Running Head: ARGUMENTATION AND SCIENTIFIC LITERACY
Effect of Argumentation on Scientific Literacy in Secondary Science Courses
Shanna Shaked
Literacy Development & Second Language Acquisition, Ithaca College
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Effect of Argumentation on Scientific Literacy in Secondary Science Courses
Scientific literacy is universally seen as a necessary component of society that is lacking in
today’s youth, yet there is no consensus on how to improve it or even what it is exactly (Pearson,
Moje, & Greenleaf, 2010). Is it (1) the ability to read and write scientific texts, (2) the ability to
think and practice like a scientist, or (3) the knowledge of science that is useful for everyday life?
All three aspects of scientific literacy are encompassed by something called the Nature of
Science (NOS), a concept still debated in education research, but with consensus building around
the following key characteristics of scientific knowledge – it is tentative, based on observations,
subjective, involves human inference and creativity, and socially embedded (Lederman, 2007).
The different aspects of scientific literacy are essential yet can often compete with one
another for time in the classroom, thus pedagogical techniques are particularly effective when
they can enhance both textual and practical abilities (Pearson et al., 2010). In reviewing the
literature, I found that an emerging but still not fully studied technique is that of using
argumentation to foster understanding of the nature of science. This review thus begins with a
broad overview of scientific literacy and issues, and then focuses on the issue of argumentation
in high school science classes. I examine two older case studies and then discuss two reviews of
large sets of such studies. In attempting to draw broad conclusions, studies span secondary
science education in classrooms across the world.
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Literature Review
Pearson et al. (2010) provide a concise overview of the interplay of science and literacy in
public education. They use theoretical and empirical studies to argue for the integration of
science and literacy, pointing out that the ability to read and write texts plays a key role in the
two main aspects of science: finding out what is currently known (reading), and carrying out
one’s own investigation and then reporting on it (writing). Moreover, science and literacy share
the same general approach and steps: set purpose, ask questions, clarify ambiguities, draw
inferences from incomplete evidence, and make evidence-based arguments.
Yet there are barriers to teaching students to read and write science texts. First, teachers
argue that it interferes with the highly recommended process of inquiry in science. Second, the
poor quality of texts for science education makes it difficult for students (and teachers!) to get
the necessary information out of them. Students thus need science reading to be scaffolded.
Third, high stakes testing causes many teachers to feel like lectures are the best way of covering
content (rather than active engagement or reading of texts). Finally, on the elementary front,
these high stakes tests are causing a focus on standardization, such that students are entering
secondary school with much less science knowledge and fewer reading and writing skills.
Pearson et al. discuss five general techniques being used to integrate science and literacy,
showing improvements in both literacy and science literacy, with increased engagement,
understanding, and statistically significant improvements on standardized tests in language arts,
reading comprehension and science. As a final point, they emphasize that all techniques that
integrated science and literacy to some degree of success shared inquiry as a common core.
This review by Pearson et al. thus concisely summarizes results from twenty publications,
providing evidence to support the possibility for simultaneous increases in scientific knowledge
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and literacy. One drawback is that they don’t quantify the gains or perform a meta-analysis of the
studies, so this paper is only suggestive of the potential. Moreover, in the context of the present
investigation into argumentation and high school scientific literacy, it is unfortunate that most of
the projects discussed here were with elementary and middle school students. Still, five of the
publications are based on work with high schoolers, and also involve discussion, collaboration
and peer review, thus this review already hints at the potential for argumentation to foster
scientific literacy.
This use of argumentation to foster scientific literacy is explored in great depth by Yerrick
(2000), in which he conducts an 18-month examination of the effect of argumentation on lower
track students. Yerrick noticed that several studies aimed at comparing lecture with inquiry
teaching, yielded inconclusive results in terms of concept development, retention, achievement,
and long-term differences in student application of concepts. He thus used action research to
examine “whether argumentation can be acquired by students who have experienced widespread
rejection, failure, and alienation in school and science and are accustomed to a fact-based science
classroom discourse” (p. 114).
His results were presented as the changes in frequency of using certain words or types of
phrases in pre- and post-interviews, after 18 months of teaching argumentation skills and
providing practice. In the post-interviews, he found substantial increases in the frequency of
linking evidence to testable warrants, and in students referencing themselves acting on the
problem. Students generally shifted from thinking an outside expert had the answer to
recognizing their own abilities.
