questionnaire. The teachers who were questioned highlight the importance of using evidence in order to defend a point of view; they indicate that they frequently use teaching devices that only include information, and that they attribute an important role to the discussion of different stands. They stress the value of argumentation for learning to think and for the scientific literacy of students, and they state that the main obstacle in terms of embarking on the teaching of argumentation is the students’ difficulty in carrying out the tasks proposed and undertaking to them. Keywords: Beliefs – Argumentation – Teaching Practices

INTRODUCTION Argumentation is a central process within the framework of science teaching and learning. Within this framework, Buty & Plantin (2008) state that the role of teachers is based not only on the critical feedback with respect to the arguments developed by students, but also on the management of knowledge and activities under construction, guiding them towards stabilised assertions and procedures accepted in expert communities within a study area. Likewise, according to the ideas proposed by Jiménez-Aleixandre (2010), teachers should take into account the difficulties involved in the integration of different subjects in a socio-scientific debate, by designing activities that tend to assess the greatest number of advantages and disadvantages about a topic, without lapsing into simplistic oppositions. In this way, within the particular context of teacher training, argumentation is linked to pedagogy focused on the construction of knowledge, and not to education based on passing it on (Sandoval & Millwood, 2008). Several research works on this topic have highlighted the importance of incorporating ongoing teacher training programmes dealing with argumentation over a long time, have led to the development of analytic frameworks in order to assess the quality of the arguments produced, and have generated teacher training opportunities that have resulted in improvements in the teaching of argumentation (Erduran, Ardac & Yakmaci-Guzel, 2006; Simon, Erduran & Osborne, 2006). Likewise, in more recent years, we can find surveys focused on specific contents or didactic strategies and on the construction of arguments by teachers (Kaya, 2013; Ozdem, Ertepinar, Cakiroglu & Erduran, 2013), and – particularly important for our research 945

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– surveys pointing not only to argumentative skills but also to the teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of scientific argumentation (McNeill & Knight, 2013; McNeill, González-Howard, Katsh-Singer & Loper, 2016; Vieira, da Rocha Bernardo, Evagorou & Florentino de Melo, 2015). However, as pointed out by Plantin (2014), there is a considerable distance between the broad knowledge developed around this topic within the scope of research and the actual lack of theoretical and practical training of teachers with respect to argumentation. One of the aspects involved in these training problems lies in the fact of how teachers conceive argumentative practices. Considering that research on argumentation within the field of teacher training has received less attention than in other contexts, especially if this is compared with research on the argumentative processes developed by primary and secondary education students (Archila, 2012; Zohar, 2008), and taking into account the fact that there is little research in relation to students’ and teachers’ conceptions of argumentation (Jiménez-Aleixandre & Erduran, 2015), elaborating on this field of study has been considered to be relevant. According to this, the conceptions about argumentations of a group of in-service secondary science teachers in the city of Córdoba (Argentina) have been characterised in this paper.

METHOD The study on the conceptions of argumentation was conducted from an essentially phenomenographic perspective. This approach starts from the premise that people perceive, conceptualise and understand their experiences –and the dimensions of which they are madein qualitatively different ways (Marton, 1981; Mateos & Solé, 2012). For data collection, a semi-structured questionnaire including questions about cadastral aspects (gender, age, degree, length of service as teachers) and six items related to argumentation was designed. The following was enquired: a) what defending a point of view in natural sciences entails for teachers (closed-ended question in which more than one option could be chosen); b) the teaching devices used in the classroom by teachers and their relation with argumentation (closed-ended question); c) the importance that teachers attribute to the performance of different tasks linked to argumentation in their classes (closed-ended question); d) whether teachers consider that there are topics with which developing argumentation is more feasible (open-ended question); e) the strengths attributed to the teaching of argumentation in science classes (open-ended question); and f) the difficulties encountered around the possibility of arguing in science classes (open-ended question). The instrument was checked by experts, and a pilot test was conducted with five teachers that were not part of the final study sample. The questionnaire was applied to science teachers from 16 state secondary schools in the city of Córdoba (Argentina). The sample was made up of a total number of 49 teachers, of an average age of 47.4 years (SD= 8.1) with a minimum age of 29 and a maximum age of 62 years old. The analysis of the conceptions was made by taking theoretical categories as reference, and by developing analysis categories according to the regularities observed.

