Learner Participation - Analyzing Argumentation On Socio Scientific Issues – Scientific And Deliberative Aspects

Author(s):

Anne Kristine Byhring(presenting / submitting)Karl Henrik Flyum

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 12 C, Perspectives on Education and Training

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-26

09:00-10:30

Room:

NM-F106

Chair:

Milosh Raykov

Contribution

Environmental and sustainability issues are at the intersection of several interests, including academic, political, ethical and economical aspects (Sterling 2010). Socio-scientific issues inquiry may thus have an important potential for preparing students for civic participation. In civic education scientific argumentation will be but one of several means to a very different end than academic assessment. Towards this broader aim of educating for citizenship, scientific probation will be subordinate and civic deliberation will be dominant. The term 'deliberation' originally meant weighing on scales, and concerns choice of actions (Kock, 2007). Teacher education aiming at education for sustainable development (ESD) should integrate science topics with education for democratic citizenship (Huckle 2014). The position we propose is that the education of the citizen must aim at developing both knowledge and ability towards deliberative argumentation.

The topic of this presentation is analyses of high school student argumentation during groupwork on socio-scientific issues (SSI), and relevant teaching approaches. We will discuss conceptual and methodological issues and theory on argumentation (Toulmin 2003) related to complex contemporary SSI assignments. Our question is: Is promotion of academic probative argumentation apt to prepare students to participate in civic deliberation?

Studies of conceptual development have shown that students often struggle to understand science concepts and concepts used to express abstract thinking patterns (Wellington & Osborne 2001). Early studies of conceptual understanding have been important for later studies of students’ argumentation in science education. Abstract concepts concerning inferences, contrasts, comparisons and causalities are difficult to learn. Ideas about sequencing, chronology and causality are scarce in student talk. Contemporary analyses of argumentation often focus on understanding the science content, that is: on the analytical evidence based (probative) argumentation. In such studies Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (TAP) is used extensively to analyze student argumentation. Prominent researchers in science education and science teacher education, among them Osborne, Erduran and Jimenez-Aleixandre, have used such formal argumentation models in their analyses of student argumentation, as reported by Osborne (2010). In our presentation we will present our concerns about how argumentation models like TAP may fail to cover deliberative aspects of argumentation, and hence fail to integrate civic aspects into the teaching of SSI and ESD.

Erduran and Jiménez-Aleixandre (2012) have presented a definition of argumentation now commonly accepted normative in the community of science education research: “the evaluation of knowledge claims in the light of available evidence” (p. 254). Thus, what counts as «being scientific» in the classroom is regulated by probative norms (Knain, 2005). However, SSI inquiry cannot be reduced to the familiar sets of genres and norms deriving from the institutions of academic science, which have provided a fundament for generations of science teachers. SSI derive from rich public discourses, and is not bound to particular social institutions in any similar manner.

Analysis of student conversation may legitimately function as some sort of tool for assessing students’ skills, measured by norms for scientific understanding and probative argumentation. But students’ conversations also include social and situational aspects. On one hand, there is factual knowledge, concepts and content, and the truth-seeking argumentation about verification according to the standards of a scientific discipline. On the other hand, there is the tangle of societal issues: deliberative argumentation on choice to support informed decision-making, such as in contemporary sustainable development issues. Such deliberation concerns what counts as right, is relevant and carries weight (Kock, 2010). And then there is this: the student’s discussions are situated in school contexts. Their arguments are not only part of deliberative and rhetorical argumentation involving science issues and civic engagement, but also of a situational decision making process aimed at the school assignment.

