The ability to engage in argumentation, that is the coordination of evidence and reasons to support claims, is an important skill in a democratic society as well as for developing subject-specific literacies. The teaching and learning of argumentation can be embedded in multiple school subjects. However, the connections between the argumentation of different school subjects are not always obvious, particularly in subjects where collaboration is not the norm, such as science and religious education (RE). Yet everyday issues often involve considering information from multiple sources, such as scientific information or ethical, moral, or religious perspectives. There is a need to better understand how students can integrate the argumentation from different subjects into cross-curricular or interdisciplinary contexts. This study investigated students' argumentation in two school subject contexts (science and religious education) and an interdisciplinary context which involved information from both.

Argumentation is often defined as the justification of claims with evidence and reasons (Toulmin 1958). It is widely recognised as an important skill to learn in school, both for the development of critically literate citizens as well as a deep understanding of the disciplines being studied (e.g. European Union, 2006; Monte-Santo, 2016).

Argumentation has been a highly prominent area of research in science education for many years (Erduran et al., 2015). It is seen as important as it enables students to understand how science works and how scientific knowledge is justified or evaluated, and as such it represents an important epistemic practice of the discipline (Erduran & Dagher, 2014). While the research literature on argumentation has been extensive in science education, interdisciplinary argumentation between science and other disciplines is less explored (Authors et al. 2019a)

Religious Education in England, as well as in much of Western Europe, is often pluralistic in nature and concerned with the study of religions and worldviews, rather than induction into a particular faith (Jawoniyi, 2015). As a school subject, then, it is often positioned as a multidisciplinary site that draws on many cognate disciplines such as philosophy, theology, sociology, psychology, and others (Freathy et al., 2017). Argumentation is a strong feature of many RE curriculum documents in England as students are asked to analyse and evaluate various truth claims and to generate well-informed and reasoned responses that draw on a range of sources (Authors et al., 2019b). While there has been research on argumentation on science and religion debates (e.g. Basel et al., 2014; Weiß, 2016), these have often focused on issues of creation and have been conducted in contexts where RE is more confessional in nature.

Many issues we face in daily life require interdisciplinary thinking and complex reasoning drawing on multiple disciplinary knowledge bases (Crujeiras-Pérez & Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2019) or the integration of moral and ethical values (Joshi, 2016). However, school subjects can often be presented in fragmented and siloed ways that limit integration (Billingsley et al. 2018) and it is not usual for teachers of subjects of science and RE to collaborate with each other (Hall et al. 2014). We know little about how students transfer or integrate their argumentation between the contexts of science and RE as school subjects. This study, therefore, sought to address the following research question: How does student argumentation ability vary between science, RE and a Science-RE cross-curricular context?

The findings suggest that students' argumentation performance was better in the science context than the interdisciplinary context and was lowest in the RE context. Finer analysis shows that student performance on different elements of argumentation (such as identifying claims, evidence, and warrants, or evaluating arguments) also varied between the contexts, with lowest performances often noted in the RE context.

The participants were 457 students of teachers who were involved in a professional development programme for the teaching and learning of argumentation in science and RE in England. Just over two-thirds of the participants were male (67%). The mean age was 13yrs (SD 0.78yrs). The instrument used was informed by previous argumentation assessment research (Osborne et al. 2016) and adapted to the contexts of science, religious education, and a cross-curricular topic involving science and RE. These were ‘What’s growing?’ (SCI) addressing the biological distinction between plants and fungi; ‘Christmas for non-Christians’ (RE), addressing arguments over whether religious festivals can be celebrated by non-adherents to that faith; ‘A zoo near you’ (SCIRE), addressing a socio-scientific issue of the ethics and value of zoos, and referring to the shared religious notion of stewardship (Hitzhusen & Tucker, 2013). The sections all presented two characters with different views on each topic so that students had to identify their individual lines of argumentation. The tasks had a similar sub-question structure, working through the identification of the claim, evidence, the link between evidence and claim (warrant), and the expression of a personal line of argumentation which encouraged evaluation of the two presented arguments. The grading of the assessment was conducted by three team members. We sought to ensure robust reliability between the grading of multiple raters. Krippendorff’s alpha test was used (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007) to estimate the interrater reliability between the three raters. Reliability was considered for each question type, ranging from α=0.76 to α=1.00 which was deemed acceptable for our purposes. To address our research question, we considered both the descriptive statistics and subjected the data to comparative tests, such as Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and related-samples Friedman’s two-way analysis of variance tests.

