Are science teachers prepared to promote argumentation? A case study with pre-service teachers in Bogotá city

The challenge of pre-service science teachers training programs

Woolnough (2000) affirms that pre-service training programs for science teachers have a significant influence on future teachers’ perceptions of science and teaching. This author demonstrates the necessity of doing drastic changes in contents and methodologies that have been arranged for the preparation of future science teachers. Orienting pre-service science teachers to build criteria must be a priority because it would enable them to decide on changes, such as the incorporation of argumentation in their training. Thus, Pérez (1992) suggests that teachers should learn in basic training and not only acquiring and reinterpreting the culture developed in the academic disciplines.

Added to that, Kagan (1992), after studies about the professional development of novice teachers, found that teaching in the first year of work seems be a period during which the teachers learns to know their students, use their knowledge to modify and reconstruct their conceptions and develop a standard procedural routine that integrates class practice and instruction. Based on the idea that pre-service training is the only source of substantiation that teachers have to do their work, some professional development courses have been created. Nevertheless, the results are not the best because those teachers repeat their classes as usual and little innovation was found (Archila, 2010). Briscoe (1991) mentions that this trend is due to the absence of a theoretical body of knowledge in science education, fully constructed and recognized by the teachers who, at the same time, should appropriate their profession during their pre-service training process.

Research done about promotion of argumentation in training programs

Archila (2012) distinguishes two distinct categories of research and development with respect to the study of argumentation from a linguistic vision and its contributions to science education. This author suggests that those categories should be taken into account to prepare future chemistry teachers. The first category is related to theoretical foundations demonstrated in the studies of Andriessen and Schwartz (2009 ), Baker (2009 ), Bisault (2008), Duschl (2007) , Erduran (2007), Erduran and Jiménez-Aleixandre (2007), Garcia-Mila and Andersen (2007), Jiménez-Aleixandre (2007), Kelly et al. (2007), Kolstø and Ratcliffe (2007), Muller et al. (2009), Rigotti and Greco (2009), Sandoval and Millwood (2007) and Schwarz (2009). The second category concerns the study of argumentative practices in science education supported on the research projects of Andriessen (2009), Archila (2013a), Buty and Plantin (2008a), Clark et al. (2007), El-Hani and Mortimer (2007), Fillon and Peterfalvi (2008), Greco (2009), Henao and Stipcich (2008), Héraud et al. (2008), Jiménez- Aleixandre and Díaz (2008), Mercer ( 2009), Muller (2008), Orange et al. (2008), Rebière et al. (2008), Simonneaux (2007), Simonneaux and Albe (2008), Stipcich et al. (2006), Texeira (2010), Zeidler and Sadler (2007) and Zohar (2007).

In the last two decades, less than 30% (see Figure 1) of research has been devoted to preparing future science teachers in how to promote argumentation in the learners (Archila, 2012). The categories theoretical foundations and argumentative practices in science education confirm that argumentation plays an important role in the manners that students build understandings and conceptions of school science knowledge, in which there are diversity of responses to argumentative questions that cannot be saturated by a yes / no answer, or by a contribution of information (Plantin, 2010). Incidentally, argumentation in the field of science education has been established as a multidisciplinary issue addressed in its remarkable depth for language sciences (Buty & Plantin, 2008b). This last point explains why it is necessary not only to prepare future chemistry teachers to design effective strategies that promote argumentation, but also offers them serious theoretical foundations of argumentation including history and perspectives.

Figure 1: Research on argumentation 1990-2010 (Archila, 2012:368)

Zohar (2007) analyzes the teaching of science and professional development through argumentation. This author poses the following questions: what do future teachers need to know to incorporate argumentation to their class activities? And which characteristics should pre-service science teacher training programs have to promote the building of that knowledge?

Furthermore, Archila (2014b) confirms the necessity of preparing future chemistry teachers to take advantage of argumentation (and others thinking abilities) to enhance learning. Some of the subjects pre-service chemistry teachers take should be profitable academic places to build strategies to help along students’ argumentation (e.g., history of chemistry, organic chemistry, epistemology of chemistry, biology, statistics, physics), (Archila, 2014a, 2013b).

The theoretical framework that has been addressed through this section is used to explore some approaches of argumentation; incorporation of this thinking ability requires a particular view of teaching and learning. In other words, it is not only acquiring information or appropriating objects of knowledge already developed, but also the emergence of new understandings and creative restructuration of prior knowledge. Students are coauthors of constructive socio-cognitive process in which argumentation offers diverse potentialities; those should be identified in pre-service science teachers training programs (Muller & Perret-Clermont, 2009).