The identification and the evaluation of arguments are fundamental elements of critical thinking. However, the explicit promotion of these elements is virtually absent from university science courses. Much of the reason for this is that in most universities, across nearly all disciplines, instructors are required to see the conceptual content…

Young people around the world show considerable engagement with climate change. How can education draw on this engagement in order to benefit students and society? In this article, we discuss how inquiry-based dialogues can support students' development in their societal engagement. We argue that such dialogues should include real-world problems…

Dialogic teaching -- in which teachers and students address controversial issues -- has become increasingly common in school education to promote civic participation in deliberative democracy. This study addresses this question: when leading whole-class discussions on controversial issues, what discursive moves could teachers adopt to enact…

In university settings, writing argumentative essays from reading conflicting source texts is a common task for students. In performing this synthesis task, they must deal with conflicting claims about a controversial issue as they develop their own positions. Argumentative synthesis is characterized by writers' back-and-forth moves between…

Controversial issues require students to analyse information critically, discuss different perspectives, and develop views on important questions. The problem-based learning model (PBL) allows learners to gain insights from various perspectives and apply the knowledge acquired to different situations. This mixed-method study aims to examine the…

Students' argumentation skills are considered a central tool to contribute to scientific controversies in the science classroom. Scientific controversies of social relevance (socioscientific issues; SSI) are subject to multiple viewpoints that are often rooted in diverse disciplines. However, the relationship between issue familiarity and…

The ability to make evidence-based decisions, and hence to reason on questions concerning scientific and societal aspects, is a crucial goal in science education and science communication. However, science denial poses a constant challenge for society and education. "Controversial science issues" (CSI) encompass scientific knowledge…

Socio-scientific decision-making necessitates reasoning from multiple perspectives and the use of trade-offs. This study examines how students decide on socio-scientific issues when they engage in an instructional intervention to enhance their socio-scientific decision-making towards consensus building that, in this study, emphasises generating…

The Covid-19 pandemic is the reason why humanity is paying more attention to the importance of regular and rigorous handwashing. Interestingly, in the nineteenth century, regular and rigorous handwashing was a key (and controversial) solution proposed by the Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis to cut drastically cases of puerperal…

Improving the ability of young people to construct arguments about controversial science topics is a desired outcome of science education. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the impact of an argumentation intervention on the socioscientific issue of climate change with Year 10 students in a disadvantaged Australian school. After…

This article discusses the dialogic nature of regulating perspectives on a controversial topic during students' argumentative writing in remote teaching. The emerging collaborative writing processes mediated by digital technology are importantly changed as responses to physical distancing in education, as demanded by the measures of biosecurity…

Researchers agree that an interdisciplinary approach should be taken to address bioethical issues at school. Little is known about the knowledge students need to be able to understand and take part in discussions about these issues. We investigate the relationship between 79 students' prior knowledge in various domains and their ability to recall…

The aims of this paper are twofold. First, we present, justify, and characterise an instrument for analysing students' argumentative reasoning developed from Walton's ideas. Then, from the analysis of students' argumentative discussion about a socio-scientific controversy, we identify the advantages and disadvantages of using the instrument. The…

Citizens often face dilemmas where they need to make decisions that impact our lives and are related to science and religion. For example, genetic cloning, nuclear energy and climate change can potentially appeal to moral and religious values as well as scientific knowledge. The ability to coordinate knowledge and values in reaching justified…

Student-active science teaching that includes interactions among students is suggested to support students' reasoning skills. However, little is known about what are the beneficial modes of interaction to support learning. In the present study, we investigated how different types of classroom discussion on socioscientific issues can encourage…