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The study analysed whether argumentation is presented as the assessment of statements in the light of evidence (Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2010); the presence of the rhetorical component of argumentation was studied (Plantin, 2004); the presence of ideas linked to the epistemic dimension of argumentation was characterised (Leitão, 2007); and, following the proposal recommended by Adúriz-Bravo (2014), the way in which teachers justify the inclusion of argumentation in science classes was investigated. This author argues that – within the framework of science teaching – there are at least three reasons for justifying the incorporation of argumentation in school science. In the first place, there is the idea that learning how to argue is a central process in order to learn to think and construct new knowledge. Secondly, the fact of appropriating a scientific practice like argumentation is deemed to contribute to the construction of an idea of science in line with the contribution of philosophy and history of science. Finally, the role of argumentation in scientific literacy is underlined, aiming at the possibility of students participating in socio-scientific debates.

RESULTS Upon analysing what defending a point of view within the field of natural sciences means for teachers, 79.6% pointed out that it is related to “submitting evidence that proves it”. A smaller number of teachers indicated the idea of “justifying without trying to convince others” (18.4%) and of “justifying and trying to convince everybody else that the point of view chosen is the right one” (10.2%). Tables 1 and 2 refer to the teaching practices developed by teachers. It is to be underlined that a significant percentage of teachers indicated that they frequently use books or films that only include information (75.5%); whereas the percentage of teachers who frequently select resources that include pieces of evidence and proofs that can be used to justify a point of view is lower (57.1%). On the other hand, teachers highlighted the importance of searching for and using different sources of information in order to justify answers (91.8% and 87.8%, respectively), and they stated that, during their classes, participating in debates in which different stands are discussed is important or very important (81.6%). Table 1. Frequency with which teachers use books or films with different characteristics in their classes. Data expressed in % of teachers.

Books and films only include information Books and films include different points of view in relation to a topic Books and films include a single point of view in relation to a topic Books and films include pieces of evidence and proofs that can be used to justify a stand or point of view

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Always or frequently 75.5

Rarely or never 16.3

No answer

65.3

28.6

6.1

28.6

61.2

10.2

57.1

34.7

8.2

8.2

Strand 7 Table 2. Importance attributed by teachers to the performance of different tasks during their classes. Data expressed in % of teachers.

Searching for different sources of information in order to justify their answers. Using the information included in textbooks, in copies provided by the teacher or in the class notes to justify their answers. Participating in debates in which different stands are discussed. Participating in debates in which one single stand is defended.

Very important or important

Little important or no important

No answer

91.8

2.0

6.1

87.8

6.1

6.1

81.6

10.2

8.2

20.4

71.4

8.2

As regards the topics with which developing argumentation in a class is more feasible, two groups of answers can be identified: whereas some teachers underline the possibility of doing so with all topics (34.7%), another group highlights its relevance within the scope of teaching socio-scientific contents, sometimes linked to health (44.9%). Table 3 shows some examples of the teachers’ answers. Table 3. Examples of the topics with which developing argumentation in science classes is possible in the opinion of the teachers who were questioned.

Categories Any topic

Examples Teacher No. 6: “(…) I believe that it is possible in all topics” Teacher No. 38: “All the contents that are taught are supported by arguments. It is us, teachers, who must teach them”. Teacher No. 33: “Cloning. Genetically modified foods. Stem cells”.

Socio-cientific topics

Teacher No. 39: “Argumentation can be mostly used for social topics or problems (…)”.

When it comes to indicating the strengths related to the teaching of argumentation in science classes, taking up the categories proposed by Adúriz-Bravo (2014), teachers justify its inclusion by stressing its contribution to scientific literacy (55.1%) and the possibility of learning to think (51%). The least chosen idea is the one connected with the contribution of argumentation to the construction of an idea of science in line with the philosophy and history of science (4.1 %). Table 4 shows some examples of the expressions used by teachers and included in the three categories. With respect to the difficulties involved in the integration of argumentation in science classes, as it can be seen in Table 5, the prevailing aspect mentioned by teachers is related to the problems that students have in carrying out the tasks proposed and undertaking to them (71.4%). A smaller number of teachers referred to the challenge involved for them in preparing activities that enable students to argue (6.1%), and to the time required for carrying on with this type of classes (4.1%).

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Strand 7 Table 4. Reasons for including argumentation in science classes identified in the speech of in-service teachers.