Method

Excerpts from sixteen-year-old students’ dialogues are presented and discussed, to illustrate the important distinction between scientific and deliberative aspects of argumentation. The examples given in the presentation are from a Ph D study of students’ group work (audio and video) (Byhring 2014). The students collaborated on an SSI inquiry assignment. Through analysis of the qualitative data collected in one case study, the understanding emerged that students’ argumentation did not fit into neat theoretical explanations as well as expected, unless the empirical data were to be heavily reconstructed by adding inferences of meanings that could be considered implicit in the empirical data. Due to this mismatch between analytical presumptions and actual classroom practice, the theoretical approaches were then broadened and changed, in order to try to capture what was actually happening. Tools from systemic functional linguistic, conversation analysis and from rhetorical analyses were used in the analysis. In the presentation the same dialogue sequence will be analyzed using TAP, to show how this model may well serve purposes different from those with which we are concerned, but would most likely fail to encompass the deliberative aspects of this kind of material. When choosing analytical perspectives on student argumentation in education, it is possible to draw a historical line from the dialectical tradition of Plato's academy to the use of the dialectic dialogue as a diagnostic tool. A sometimes overlapping parallel historical line is the rhetorical deliberative tradition. It is present in modern analyses of language and communication (Conley 1994). Systemic Functional Linguistic, for example, focus on functional language, language acts and what language can do for the interlocutors. And Conversation Analysis can describe social functions, strategies for participation and relations between interlocutors. Discourse Analysis can trace power relations and institutional constraints. Rhetorical approaches can suggest impact on the audience, and the appropriate language resources as well as the situated call to choose action.

Expected Outcomes

The answer to the main question is that learning academic argumentation is necessary, but not sufficient, to prepare students for argumentation in civic deliberation. In the science classroom, argumentation will have scientific as well as several deliberative aspects. In a «good» science classroom groupwork the students should both understand content and use science language and argumentation. Analytical approaches, like TAP, can be a suitable tool for analysis as well as for development of teaching approaches to such probative issues. In SSI and ESD, however, where argumentation is related to civic engagement and political choice, something more is needed. A high-quality group conversation on socio-scientific issues must necessarily imply deliberation. Hence the means to develop students' deliberative argumentation competence should also be utilized. The results from the Ph. D. case study exposed a need to support development of students’ deliberative as well as their scientific argumentation. All three contexts: science, society and school, are evident in our empirical example. The analysis of the dialogue sequence show how varying analytical approaches will expose different aspects of the empirical material, but also conveys significant blind spots. The broader aim of the study concerns development of students’ civic engagement as part of ESD, and hence concerns the role and purpose of science education in ESD. My concern is how to direct further development of innovative teaching methods on argumentation within science teacher education. As the most commonly used models of argumentation may fail to distinguish between scientific and civic aspects of argumentation, we suggest that further research on student argumentation in SSI would benefit from covering both deliberative and probative aspects.

References

Byhring, A. K. (2014). Complexity and deliberation in collaborative socioscientific issues (SSI) inquiry discourse. (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Ås: Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Conley, T. M. (1994). Rhetoric in the european tradition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Erduran, S., & Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P. (2012). Argumentation in science education research: Perspectives from Europe. In D. Jorde & J. Dillon (Eds.), Science education research and practice in Europe. Retrospective and prospective (pp. 253-289). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Huckle, J. (2014). Education for Sustainable Citizenship: an emerging focus for education for sustainability. In J. Huckle& S. Sterling (Eds.), Education for Sustainability (pp. 228-243). Oxford: Routledge. Knain, E. (2005). Identity and genre literacy in high-school students' experimental reports. International Journal of Science Education, 27(5), 607-624. Kock, C. (2007). Norms of legitimate dissensus. Informal Logic, 27(2), 179-196. Kock, Christian Erik J. (2010). Ned under overfladen i den politiske debat: via undervisning i argumentation. In: Kvan - et tidsskrift for læreruddannelsen og folkeskolen, Vol. 30, No. 88, 2010, p. 58-68 Osborne, J. (2010). Arguing to learn in science: The role of collaborative, critical discourse. Science, 328, 463-466. Sterling, S. (2001). Sustainable Education. Devon: Green Books. Wellington J. & Osborne, J. (2001). Language and literacy in science education.Berkshire: Open University Press.

Author Information

Anne Kristine Byhring (presenting / submitting)

Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

Faculty of Education and International Studies, Department of Early Childhood Education

Oslo

Karl Henrik Flyum

University of Oslo, Norway

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