Educating future citizens and equipping them to make informed decisions regarding contemporary social issues interconnected to science and technology has been a major focus in science education policies in Europe for over a decade (Hazelkorn, 2015). Moreover, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, adopted by United Nations Member States in 2015, ensures that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development through education. Hence, this includes an Education for sustainable development (ESD) that “gives learners of all ages the knowledge, skills, values and agency to address interconnected global challenges including climate change, loss of biodiversity, unsustainable use of resources, and inequality. It empowers learners of all ages to make informed decisions and take individual and collective action to change society and care for the planet.” (UNESCO, 2023).

In addition, engaging learners with Environmental Socioscientific Issues (ESSI) (e.g. Social issues with conceptual or technological ties to science), associated to sustainability, has become a major focus for recent research in science education from various perspectives (Morin et al., 2017; Zeidler et al., 2019). Reasoning on Environmental Socioscientific issues encompass dealing with ill-structured open-ended environmental complex problems, embedded in uncertainties.

Moreover, studies that are focusing on promoting the argumentation discourse in the science classroom, including on socioscientific issues, have emanated from the perspectives of argumentation as a way to learn science and about science, but also from an interest in the students’ citizen education in a democratic society, which requires the participation in debates (Jiménez-Aleixandre & Erduran, 2007).

However, encouraging classroom students’ dialogic argumentation practices and assessing it, during a decision-making in authentic SSI and in different cultural contexts, as students consider multiple perspectives from different sources, are still current topics in socioscientific issues science education research (Zeidler et al., 2019).

This research contributes to what is mentioned previously. It encourages both classroom students’ decision-making regarding an ESSI, which takes into account values, global and local dimensions and social, scientific and technical content-knowledge related to the issue, and argumentation practices. In particular, we focus in this paper on examining classroom high school students’ argumentation quality when making a decision regarding an environmental socioscientific authentic issue while considering multiple perspectives from different sources (Rached, 2018).

Our research question is: What is the students’ dialogic argumentation quality during a classroom decision-making on a socioscientific issue?

In this paper, we examine the product of the students’ dialogic argumentation, i.e. arguments. We take into account in our analyses the arguments core and to some extent, the argumentation dialogic features in which two or more speakers discourse with one another (Nielsen, 2013).

We designed and conducted the research in two specific contexts in France and Lebanon, with an experimental design-based research approach committed to the SSI and argumentation currents (Rached, 2015). In this paper, we present the data analyses from the French sample.

Thirty French second year high school students in the scientific-section, were engaged in a weeklong ESSI teaching unit during their school year. The ESSI involves a local energy decision, choosing a heating system for a habitat, in the context of a climate global warming. The teaching unit includes five sessions. Each session lasts 25-55 min. After teaching basic scientific content-knowledge related to the issue (session 1), we presented to the students in small-group discussions one of three abstracts from scientific papers debating Global warming issue, to read and synthesise in written form (session 2) and then to present it orally to the whole classroom (session 3). Later, we presented to the students in small-groups, a document resuming technical, scientific, environmental, economical, health, etc. characteristics of five heating systems powered by different energy sources (electricity, wood, fuel, gas and solar), from which they had to choose one, while justifying with reasons (session 4). After, the students present and defend their (written) respective choices to the whole classroom (session 5). We recorded all the sessions and working groups. In addition, the students answered the same ESSI questionnaire presented to them before and after the teaching unit (Rached, 2018). In this paper, we present the analysis of the students’ small-group discussions of one working group during session 5. Students’ dialogic argumentation was analysed using the Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (TAP), developed by (Osborne et al., 2004) (Table 1). We traced the quantity and quality of argumentation in their discourse. TAP illustrates the nature of an argument in terms of claims, data, warrants, backings, qualifiers and rebuttals. Osborne et al. reorganise either data, warrants or backings in one category called grounds. Moreover, Osborne et al. take into account the oppositions between students in their discourse and the use of rebuttals. Table 1: Analytical Framework Used for Assessing the Quality of Argumentation (Osborne et al. 2004) Level 1: Consists of arguments that are a simple claim versus a counter-claim or a claim versus a claim. Level 2: Has arguments consisting of a claim versus a claim with the ground(s) but do not contain any rebuttals. Level 3: Has arguments with a series of claims or counter-claims with ground(s) with the occasional weak rebuttal. Level 4: Shows arguments with a claim with a clearly identifiable rebuttal. Such an argument may have several claims and counter-claims. Level 5: Displays an extended argument with more than one rebuttal.

We present in Table 2 our first findings. The students reach the high-level argumentation (Levels 4 and 5) by using rebuttals at many occasions (8) and some weak rebuttals and oppositions (6). These results suggest that offering students with basic scientific knowledge and the opportunity to argumentation practices on the issue, while engaging them with high-quality arguments, may have certain impact on the argumentation quality use. However, our findings are limited to one-group analyses. We need to analyse other small-groups discussions to check for eventual similar outcomes. It is also important to compare our sample results with the Lebanese sample for a broader cultural contextual view of these findings. The high-level arguments frequency in our findings (44.3%) are comparable to (Osborne et al., 2004) findings (43%) on the SSI topics with their experimental group after a yearlong work with junior high-school students. However, our students are at the end of their second year of high-school, which explains some of the students’ performances in our research. The use of Osborne et al. model to analyse dialogical collective arguments reduces many gaps found in the initial TAP (Nielsen, 2013). However, it would be interesting to make some adjustments in order to grasp the students’ cross references made along the discussions and the distinction between arguments with weak rebuttals and those without, in the Level 3. In addition, we suggest introducing a sub-level of argumentation for the use of qualifications, which also could be an indicator of argumentation quality, especially when comparing argumentation discourse to written ones. Table 2: numbers of each level of argumentation achieved by students Level of argumentation / Frequency (percentage) Level 1: 1 (5.5%) Level 2: 3 (16.6%) Level 3: 6 (33.3%) Level 4: 5 (27.7%) Level 5: 3 (16.6%) Total: 18 Non arguments: 43 = 23 + 20

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