Learning to TAP An effort to scaffold st

  

L EARNING T O T AP : A N E FFORT TO S CAFFOLD

TUDENTS RGUMENTATION

  IN CIENCE S ’ A S

Demetris Lazarou

  

University of Bristol

Abstract

  The paper describes a research study in which students learned to structure their arguments by using Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (Toulmin, 2003). Data sources included students’ written answers and audio-recorded oral answers given in classroom discussions in seven science education lessons during a five month period. Data were quantitatively analysed, based on the analytical tool suggested by Erduran, Simon & Osborne (2004), to evaluate possible improvements of students’ argumentation skills. The analysis revealed that positive improvements of students’ skills could be observed over time. Important implications for promoting argumentation in primary science are also suggested.

  Introduction

  Argumentation is highlighted by various researchers as one of the most important activities of science education (e.g. Newton, Driver, & Osborne, 1999). The reasons for this do not refer just to the educational value of argumentation as a skill but also to its value as a social skill (e.g., Erduran, Simon, & Osborne 2004). Despite its noted importance and the assertion that it is a skill that needs to be explicitly taught (e.g., Kuhn & Udell, 2003), argumentation is not adequately practiced in primary science education (Tytler & Peterson, 2003).

  The aim of this research effort was to help primary school students enhance their argumentation skills through promoting structured argumentation in primary science education. The specific interest of the study thus, centred upon the structure of the argument and an effort to scaffold students’ understanding concerning the argument’s structure, as this was considered as the initial, but still the fundamental skill students have to acquire before dealing with the inner validity of an argument. The reasons for these are presented in the following section of the paper.

  To address the aims of the research study, Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (TAP) (Toulmin, 2003) was utilised as a teaching medium and a scaffold for supporting and enhancing students’ argumentation in primary science education; it was utilised as a medium for assisting students realise the essence of the argument and a means of helping them realise how they can structure an argument and how they can evaluate the adequacy

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  of their arguments in terms of its inner structure. It needs to be noted that this study is a part of a larger study examining in more detail the ways structured argumentation can be integrated in primary science education.

  Rationale

  As Newton et al. (1999) suggested, science education should not focus only on knowledge acquisition by the students but it should also emphasise aspects around the nature of science, about its epistemology, the methods and the practices that scientists utilise, in a way of helping students realise that science is not equivalent to a fixed, ready- made set of facts that they have to learn. Students need to understand that science is a way of constructing theories which explain how the world may be (Erduran et al., 2004), a way of becoming socialised into the discourse being used and the practices of the scientific community (Newton et al., 1999), a way of being introduced to scientific ways of knowing and not just acquiring facts about the way the world is (Driver, Asoko, Leach,

  Mortimer, & Scott, 1994) , a way of being able to evaluate claims in the light of new

  evidence (Newton et al., 1999) and a way of comprehending that scientific theories are constructed explanations that help us make sense of the world (Sandoval & Millwood, 2005). As these researchers suggest, this is possible only through incorporating argumentation in our teaching and learning practices.

  Some people may argue that argumentation is a skill that should be addressed at a later stage in students’ lives. Even though there are various research projects indicating the importance of engaging students with argumentation in secondary school (e.g., Erduran et al., 2004; Jiménez-Aleixandre, Bodríguez, & Duschl, 2000; Sandoval & Millwood, 2005) it seems that argumentation is a skill that needs to be addressed while students are still in primary school. Kuhn and Udell (2003) report that there are research projects which suggest that even small children are capable of showing competence in producing arguments to support a claim and in understanding the structure of an argument (Chambliss & Murphy, 2002). Kuhn (1991) showed that a significant improvement of argumentation skills can take place across preadolescence to early adolescence (11-13 years) whereas no significant change of the argumentation skills can be noticed between adolescent and young adult participants, indicating thus the crucial importance of addressing argumentation in primary school. The importance of addressing argumentation in primary school is evident by the reported inadequacy of students to undertake an effort not only to challenge their opponent’s argument but also to advance their own (Kuhn & Udell, 2003). Additionally, Kuhn (1991) argues that children of early adolescence seem to have weak metacognitive skills as they think with the theories they implicitly hold about the world they live in and not explicitly about the theories; this suggests that there is a need to support students to acquire the metacognitive skills needed in order to engage productively with argumentation and learn strategies for productively interacting with the theories they hold.

