Learning to argue and arguing to learn: Developing scientific argumentation skills in pre-service chemistry teachers

The discipline of science is characterized by the evaluation of knowledge claims that are supported by available evidences. As such, one of the key attributes of a scientist is the ability to discern relevant and orthodoxy evidence from those that are irrelevant and outdated, and use these evidences to construct coherent arguments (Osborne, 2010). Translating this characteristic practice of science into science teaching in schools means that a learner of science must also be able to construct plausible and relevant arguments from available evidences in learning science concepts. This has important implications for science teacher educators as there is now a need to teach and equip pre-service teachers with skills, knowledge and strategies to teach their prospective students in schools how to make sense of evidences and how to construct coherent arguments and at the same time, learn the contents of science (Newton, Driver,& Osborne, 1999).

The nature of science and paradigm shift in science teacher education asserts that argumentation should be central in science education. The paradigm shift referred to here is the need to move our attention from focusing on acquisition of content knowledge to understanding and appreciating the process by which scientific knowledge is formed. As such, we argue here that argumentation is one of the key scientific practices to enable this change to take place and hence, to enable learners of science to learn science in an authentic manner, science teachers need to know how to position the content that they are teaching in a manner that will open up a space for students to discuss and argue. Yet, in reality, the opportunity for students to engage in argumentation discourse is rarely seen in science classroom practice (Duschl & Osborne, 2002; Roth, et al., 2006). Thus, we argue that if cultivating students’ involvement in the practice of argumentation is a goal to achieve, then the current culture of science classrooms, which is largely dominated by didactic monologues from the teacher, must be altered. Current research indicates that the teacher plays a fundamental role in any reform effort because curriculum implementation and classroom instruction are often shaped by them (Bybee, 1993; Lotter, Harwood, & Bonner, 2007; Sampson & Blanchard, 2012). As such, one of the key platforms to advocate and promote this kind of curricular and pedagogical reform is through initial teacher education programs.

To facilitate the change process, we need to understand what pre-service teachers know about scientific argumentation and to what extent they value its role in the teaching and learning of science. Current research that focusses on pre-service teachers’ perceptions and ideas about science as a form of inquiry highlighted the difficulties they faced in enacting science as inquiry in classroom (e.g., Biggers & Forbes, 2012; Crawford, 2007; Davis, Petish, & Smithey, 2006; Haefner & Zembal-Saul, 2004). The similarity between practice of science as inquiry and argumentation is likely to be due to the fact that argumentation is a prerequisite skill for learners of science to be engaged in science as inquiry. Despite the wealth of research into practices of science as inquiry, few studies in inquiry classroom examine the embedded argumentation explicitly. By embedded argumentation, we refer to the nature of the tasks that inherently has tenets that are debatable. These would generally be scientific theories and ideas that scientists are still seeking evidences for. The only difference between embedded argumentation and argumentation that stems from socioscientific issues is the reliance of embedded argumentation on empirical evidence rather than affective perspective. There is hence limited research on how pre-service teachers participate in argumentation as well as explore on their knowledge and views of the use of argumentation (Kaya, 2013; Ozdem, Ertepinar, Cakiroglu, & Erduran, 2013; Sadler, 2006). As early as the late 1990s, researchers such as Newton, Driver, and Osborne (1999) were already arguing that argumentation should form part of the pedagogical repertoire of science teachers and hence their knowledge in this area should be developed. McNeil and Knight (2013), in their study of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in argumentation highlighted that in-service teachers faced challenges with understanding the structural and dialogic characteristics of argumentation. They also struggled with designing tasks that are argumentation-centric. As such, research into the development of argumentation skills is important not only for students learning science in schools, but also for teachers, both in-service as well as pre-service, engaged in teaching science.