Introducing argumentation frameworks: Teaching students to think like scientists by developing claims, evidence, and reasoning.

My students have trouble explaining scientific phenomena. Why? When I probe for recall of key concepts, students are often strong. They know the answer. But other times, even if they know that vaccines prevent disease, or that ice is slippery, or that the mitochondrion is the powerhouse of the cell… they can’t tell me why or how these things happen. Given that this process of explanation and argumentation is essential to doing and learning science (Osborne 2010), I want to teach my students how to build better arguments.  In the classroom, I hope to use this to make their thinking visible and to enhance our flow of learning. More broadly, I hope to weave this practice of argumentation into our activities, to develop my students into engaged and empowered problem-solvers.

Now, what makes a strong argument?
People smarter than me have broken argumentation down into three main components:

1. Claim: an assertion addressing a question about a phenomenon.
2. Evidence: scientific data (from lab investigations or applied research) supporting the claim.
3. Reasoning: justification for the evidence (usually applying scientific concepts).

The strength of any argument, as such, depends on the strength of these components. Let’s say, for example, I ask my students How  does a Bunsen  burner release energy into the environment?
Students might provide answers like the following: The burner releases gas, and when you light it up with a spark, it turns into a flame.  The flame  is hot, and this releases energy in the form of heat.

Here’s a better response.
When we ignite a Bunsen burner, we observe light and temperatures of 1500 C  emitting from the flame.  We also observe the release of carbon dioxide gas and water vapor,  typical products of  combustion reactions.  Bunsen burners release methane gas, which  is a hydrocarbon that readily combusts in the presence of oxygen and heat.  Thus,  this release of energy must  be coming from the combustion reaction, specifically the rearrangement of our reactants methane and oxygen.

The key thing here is that, in addition to having a specific claim, students also provide supporting evidence and scientific ideas. I find that when I talk with my students, the latter is often the most difficult for them. So, I want to give them scaffolds that can develop this skill. Here's mine:

THE ART OF ARGUING IN SCIENCE
​In this lesson, I introduced argumentation as a scientific practice that we’ll be using throughout the year (and life!). This was also our first time trying out CER. Using rubrics and graphic organizers, we evaluated an example of an argument and then set out to build our own. Lesson outline below, adapted from Ben Meacham's work here:

1. Warmup/engager: presentation of socio-scientific prompts; brainstorming arguments.
   One broad goal of mine is to develop scientific literacy. Beyond knowing scientific facts, I want my students to be able make decisions on societally relevant problems. What’s the purpose of knowing the structure of the cell, if students can’t defend a claim for vaccinations? This theme of socio-scientific issues is an important one for me. It will return in future lessons.
2. Introduction of terms: Defining argumentation and why it’s important.
   I really wanted to drive home that this is something that real scientists do; science happens when people build ideas, evaluate them, and refine them into working theories. It’s not the end result, the knowledge, that’s most important for us to walk away with. We want to learn the process, too.
3. How to build an argument: Introducing CER, offering rubric/scaffolds. Applying CER to evaluate a sample prompt: Is my dad a space alien?
   Poor girl… students were so quick to trash her argument! I like this though, because they were quickly able to see why her argument was weak: her evidence did not hold up to scrutiny, and her reasoning was completely lacking. Turns out, though… they’d run into similar problems themselves.
4. Student practice: Using CER, students answer: Have humans evolved in the last 20,000 years?
   Students worked in groups to research an answer to the above. They were encouraged to share ideas, but each had to submit their own arguments. 

Overall, we had fun with this lesson. Students seemed to enjoy the angle of making their arguments better, and my goals of  developing their sensemaking and problem-solving seemed to resonate with them. This didn't come without challenges, though. As expected, supporting their claims with strong evidence and reasoning  was difficult. We've got some room to grow, and I'm excited to track our improvements!

In the next post, I'll start by analyzing student data from this lesson.