The impact of a classroom intervention on grade 10 students' argumentation skills, informal reasoning, and conceptual understanding of science

Abstract

The literature provides confounding information with regard to questions about whether students in highschool can engage in meaningful argumentation about socio-scientific issues and whether this process improves theirconceptual understanding of science. The purpose of this research was to explore the impact of classroom-basedargumentation on high school students’ argumentation skills, informal reasoning, and conceptual understanding ofgenetics. The research was conducted as a case study in one school with an embedded quasi-experimental design withtwo Grade 10 classes (n ¼ 46) forming the argumentation group and two Grade 10 classes (n ¼ 46) forming thecomparison group. The teacher of the argumentation group participated in professional learning and explicitly taughtargumentation skills to the students in his classes during one, 50-minute lesson and involved them in whole-classargumentation about socio-scientific issues in a further two lessons. Data were generated through a detailed, written pre-and post-instruction student survey. The findings showed that the argumentation group, but not the comparison group,improved significantly in the complexity and quality of their arguments and gave more explanations showingrational informal reasoning. Both groups improved significantly in their genetics understanding, but the improvementof the argumentation group was significantly better than the comparison group. The importance of the findingsare that after only a short intervention of three lessons, improvements in the structure and complexity of students’arguments, the degree of rational informal reasoning, and students’ conceptual understanding of science can occur.