  However, is the structure of the argument important for promoting students’ argumentation skills? One of the main reasons for fallacious argumentation identified by Zeidler (1997) is students’ naïve conception of argument structure; “ when students begin to formulate propositional arguments and counterarguments, their lack of a conceptual awareness about the structure of arguments gives rise to misconceptions about the validity of their claims” (Zeidler, 1997, p. 488). Having awareness about the structure of arguments is thus presented as a crucial factor in assisting students express a valid claim which could be a significant instructional implication for teaching argumentation. Walker and Zeidler (2007) further supported this by recommending that students should be explicitly taught about the structure of an argument either prior or during argumentation activities. A very interesting finding of Cross, Taasoobshirazi, Hendricks and Hickey (2007) which further supports the importance of teaching students about argumentative structures is that these seem to play a significant role in positively influencing students’ learning and achievement in science education. Furthermore, another recent project by Sibel Erduran, Jonathan Osborne and Shirley Simon (e.g., Erduran et al., 2004; Osborne, Erduran, & Simon, 2004) has shown that pedagogical practices implemented by teachers which had a focus on the structure of the argument, resulted in qualitatively and quantitatively enhancing students’ arguments.

  In spite of the noted importance of argumentation through research studies, the assertion that it is a skill that can be developed (Erduran et al., 2004; Kuhn, 1991; Kuhn & Udell, 2003) and the assertion that it is a skill that needs to be explicitly addressed and taught (Erduran et al., 2004; Kuhn & Udell, 2003; Walker & Zeidler, 2007), scientific argumentation is not adequately practiced in primary science education (e.g., Kuhn, 1991; Tytler & Peterson, 2003). This research study attempted to address these issues to a certain extent.

  Toulmin’s (2003) Argumentation Pattern (TAP) was utilised as an argumentation framework for fulfilling the aims of the research; a model through which an argument’s structure is defined by its interlinked components: i) a claim (C), which is an assertion put forward and which awaits to be established, ii) data (D), which are facts in order to support the claim, iii) a warrant (W), which is a clause which justifies the connection between claim and data, iv) a backing (B), which justifies the authority of the warrant, and v) a rebuttal (R), which is a clause which may reduce the strength of the warrant (Figure 1). TAP seemed to be a suitable tool for primary school students to use due to its well- defined and puzzle-like structure with clearly defined interlinked components placed in a well-organised diagram.

  So, Qualifier,

  Data Claim

  Since

  Warrant

  Unless

  Rebuttal

  On account of

  Backing Figure 1. Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (Toulmin, 2003, p.97).

  Methods

  Three sixth-grade classrooms participated in this research study. The findings described in this paper refer to the work that took place in one of these classrooms, so that a more comprehensive part of the overall effort is presented. The classroom consisted of fifteen 12 year-old students and the teacher of the classroom was the author of this paper.

  TAP was explicitly taught by the teacher in a single instance and was further revised and practiced by the students in a series of six other instances during a five month period. Students had not been previously involved in any effort aiming at explicitly teaching them structured argumentation. More explicit details concerning these instances are reported along with the findings in the following section.

  Students’ written answers and audio-recorded oral answers given in classroom discussions were then quantitatively evaluated based on the analytical tool suggested by Erduran et al. (2004). The tool focuses on the argument’s structure and suggests that arguments can be quantitatively evaluated by generating clusters characterising the argument (e.g., CD, CDW, CDWB) based on the components of that argument, as suggested by Toulmin (2003) (e.g., CD stands for Claim-Data, etc); clusters with increasing number of components suggest a more complex argument. This tool can practically provide the necessary evidence so that to evaluate any improvement of students’ skill to provide structured arguments over time. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the aim of this study is not to report on a deep and detailed statistical analysis of the arguments constructed by the students but to provide the reader with an overall impression on how students’ arguments may evolve over a relatively long period of time, when their argumentation efforts are scaffolded by utilising TAP.