Wilcoxon signed-rank tests show significant differences between scores of SCI and RE (Z= -10.884, p=0.000), between SCIRE and RE (Z = -7.587, p=0.000) and between SCIRE and SCI (Z= -4.623, p=0.000). The majority of students scored higher on SCI than RE or SCIRE, and higher on SCIRE than RE. Examining comparative performances at each level of argumentation show a range of differences, which will be explored in greater detail in the presentation. For example, fewer students identified the evidence for both characters in RE (43%) than in SCI (67%) or SCIRE (66%). Students were also least able to identify the link between claim and evidence in the RE context compared with the other two contexts [SCI vs RE (Z= -9.524, p=0.000), SCIRE vs RE (Z= -5.086, p=0.000)]. When constructing their own line of argument, students performed better in SCI than in the other two contexts [SCI vs RE (Z= -7.573, p=0.000); SCI vs SCIRE (Z= -8.114, p=0.000)]. Lower performances in RE contexts is interesting given the strong explicit focus on argumentation within the context of the RE curriculum (Authors et al., 2019b). However, argumentation in RE has been reported by teachers as more complex where there is no definitive answer compared with science (Authors et al., 2020). Mid-way performance in the cross-curricular context may indicate some level of transfer of argumentation skill between the contexts where students can apply their scientific argumentation where applicable but remain challenged by RE components. The findings will be contextualised within an ongoing innovative professional development and research project for science and RE teachers to collaborate in the teaching of argumentation within and across their subjects.

Basel, N., Harms, U., Prechtl, H., Weiß, T., & Rothgangel, M. (2014). Students’ arguments on the science and religion issue: the example of evolutionary theory and Genesis. Journal of Biological Education, 48(4), 179-187. doi:10.1080/00219266.2013.849286 Billingsley, B., Nassaji, M., Fraser, S., & Lawson, F. (2018). A framework for teaching epistemic insight in schools. Research in Science Education, 48, 1115-1131. Crujeiras-P., B. & Jimenez-Aleixandre, M. P. (2019). Interdisciplinarity and argumentation in chemistry education. In S. Erduran (Ed.), Argumentation in Chemistry Education: Research, Policy and Practice, pp32-61. London: Royal Society of Chemistry European Union. (2006). Recommendation of the European parliament on key competences for lifelong learning, Official Journal of the European Union, 3012-2006, L 394/10-L 394/18. Retrieved August 10, 2020 from https://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2006:394:0010:0018:en:PDF Freathy, R., Doney, J., Freathy, G., Walshe, K. and Teece., G. (2017). Pedagogical Bricoleurs and Bricolage Researchers: The Case of Religious Education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 65(4): 425–443. doi:10.1080/00071005.2017.1343454. Hall, S., McKinney, S., Lowden, K., Smith, M., & Beaumont, P. (2014). Collaboration between Science and Religious Education teachers in Scottish Secondary schools. Journal of Beliefs & Values, 35(1), 90-107. doi:10.1080/13617672.2014.884846 Hayes, A. F., & Krippendorff, K. (2007). Answering the Call for a Standard Reliability Measure for Coding Data. Communication Methods and Measures, 1(1), 77-89. doi:10.1080/19312450709336664 Hitzhusen, G. & Tucker, M. (2013). The potential of religion for Earth Stewardship. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 11(7), 368-376. doi/abs/10.1890/120322 Jawoniyi, Oduntan. (2015). Religious education, critical thinking, rational autonomy, and the child’s right to an open future. Religion & Education, 42(1), 34–53 Joshi, P. (2016). Argumentation in Democratic Education: The Crucial Role of Values. Theory into Practice, 55(4), 279-286. doi:10.1080/00405841.2016.1208066 Monte-Sano, C. (2016). Argumentation in history classrooms: A key path to understanding the discipline and preparing citizens, Theory Into Practice, 55(4), 311-319. doi:10.1080/00405841.2016.1208068 Osborne, J. F., Henderson, J. B., MacPherson, A., Szu, E., Wild, A., & Yao, S.-Y. (2016). The development and validation of a learning progression for argumentation in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(6), 821-846. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21316 Weiß, T. (2016). Fachspezifische und fachübergreifende Argumentationen am Beispiel von Schöpfung und Evolution. [Specialist and multidisciplinary Arguments Using the Example of Creation and Evolution]. Gottingen: V&A.