Engaging in argument from evidence is a fundamental science practice. However, preservice elementary teachers have difficulty constructing arguments. They need effective experience with argument construction in science. Written argumentation is crucial in the process of science learning. One of the approaches for learning science through…

The purpose of this study was to reconstruct writers' reasoning process as reflected in their written texts. The codes resulting from the text analysis were related to cognitive operations, ranging from simple to more sophisticated ones. The sequence of the cognitive operations as the text unfolded represents the writer's cognitive pathway at the…

Science laboratory activities within secondary science have traditionally followed prescriptive outlines both in the structure and reporting of the activity. Building on current understandings of writing to learn science strategies, a Science Writing Heuristic has been developed that encourages students to examine laboratory activities much more…