The analysis and reconciliation of students’ rebuttals in argumentation activities

Lin, Y.-R., & Hung, J.-F. (2016). The analysis and reconciliation of students’ rebuttals in argumentation activities. International Journal of Science Education, 38(1), 130-155. doi: 10.1080/09500693.2015.1134848

Background

Although argumentation is an important aspect of scientific literacy, prior research has shown that science teachers rarely plan activities that involve scientific argumentation in class. In addition, researchers have argued that teachers need to provide guidance when students engage in crafting rebuttals or disagreement during argumentation activities so that a friendly learning environment can still be maintained.

Aims

The aim of this article was to examine the strategies science teachers used to help their students resolve conflicts during argumentation activities that involved socio-scientific issues.

Sample

The participants were two science teachers and 98 Grade 10 students (92 females and 6 males) majoring in nursing in a Taiwanese college.

Method

Two socio-scientific issues were chosen based on the school’s science curriculum, students’ prior knowledge and motivation, and were developed for argumentation activities. They were the use of chemical surfactants, and cosmetics and health. The data included four 40-minute role-play debate activities that were video-recorded. The authors used a graphical representation as a tool to code and analyse students’ arguments during these activities. Three key elements were coded: assertion, warrant (the reasoning that connects the supporting evidence to the assertion), and rebuttal. The authors used the emergent coding approach in content analysis to group the strategies that teachers used to coordinate the rebuttal arguments.

Findings

The authors found that the rebuttal arguments made by the students consisted of personal attacks, personal opinions, and scientific evidence. Rebuttals involving personal attacks were the main cause of dialogue conflicts among the students. The authors found three types of strategy that the teachers used to reconcile rebuttal arguments: (a) through teacher management, (b) by using a qualifier (to indicate the strength of the argument), and (c) by forming broad questions.

Implications

The authors recommended that teachers explain the types of rebuttals characterized as personal attacks and suggested that teachers could withdraw students’ right to speak for a short while whenever they used this type of rebuttal. Teachers should then guide the argumentation towards one that is more based on rational and scientific evidence. They recommended that teachers help students evaluate the effectiveness and limitations of their arguments by using a qualifier to indicate the strength of their arguments. They also suggested that teachers use broad questions to encourage students to correct any limitations in their arguments by exploring related information online, in the library, or by conducting experiments in the laboratory.

Original article retrieved from Taylor and Francis.