To disagree well, one first must listen. Listening conveys respect of the person speaking, especially when your listening includes restating ideas to confirm understanding and let the speaker know you are making this effort. Most of us know this, but still can get caught in angry, argumentative, or defensive engagements. You may know someone who…

In this review essay I respond to issues raised in Mijung Kim and Wolff-Michael Roth's paper titled "Dialogical argumentation in elementary science classrooms", which presents a study dealing with dialogical argumentation in early elementary school classrooms. Since there is very limited research on lower primary school students'…

Puzzled by the shrugs and unimaginative responses of his students when asked certain counterfactual questions, James Edward Carroll set out to explore what types of counterfactual questions would elicit sophisticated causal explanations. During his pursuit of the 'gold standard' of counterfactual reasoning, Carroll drew upon theories of academic…

Students often struggle in AP Physics 1 because they have not been previously trained to develop qualitative arguments. Extensive literature on multiple representations and qualitative reasoning provides strategies to address this challenge. Table I presents three examples, including SiQuENC, which I adapted from a strategy promoted by Etkina et…

Building on the call to racialise Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of development, this paper examines the role of speech in the development of counter-hegemonic white identity. Through a Vygotskian lens, I argue that naming racism as white supremacy, valuing emotion as knowledge, preparing for discomfort, and designing increased opportunities for…

The National Research Council (NRC) released the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) that established a framework for three-dimensional learning, which includes science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. The first dimension of learning emphasizes scientific and engineering…

The topic of living things is ideal for exploring the ideas of children in the early years of school. Preschool and primary school teachers are reasonably confident with the subject matter and all children will have had some life experiences that contribute to their prior knowledge. For this reason, the question 'Is it alive?' is one that…

The aim is to analyse how policy decisions about assessment practices influence what it means to be a student in a performative system. We examine an occasion where a previously mandatory national test became optional, and how students took the opportunity to try to change the school's decision about this. The study is based on student group…

The present study compared socio-educational policies and argumentation in Sweden and Finland during Covid-19 pandemic in March-May 2020. Countries were selected, first, due to similar tuition-free basic education, which performed high in global surveys. Second, no pandemic socio-educational research existed from Nordic countries. National…

In this article, we investigate translanguaging in an English/Spanish dual language, urban, middle school science classroom as the teacher and students employ a scientific argumentation framework to address biodiversity socioscientific issues. Drawing from theories of sociocultural psychology and sociolinguistics, we considered how engaging in…

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…

Strong information literacy, collaboration, and argumentation skills are essential to success in problem-based learning (PBL), and computer-based scaffolding plays a key role in helping students enhance these skills. As students search for information, identify root causes, and propose problem solutions, they are faced with choosing among…

The empowerment of metacognitive skills has an important role in increasing the capacity of critical thinking and active control of students' cognitive processes in learning. Metacognitive skills can be enhanced through the implementation of learning strategies involving higher-order thinking. The RQA, ADI, RQA integrated with ADI are…

This study illuminated the strategy of Zenith Bank®, employing characteristics of children as fascinating instruments to persuade parents-cum-guardians to open a ZECA account for their children. Mrs. Bonke and the author randomly collected the advertisements for one year and nine months with a camera, utilizing a laptop to adjust the advertising…

Scientific knowledge is advanced because scientists manage uncertainty. Although managing uncertainty is an essential practice of science, transferring it from expert settings to K-12 classrooms is problematic because, understandably, students are not familiar with the intentions of scientists. Few studies have explored learning science as an…