Categories

Contribution to scientific literacy

Examples Teacher No. 1: “[By means of argumentation] students learn how to be critical, how to explain why they choose one thing or the other one”. Teacher No. 25: “I think that [argumentation] is important so that they know how to argue or defend their stand not only as regards the topics dealt with in class but also in their daily life” Teacher No. 34: “[Argumentation enables you] To know how to have a point of view, how to have an opinion about a certain topic, and (…) how to have critical thinking”.

Possibility of learning to think

Teacher No. 2: “[By means of argumentation, students] analyse, justify each topic, acquire oral or oral expression resources to justify each point. They practise. They also argue in written form”. Teacher No. 12: “[Argumentation] enables to produce concepts. To generate ideas (…)”. Teacher No. 46: “[Argumentation] enables to reason. To relate”.

Construction of an idea of science in line with the philosophy and history of science

Teacher No. 30: “Knowledge changes constantly (…); you need to be updated in order to strengthen argumentations”.

Table 5. Difficulty in including argumentation in science classes in the opinion of the teachers who were questioned.

Categories Students’ deficit

Challenge for the teacher Time required

Examples Teacher No. 17: “[Students] chat with each other. They do not pay attention. They play with smartphones”. Teacher No. 47: “Students do not pay due attention; therefore, they do not understand the instructions”. Teacher No. 49: “[The main difficulty is obtaining] the complete group participation”. Teacher No. 7: “(…) arguing takes time”.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS According to the results obtained, we can highlight at least two points of conflict between the conceptions of argumentation and the teaching practices implemented. In the first place, when it comes to defining argumentation, teachers underline the idea of submitting evidence, and push into the background its rhetorical component; but when they refer to their practices, they state that they attribute an important role to debate. It is considered that these answers can be the result of a tension between the deslegitimization suffered by rhetoric at different times in history and the value that is currently attributed to debate in democratic societies (Plantin, 2004). Secondly, as it has already been mentioned, teachers associate argumentation mainly 949

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with the idea of submitting evidence that proves knowledge, but the most frequently used resources in classes are books and films, which only include information. These answers establish another zone of tension between conceptions and practices. Concerning the relation between argumentation and different types of contents, two polar stands can be observed; whereas some of the teachers take a more inclusive stand, others associate argumentation only with socio-scientific topics. Even though the latter is powerful from the point of view of scientific literacy, these differences in the conceptions held by teachers highlight the complexity of the notions that are constructed around the idea of arguing in science classes. As regards the categories proposed by Adúriz-Bravo (2014) and taking up the contributions of Jiménez-Aleixandre (2010) and Leitão (2007), teachers stress the epistemic dimension of argumentation and its potential for critical thinking. However, they omit aspects related to the scientific work and to the nature of science that are learnt by means of argumentation. The discussion centring on the difficulties in arguing in science classes focuses almost exclusively on the apparent students’ deficiencies, considering them to be obstacles rather than possibilities for facing the teaching practice in a different manner. This majority stand can be related with a passing-on stand, which gives priority to the amount of knowledge over the possibility of constructing knowledge. The challenges that face teachers for including argumentation in science classes are barely mentioned. Taking into account the complexity of the situation analysed, it can be stated that teacher training in argumentation should include the problematisation of teachers’ conceptions, establishing relations between such beliefs and the different theoretical currents about argumentation, and analysing the educational implications of such theoretical approaches. Finally, it is pointed out that training should include a wide range of activities that would enable teachers to argue and design activities for their students to argue, establishing a more explicit link between argumentation and the nature of science, and to incorporate the discussion concerning which argumentation levels we want to reach and how we can do it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Thanks to the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and to the Science and Technology Teaching Department of the National University of Córdoba (SECyT-UNC) in Argentina for the funding granted to conduct this research.

REFERENCES Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2014). Revisiting school scientific argumentation from the perspective of the history and philosophy of science. In M.R. Mathews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 1443-1472). Dordrecht: Springer. Archila, P.A. (2012). La investigación en argumentación y sus implicaciones en la formación inicial de profesores de ciencias. [Argumentation research and its implications in science preservice teachers’ training] Revista Eureka sobre Enseñanza y Divulgación de las Ciencias, 9(3), 361−375. Buty, C., & Plantin, C. (2008). L’argumentation à l’épreuve de l’énseignement des sciences et viceversa [Argumentation to the test of science teaching and vice versa]. In C. Buty & C. Plantin

