Socioscientific issues (SSI), important for developing scientific literacy, are controversial issues related to social and scientific information. This study investigated the effect of argumentation about SSI on middle school students' views, attitudes, knowledge about SSI, and their scientific literacy. The study uses a pre-test and post-test…

This research aimed to understand the features of the informal reasoning skills performed by students who debated the socio-scientific contentious issue of breastfeeding versus milk formula during an Indonesian biology lesson. A class of 30 students in grade 11 discussed this issue by participating in a role play represented by four organisations…

National standards that centre on the underpinning epistemic practices of the discipline has emphasised the need for teachers to focus much more on knowledge generation approaches to learning. Adopting a complexity perspective, we attempt to understand how teachers shift over time by examining their epistemic orientation to knowledge generation…

For decades, the case has been made for inquiry-based activities that enable teaching and learning of science concepts through the process of doing science. Laboratory courses provide a unique setting with opportunities for students to learn to ask questions, plan and carry out investigations, analyze data, and construct scientific arguments. Yet,…

Students' difficulties in scientific argumentation have been widely reported in the literature. Researchers argue that these difficulties result mainly from students' lack of understanding of the goals and norms of argumentation. Therefore, designing and implementing appropriate instructional scaffolds to facilitate such essential knowledge of…

This study explored the effects of directed and undirected online peer feedback types on students' peer feedback performance, argumentative essay writing skills, and acquisition of domain-specific knowledge. The study used a pre-test and post-test design with four conditions (feedback, feedforward, a combination of feedback and feedforward, and…

This research aimed to determine and develop 8th grade students' views on the demarcation between science and pseudoscience. In this context, the study was designed with convergent parallel design which is a mixed research method. The study group for the quantitative dimension was composed of 32 8th graders in a secondary school in Akdeniz…

The purpose of the study was to reveal the effects of scientific argumentation-oriented teaching activities on the environmental attitudes and knowledge of seventh-grade Turkish students within the human and environment unit compared to the activities suggested by the ministry of education science and technology curriculum. This study employed a…

The purpose of this study was to identify the Argumentation-based Inquiry (ABI) process from the perspective of teachers implementing the approach and determine the impacts of the process on both teachers and students. The researchers conducted the study via qualitative research methods. To this end, three science teachers teaching in three…

There is compelling evidence that arguing with peers in educational contexts fosters students' content knowledge and argumentation skills. Indeed, curricula have already been developed that, through tailored support for peer argumentation, promote both content knowledge and argumentation skills simultaneously. However, we do not yet know how to…

Biology and biotechnology are increasingly ubiquitous and genome research will define the 21st century as the century of biology (Venter & Cohen, 2004). Comprehension of biology is needed to engage with major public policy issues and to make informed decisions (Barton & Uphadyay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2003; NRC, 2012; Walker, 2021).…

Peer argumentation, especially the discussion of contrary points of view, has experimentally been found to be effective in promoting science content knowledge, but how this occurs is still unknown. The available explanations are insufficient because they do not account for the evidence showing that gains in content knowledge are unrelated to group…

This study used a quasi-experimental design to examine the effects of argumentative writing on non-science majors' conceptual understanding and the growth of their writing skills over a semester. To assess gain in conceptual knowledge, tests were given before and after the course; students in the writing group gained significantly more than…

Sustainability has become a prominent theme in society and can be considered as an integral part of scientific citizenship. This study investigates to what extent the production, use and re-use of (bio)plastics initiates students' reasoning and to identify the kind of content knowledge students put forward. The structure of students' arguments was…

Physics inquiry can be interpreted as the construction of a cogent argument in which students apply inquiry knowledge and knowledge of physics to the systematic collection of relevant, valid, and reliable data, creating optimal scientific support for a conclusion that answers the research question. In learning how to devise, conduct and evaluate a…