As Yerrick himself points out, it is difficult to draw any broad conclusions from this single
study. In particular, because he focused on a lower-tracked course in a high needs school, four of
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the nine students he started with dropped out, leaving only five students for the post-interview.
Finally, interview probes were intentionally used, but can also bias the pre- versus post- results.
Kind, Kind, Hofstein, and Wilson (2011) built on studies such as that by Yerrick, asking
if argumentation strategies can be sustained in laboratory teaching. In a more thorough and
controlled way, they examined the effects of introducing argumentation into labs, which is
generally difficult to implement because stereotypical labs have data that is unproblematic with
obvious conclusions. They chose three strategies to examine. (1) They purposely devised a lab
activity that would yield results that were difficult to interpret within the uncertainties of the
setup. (2) They asked students to devise hypotheses before they had any information on the
system, ideally with a problem where conflicting hypotheses would be proposed. (3) They had
the teacher facilitate a post-investigation discussion about possible methods and sets of data and
the value of that data.
Their first key finding was that even when trying to foster argumentation, more than 80%
of student time was spent on data gathering, the phase that contained the least developed
scientific argumentation. As for the first strategy for fostering argumentation, the complexity of
the task was not marked by any student groups, since none considered experimental error. For
the second and third strategies, they found that students spent little time hypothesizing and often
needed to be prompted to evaluate data. They concluded that argumentation needed to be taught
in order to be well-implemented, and generally for longer than two weeks.
Similar to the study of Yerrick (2000), this study provided an interesting investigation but
one that is not far-reaching. Moreover, results were presented based on observation rather than
any sort of pre- and post-intervention interviews. Given the newness of investigating the effect of
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argumentation on scientific literacy, such case studies will be helpful in better informing metaanalyses.
Building on such case studies, Osborne (2010) presents a review of using argumentation to
aid scientific literacy, but without much fodder for a meta-analysis. He makes the salient
theoretical point that argumentation is needed for a scientist to convince others of their great
discoveries, yet in trying to present so much amazing scientific knowledge, teachers often don’t
present all the argumentation that led to its presence. Osborne does cite a meta-analysis of 14
classes to claim that something isn’t working about the typical model of lecturing, since students
are achieving higher gains when discussing concepts in groups than when taught traditionally.
He then points to four studies finding that students who engage in argumentation show
improvements in conceptual learning. Moreover, he cites a meta-analysis that interactive
activities in science resulted in the highest learning gains compared with creating a final product
or conducting an experiment.
Osborne cites a large study from the U.K. that explicit instruction on reasoning does
increase conceptual knowledge, and even increases language arts and mathematics performance
two years later. However, there were no significant improvements in constructing arguments.
Osborne also points out a complication in assessing the effects of argumentation, since it is
difficult to separate content knowledge and reasoning abilities.
Osborne stands out from the other studies discussed here by reviewing the characteristics
needed to foster successful discourse in science. Based on previous reports, students need to be
taught the norms of social interaction, understand that the function is to persuade others of the
validity of their arguments, have exemplary arguments modeled, have a clear outcome, and have
guiding materials to help students ask appropriate questions and identify relevance of evidence.
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For the future direction of this topic, Osborne synthesizes perspectives from psychology,
sociology, and philosophy to suggest that science education seek to develop the following
reasoning skills: identify patterns in data, coordinate theory with evidence, construct evidencebased hypotheses and arguments, and resolve uncertainty with scientific and statistical tools. And
he points out that more research is needed on competency as a result of argumentation. Despite
the need for more research, Osborne concludes that teaching students to reason helps them
develop reasoning skills, increase content knowledge and be more engaged in learning.
By synthesizing reports and studies, Osborne could make some better supported claims
about the efficacy of argumentation and reasoning. However, although broad and thoughtprovoking, this review lacks any quantitative analysis of the existing studies available, making
most claims merely suggestive of the value of future research.
Finally, Deng et al. (2011) provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date review on
argumentation and scientific literacy. They generally refer to scientific literacy as “students
views’ on the Nature of Science”, but given the overlap of NOS with scientific literacy described
in the introduction, their results would apply to either. They review 105 articles on empirical
studies investigating teaching the nature of science, and divide these studies into ones that
approach the assessment of NOS from three different frameworks. Whereas the dominant
framework is one that describes how the individuals hold the nature of science concepts in their
head, Deng et al. argue that student views on the nature of science should be approached as
“discursive achievements” in the context of the science topic being discussed. They refer to this
as the “argumentative resource framework”, which focuses on the manner with which students
argue scientific claims rather than the dimensions of NOS that they exhibit.
