Understanding and practice of argumentation: A pilot study with Mainland Chinese pre-service teachers in secondary science classrooms

Science education has long been criticized for placing too much emphasis on scientific knowledge transmission while failing to develop students’ scientific literacy (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000). To reverse this negative trend, great efforts have been made by science educators, and a number of strategies and theories have been developed in the past several years. Among these new approaches, argumentation has caught the eye of science educators since it began to be discussed in science education in the latter part of last century. A number of studies on argumentation have been published in international journals in the past few years (e.g. Clark & Sampson, 2007; Driver et al., 2000; Erduran, Simon, & Osborne, 2004; Kuhn, 1993; Lawson, 2002; Lawson, 2003; Maloney & Simon, 2006; McNeill & Pimentel, 2010; Osborne, Erduran, & Simon, 2004; Zohar, 2008). The central role of argumentation in science teaching and learning has also been discussed in past studies (Brick & Bell, 2008; Driver et al., 2000; Kuhn, 1993). However, argumentation rarely automatically takes place in science classrooms today (McNeill & Pimentel, 2010). One premise of successfully implementing argumentation in the classroom is the science teachers’ professional development (Lawson, 2002). Zohar (2008) argued that to implement argumentation in science lessons, science teachers need to experience a fundamental shift in their pedagogical understanding and practice. In other words, science teachers’ limited understanding may be an obstacle to implementing argumentation. An exploration of science teachers’ understandings and skills is both significant and necessary to develop countermeasures to improve argumentation in science education today. Although the area of argumentation has attracted the attention of an increasing number of science educators, according to a search using the key word argument* on the ERIC online data base, few studies have been done in the Greater China area and even fewer have been conducted in Mainland China. While a search using the key word 论证 (argumentation) on the CEPS¹ for journal articles in Chinese from 2002 to 2012 yielded 725 articles, a quick look at the titles of these articles, focusing especially on those related to science education, showed that there were about 20 papers from Taiwan and only one from Mainland China. In conclusion, few studies of argumentation have been conducted in Mainland China to date.

This study explores pre-service science teachers’ understandings, skills and their instructional practice of argumentation in science classrooms in Mainland China. Three pre-service science teachers volunteered to be involved in this study. Their understandings and skills of argumentation were examined. At the same time, the questions they raised in their lessons during their field experience were also examined. This study can provide us with an initial understanding of pre-service science teachers’ status with regard to argumentation, and provide evidence for future studies in this area in Mainland China.

¹CEPS: http://www.airitilibrary.com/index.aspx, a database for journal articles in Chinese.