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(Eds.) Argumenter en classe de sciences. Du débat à l’apprentissage [Arguing in science classes. From debate to learning] (pp. 17-41). Lyon: Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique. Erduran, S., Ardac, D., & Yakmaci-Guzel, B. (2006). Learning to Teach Argumentation: Case Studies of Pre-Service Secondary Science Teachers. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2(2), 1-14. Jiménez-Aleixandre, M.P., & Erduran, S. (2015). Argumentation. In R. Gunstone (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Science Education (pp. 54-59). Dordrecth: Springer. Jiménez-Aleixandre, M.P. (2010). Diez ideas clave. Competencias en argumentación y uso de pruebas. [Ten Key Ideas. Competences on Argumentation and Use of Evidence]. Barcelona: Graó. Kaya, E. (2013). Argumentation Practices in Classroom: Pre-service teachers' conceptual understanding of chemical equilibrium. International Journal of Science Education, 35(7), 1139-1158. Leitão, S. (2007). La dimensión epistémica de la argumentación. [The Epistemic Dimension of Argumentation]. In E. Kronmüller & C. Cornejo (Eds.), Ciencias de la Mente: Aproximaciones desde Latinoamérica. [Mind Sciences: Approximations from Latin America]. Santiago de Chile: JCSáez Editor. Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography - describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10, 177–200. Mateos, M. & Solé, I. (2012). Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions and Beliefs about Academic Writing. In M. Castelló & C. Donahue, C. (Eds.), University Writing. Selves and Texts in Academic Societies (pp. 53-67). London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. McNeill, K.L., & Knight, A.M. (2013). Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Scientific Argumentation: The Impact of Professional Development on K–12 Teachers. Science Education, 97(6), 936–972. McNeill, K.L., González-Howard, M., Katsh-Singer, R., & Loper, S. (2016). Pedagogical content knowledge of argumentation: Using classroom contexts to assess high-quality PCK rather than pseudoargumentation. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(2), 261–290. Ozdem, Y., Ertepinar, H. Cakiroglu, J., & Erduran, E. (2013). The Nature of Pre-service Science Teachers’ Argumentation in Inquiry-oriented Laboratory Context. International Journal of Science Education, 35(15), 2559-2586. Plantin, C. (2004). Pensar el debate [Thinking debate]. Revista Signos, 37(55), 121-129. Plantin, C. (2014). Lengua, argumentación y aprendizajes escolares. [Language, Argumentation and Learning in the School]. Tecné, Episteme y Didaxis, 36, 95-114. Sandoval, W.A & Millwood, K:A. (2008). What Can Argumentation Tell Us About Epistemology? In S. Erduran & M.P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in Science Education. Perspectives from Classroom-Based Research (pp. 71-88). Dordrecht: Springer. Simon, S., Erduran, S., & Osborne, J. (2006). Learning to Teach Argumentation: Research and development in the science classroom. International Journal of Science Education, 28(2&3), 235-260. Vieira, R.D., da Rocha Bernardo, J.R. Evagorou, M., & Florentino de Melo, V. (2015). Argumentation in Science Teacher Education: The simulated jury as a resource for teaching and learning. International Journal of Science Education, 37(7), 1113-1139. Zohar, A. (2008). Science Teacher Education and Professional Development in Argumentation. En S. Erduran & M.P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in Science Education. Perspectives from Classroom-Based Research (pp. 245-268). Dordrecht: Springer.

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TEACHER BELIEFS ABOUT ARGUMENTATION IN JAPANESE IN-SERVICE TEACHERS Tomokazu Yamamoto¹ and Shinichi Kamiyama2 1

2

Hyogo University of Teacher Education, Kato, Japan Kobe Municipal Seiwadai Elementary School, Kobe, Japan

In recent years, in order to provide appropriate argumentation instruction to the students, it is essential for teachers to recognize the importance of argumentation, as well as to improve their own argumentation skills. Beliefs regarding argumentation held by teachers would impact their argumentation instruction. It can be thought that teacher beliefs regarding argumentation depend on the educational environments and curricula in different countries. However, such beliefs among Japanese teachers in East Asia are yet to be elucidated. In this study, using belief categories developed by Katsh-Singer, McNeill, & Lope (2016), in relation to the seven beliefs, 36 in-service teachers selected the most suitable reply from among "strongly agree," "agree," “disagree,” and "strongly disagree." The results of the analysis of the questionnaire survey show significantly positive results for “The role of argumentation in the classroom,” “Classroom discussion practices,” “Using argumentation to accomplish other educational goals,” “Student ability,” and “Standards” on the teacher’s beliefs (p