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They found 9 studies that addressed student views on the nature of science through the
argumentative resource framework. These studies generally involve qualitative research, because
discourse is more important than answers to multiple choice tests. They argue that these studies
yield some of the most interesting results, because the dominant dimensional frameworks focus
more on the students’ professed views on the nature of science, whereas these argumentative
framework studies focus on how these views are enacted. According to the argumentative
framework studies reviewed, students are capable of using argument to construct and justify
scientific claims. Moreover, based on systematically analyzing the characteristics and outcomes
of all 105 studies, they find that “[e]ffective interventions generally involve inquiry, discussion,
reflection, and/or argumentation activities” (p. 979).
In general, this paper claims to be a review of studies related to NOS, but seems to be
clearly biased toward the 10% of studies that focus on argumentation. They still provided some
valuable and detailed data, though. Examining their data table of 105 studies, I found that all
studies that used argumentation yielded recognizable or statistically significant change in some
dimensions of student views on NOS, further supporting the potential importance of
argumentation. In contrast to the other research, studies of argumentation are only starting to be
developed and therefore don’t account for differences in gender and culture. Moreover, reviews
of other frameworks span a range of countries and cultures, whereas the argumentation studies
are only in North America.
Conclusion
The current body of research on argumentation and scientific literacy ranges from action
research to meta-analyses, with studies occurring around the world (dominantly in the U.S.) and
at all age levels. Despite this breadth, the investigation is still new enough to not yield conclusive
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evidence on the effect and implementation of argumentation on scientific literacy. All papers
reviewed above do point out the proven effectiveness of non-lecture techniques and inquirybased learning . However, existing evidence-based research does not yet clarify the tradeoff, if
any, of fostering argumentation over other pedagogical techniques. Argumentation seems
obviously beneficial, in theory, for multiple reasons, including Osborne’s (2010) important point
that the goal of science is to “produce new knowledge of the natural world” (p. 463), which
requires that scientists make their case for new ideas. Still, a more systematic set of studies is
needed on argumentation to better understand its influence on scientific literacy.
As this was my first in-depth foray into research on science education, this review was
informative on topics broader than argumentation and scientific literacy. It brought to my
attention that, first, scientific literacy can have three possible meanings. One meaning is the wellestablished Nature of Science concept, which is itself not well-defined. Each of these three
different aspects of scientific literacy can have different pedagogical techniques that may be
most effective. Our goal is to somehow measure this effectiveness, which is extremely difficult
given that the concept itself is difficult to define, and any robust measure of a technique is
difficult to determine. To confound these features (or maybe because of them) Matthews (1997)
points out that there is still an “unfortunate tendency to judge success in teaching the nature of
science by the degree to which students adopt our views on the subject”. Therefore, my overall
impression is that we are in the somewhat ironic position of finding it difficult to use scientific
techniques to understand how to best teach scientific techniques.
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References
Deng, F., Chen, D., Tsai, C., & Chai, C. (2011). Students' Views of the Nature of Science: A
Critical Review of Research. Science Education, 95(6), 961-999.
Kind, P., Kind, V., Hofstein, A., & Wilson, J. (2011). Peer Argumentation in the School Science
Laboratory--Exploring Effects of Task Features. International Journal Of Science
Education, 33(18), 2527-2558.
Lederman, N.G. (2007). Nature of science: Past, present, and future. In S.K. Abell & N.G.
Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of research on science education. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Matthews, M. R. (1997). James T. Robinson's Account of Philosophy of Science and Science
Teaching: Some Lessons for Today from the 1960s. Science Education, 81(3), 295-315.
Osborne, J. (2010). Arguing to Learn in Science: The Role of Collaborative, Critical Discourse.
Science, 328(5977): 463-466.
Pearson, P.D., Moje, E., Greenleaf, C. (2010). Literacy and Science: Each in the Service of the
Other. Science, 328(5977), 459-463.
Yerrick, R. K. (2000). Lower Track Science Students' Argumentation and Open Inquiry
Instruction. Journal Of Research In Science Teaching, 37(8), 807-38.