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

Pre-service teachers’ understanding of argumentation

According to the past literature, argumentation is not a new word to the public. In this study, the three pre-service teachers’ understanding of argumentation was explored, and it was found that they had heard of argumentation but not in the area of science education. One of the teachers, Alice, tried to provide a general description of argumentation:

“I think argumentation is that, for example, my viewpoint is the earth is round, I should provide evidence, etc.; present my argument. I have learnt a little about this in debating.”

She thinks that argumentation is a kind of expression which needs some support for the conclusion. On the whole, however, the three pre-service teachers’ understandings of argumentation were limited. Two of them did not know how to describe argumentation at all.

Kuhn (1993) argued that the central role of argumentation in scientific practice has been widely accepted by the public. In this study, the three pre-service teachers’ views on the role of argumentation in scientific practice were also probed by inviting them to describe the work of scientists. However, they did not mention argumentation in scientific practice. They all agreed that scientific inquiry is the core activity of scientists’ work. However, they did not consider argumentation in scientific inquiry.

Argumentation was therefore a relatively unfamiliar word to these three pre-service teachers in the area of science education. Two of them, Alice and Tina, had never heard of the word “argumentation” in the area of science education, and Tina even thought that argumentation should only be discussed in philosophy lessons. The other participant, Jane, seemed to have heard of argumentation once in her past three years of theoretical learning, but she still showed some uncertainty about it. In addition, they all felt that it was strange to discuss argumentation in the area of science education. In conclusion, in this area, argumentation was a completely foreign concept to them, and their limited understandings came not from their past theoretical learning in science education but from other areas of their life.

These three pre-service teachers’ views on science education objectives were also investigated in this study. The objectives related to argumentation, such as understandings of the nature of science, scientific rational thinking and the skills related to argumentation, were not mentioned in their responses. Rather, two other objectives were always mentioned: to realize the transmission of scientific knowledge and to cultivate students’ interest in learning science. They considered that to cultivate students’ learning interest is important; however, it is always abandoned when facing the objectives of scientific knowledge transmission. Jane mentioned scientific critical thinking in her response, but she also admitted that it is an ideal perspective which is difficult to realize.

In conclusion, these three pre-service science teachers had very limited understandings of argumentation. They not only did not understand the role of argumentation in scientific practice, but they had also never heard of argumentation in the area of science education. The objectives related to argumentation were not taken into account in their teaching objectives. Argumentation was a completely new word to them in the area of science education. The responses of the three pre-service teachers to the interview questions are organized in Table 4.

Table 4 Pre-service Teachers’ Responses to the Interview Questions
Understanding of argumentation
Q1: Have you ever heard of argumentation? Have you ever heard of it in the area of science education before?
Alice	I have never heard of argumentation in the area of science education before.
Tina	Argumentation? Has it been mentioned in the philosophy classes? I have never heard about it in science education.
Jane	Has it been mentioned in Miss Wang’s lessons? I am not sure.
Q2: Could you describe your personal understandings of argumentation?
Alice	I think argumentation is that, for example, my viewpoint is that the earth is round; I should provide evidence... present my argument. I have learnt a little about this in debating.
Tina	I do not know clearly what the meaning of argumentation is. I think argumentation is “explaining something with examples.”
Jane	I forgot the meaning of argumentation and the content of argumentation was not addressed too much in the past instructional lessons in university.
Understanding the role of argumentation in scientific practice
Q3: Could you describe scientists’ work?
Alice	Scientists’ work is inquiry and the core activity of scientific thinking is inductive and deductive.
Tina	Inquiry should be the focus of scientists’ work. The content of inquiry has been addressed so many times in my theoretical learning in university.
Jane	Inquiry can be viewed as the core practice of scientists’ work. Inquiry represents a kind of thinking.
Understanding the role of argumentation in science education
Q4: What are the objectives of science education?
Alice	“First of all, to help students to understand scientific knowledge is the most important thing. If students cannot acquire enough scientific knowledge, they will fail in the examination and you must be a very unsuccessful teacher in China. Another thing I hope is that I can help my students to cultivate interest in science learning... For they always complain to me that they are too tired of learning.”
Tina	The objective of science teaching is to cultivate students’ interest. But science education today just emphasizes the scientific knowledge transmission from the science textbook to the students.
Jane	The objectives of science education should consist of two dimensions: transmission of scientific knowledge and cultivating students’ interest in learning science. Furthermore, science education should develop students’ ability to deal with problems by scientific critical thinking...Scientific thinking is critical and questioned. But it very difficult to realize in reality.

Pre-service teachers’ ability to compose argumentation

These three pre-service teachers’ ability to compose argumentation was examined in terms of two dimensions: daily argumentation and scientific argumentation.

Argumentation related to personal experiences

The three pre-service teachers’ skills of argumentation were examined by inviting them to introduce one or two lessons and teachers that had impressed them the most. They showed different abilities of composing daily argumentation.

Alice

Alice introduced three teachers who had influenced her the most. In her statement, a sound argument emerged; her statements were clear and closely connected with warrants and backings. When her viewpoint was different from that of the others, rebuttal was adopted in her argumentation to defend her standpoint. For example:

“I do not like the lessons given by Mr. Mark (claim) and I always sleep in his lessons (data). The lessons which impressed me most were The History of Science given by Prof. Walker (claim). Because in his classes I have a totally different feeling (data). There would be a topic in each lesson, and Prof. Walker would ask our views on this topic. Then he would explain the contents from different literature, and he would also provide his personal explanation (warrant). I feel so good in the lessons (backing). Although they give the same lessons, it’s a totally different feeling compared to the lessons giving by Mr. Mark (qualifier). Compared to Mr. Mark’s four lessons, I learned more things in Prof. Walker’s two lessons (rebuttal).”

According to Osborne et al.’s (2004) framework, the statement contains clear rebuttals and it can be classified as level 4 argumentation.

Tina

Tina also introduced the teacher who impressed her the most. Her favorite teacher was an exact contrast to Alice’s. Tina’s response was:

“In my personal opinion, I like Mr. Mark (claim). I thought his lessons were very good (claim). Although knowledge is addressed most in his lessons (warrant). And I have an interest in history so it may influence my opinion (backing).”

The statement shown above is the best example of argumentation from Tina’s response. In this argumentation, the warrant and backing are included to support the claim. According to Osborne et al.’s (2004) model, Tina’s statement can be classified as level 2 argumentation as it lacks any rebuttal. Tina’s statement also shows emotive influence in the claim. Furthermore, in her statement the warrants cannot support the claim.

Jane

Jane’s opinion is similar to Alice’s. She also enjoys Prof. Walker’s lessons, and dislikes the same lessons given by Mr. Mark.

Jane: “I think the teacher who influenced me the most is Prof. Walker (claim). Although I am not his student, I attend all of the lessons, The History of Science, given by him (qualifier). It’s so great, a kind of respect feeling (data). He is a very guileless professor (warrant). You will never think he is a professor from his clothes (backing). I like the professors like him (warrant). In his lessons, he said he felt so sad that the science education in China is too backward (warrant). We all respect him (backing). Compared to him, the lesson given by Mr. Mark is too boring and he is too busy to deal with the different lessons (rebuttal).”

Jane’s statements can be classified as level 4 argumentation as there is clearly rebuttal in her statement. However, we can still find an emotional factor in her statement.

In conclusion, when the questions are closely related to personal experience, these three pre-service teachers have the basic skills of composing argumentation, such as connecting claims and data, employing warrants and backing and even qualifiers and rebuttals in their argumentation. Although these statements are not at the highest level, their expression still provides us with evidence that argumentation exists in their daily life and they have a certain ability to compose argumentation. In addition, we can also find that in the daily argumentation given above, their opinions are not always neutral but are influenced by their personal emotions and less rational thinking. Words expressing emotion such as like, hate and dislike were frequently used in their argumentation.

Argumentation related to scientific knowledge

Three scientific propositions were adopted in the interview to investigate the participants’ ability to compose scientific argumentation: 1) We live at the bottom of an ocean of air; 2) the shape of the earth is very close to spheroid; and 3) in our daily breathing exercises, we inhale oxygen, and exhale carbon dioxide and water (Simon, et al., 2006).

Alice is the only one who tried to make clear argumentation about these questions: “I want to argue the shape of the earth. Firstly, we think that the earth is round (claim) and this shape was recognized as perfect by people in the past (data). The ancients were inspired by the earth’s shadow when there is an eclipse (warrant). According to the round shadow we can understand that the earth is round (backing). And then, if we take a boat in a southern direction, we can see the Polaris (qualifier). In this way, we can conclude that the shape of the earth is cylindrical (conclusion). When we take a boat from west to east, we may also find similar evidence (qualifier). So the shape of the earth should be spherical......I think I cannot finish the argumentation in such a short time.” In this argumentation, Alice tried to divide the problem into several parts and to argue each of them. Her argumentation can be classified into level 3.

Tina showed uncertainty about the scientific statements: “Exhale carbon dioxide... can we argue that in this way?...All these statements look very simple but I cannot make clear argumentation. Why do you ask us to argue these statements?” Actually, Tina did not want to evaluate the evidence to compose argumentation, but wanted to guess the intention of asking for responses to such questions in just a few seconds. She also admits that when she was a student and was faced with the questions asked by the teacher, she always thought about what answer the teacher expected. She did the same here.

Jane did not compose any argumentation as she felt that the activity (i.e., composing argumentation for certain scientific statements) was very strange. She asked a question, “All these scientific statements have been proven by scientists and have been accepted by the public, so why do we need to try to argue them here?” She also thought that it was too difficult to compose scientific argumentation as she had never done it before.

In conclusion, when faced with scientific statements, these three pre-service science teachers showed an extremely low level of argumentation compared with their daily argumentation. The findings are consistent with those of Durant, Evans and Thomas’ (1989) study. In this study, two pre-service teachers showed a positive and traditional view of scientific knowledge, meaning that they believe scientific knowledge to be objective and absolute truth. Two of them were not even ready to argue the scientific statements as they thought they had been argued by scientists already and had become known truths. Faced with scientific statements, these participants had limited ability and less confidence in composing argumentation. They even doubted the necessity of composing scientific argumentation. The details of the three pre-service teachers’ argumentation levels are listed in Table 5.

TABLE 5 The Three Pre-service Teachers’ Argumentation Levels
Name	Daily argumentation level	Scientific argumentation level
Alice	Level 4	Level 2
Tina	Level 2	Failed to give scientific argumentation
Jane	Level 4	Failed to give scientific argumentation

Use of open questions and closed questions in the science classroom

McNeill and Pimentel (2010) suggested that the questions used by science teachers directly determine students’ argumentation in the science classroom; hence, all the questions asked by the pre-service teachers in the three lessons were analyzed to investigate the opportunities of argumentation provided. However, it was found that more than 80% of the questions analyzed were closed questions, and most of these closed questions were followed with a short choral response from the students of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without much time for thinking. No argumentation can be identified from these closed questions.

In contrast to the high proportion of closed questions, the percentage of open questions was very low. While 14.6% of Tina’s questions were open, only 5.3% of Alice’s and 8% of Jane’s were. In other words, the number of open questions in the three pre-service teachers’ classes was very low: 6 open questions in Alice’s lesson, and 7 in Tina’s and Jane’s lessons. The percentages of the questions in the three lessons are presented in Figure 1. Open questions can support students’ argumentation in the science classroom (McNeill & Pimentel, 2010), while few open questions brings little argumentation.

Figure1 Types of Teacher Questions in Three Lessons

Although there were a few open questions asked in the three lessons, not all of them were followed with students’ argumentation. In Alice’s lesson, just two open questions were followed with students’ argumentation, while 4 questions in Tina’s lessons and 6 questions in Jane’s lessons were. Other open questions were inviting students to give examples or to describe the experiment they had observed. The details of the open questions asked in the three lessons are listed in Table 6. Obviously, the students in these three lessons had few opportunities to compose argumentation. Except for the very few cases of argumentation, most of the students’ answers in the three lessons were low-level recall and short utterance responses. This coincides with the characteristics of the IRE pattern (McNeill and Pimentel, 2010).

In conclusion, little argumentation took place in the three pre-service teachers’ classrooms. Most of the questions raised by the teachers were closed questions and students have no opportunity to compose argumentation when faced with closed questions. All argumentation is prompted by open questions, but not all open questions in the classroom will bring about argumentation.

Table 6 Details of Open Questions in the Three Lessons
Teacher	Number of open questions	Sub-types and number of open questions	Followed with argumentation
Alice	6	Asked students to give examples (2)	No
		Asked students to describe the experiment they had observed (1)	No
		Asked students to explain (2)	Yes
Tina	7	Asked students to describe the experiment they had observed (3)	No
Tina	7	Asked students to explain why (4)	Yes
Jane	7	Asked students to describe the experiment they had observed (1)	No
	7	Asked students to explain why (6)	Yes