  Results

  Results from the 7 teaching instances during which TAP was explicitly taught and revised are presented here. Information about the teaching and learning processes are described through which the evolution of students’ arguments can be depicted.

  Instance 1

  Initially, the model was explicitly taught during a single science lesson by using a specific question that related to the lesson of the day. At the beginning of the last lesson about the respiratory system, students were given the question “Is it better to breathe from the nose or from the mouth?” and were asked to work individually and construct a written argument in order to address it. They were then asked to evaluate the adequacy of their peer’s arguments in a whole class discussion; the aim of this was to help students realise the need to engage in an effort to enhance their argumentation skills. Afterwards, the teacher guided the discussion in such a way so that the constituent components of the argument, based on TAP, could emerge and the whole argument could be portrayed on a structured diagram on the white-board (Figure 2). Moreover, the teacher named the various components of an argument and placed their names on the diagram so that students could begin familiarising with the terms. Nevertheless, the teacher had to explicitly assist students to express a rebuttal as this was one of the components that did not emerge from the discussion. A post analysis of students’ initial arguments after the completion of the lesson revealed that 4 out of 15 had provided an argument consisting of a claim (Cluster 1 argument e.g., “ From the nose”, Student 2), 8 out of 15 expressed some data along side the main claim (Cluster 2 argument e.g., “ It’s better to breathe from the nose because the air is filtered”, Student 5) and only 3 out of 15 suggested an argument consisting of a claim, data and a warrant (Cluster 3 argument e.g., “ We breathe from the nose because we have hair and the air we take is cleaned”, Student 12).

  Data – Clues Claim

  There is some hair in the It is better to breathe from nose the nose

  There is some mucus in

  Connecting Clause (Warrant) Rebuttal (Exception

  Since there is hair and mucus in the

  Clause)

  nose, air is filtered from airborne Smoke from cigarettes and substances, like dust, as these stick its substances cannot stick on the hair and on the mucus on the nose’s hair and mucus and therefore, it cannot be argued that there is any

  Verifying Assertion (Backing)

  difference if you breathe When we occasionally blow our from the nose or from the noses, we can observe that the mucus coming out from it is dirty which means that airborne substances have indeed stuck on the

  

Figure 2. The structured argument that emerged from the classroom discussion

during Instance 1.

  Instance 2 TAP was revised again after two weeks based on the same question as in Instance 1.

  Students made an effort to revise the components of the argument and their names and a complete structured argument was built on the white-board. Students’ effort was scaffolded by the teacher and their peers.

  Instance 3

  Students’ next attempt to practice structured argumentation followed after three weeks and was related to two questions given in an evaluation test on pressure and hydrostatic pressure. For the first question, students had to provide an argument on which of two pairs of shoes was better to be worn while walking through sand, which related to the topic of pressure (Figure 3). In the second question, students had to explain the reasons for which the supporting wall of a dam was built having a slope and a gradually increasing thickness from top to bottom, which related to hydrostatic pressure (Figure 3).

  Figure 3. Question related to pressure (left) and hydrostatic pressure (right).

  The teacher’s motivation for practicing argumentation was the quality of students’ arguments as in the question related to pressure, 12 out of 15 students built arguments classified as CD arguments (Cluster 2 arguments) and the rest of the students expressed arguments classified as CDW arguments (Cluster 3 arguments). At the beginning of the lesson, a whole-class discussion was facilitated by the teacher through which students evaluated the adequacy of their arguments in the question related to pressure and an argument based on TAP was constructed on the white board; through this effort, students were given the opportunity to revise the structure of the argument, name its various components and build a complete argument. Afterwards, students were asked to work in their groups (three groups of 4 and one group of 3) in order to first evaluate the initial argument they had constructed in the second question of the test, related to hydrostatic pressure, and afterwards build a revised argument based on TAP. Their effort was scaffolded by the teacher, their peers and the constructed argument of the previous question concerning pressure that was portrayed on the white-board. An analysis of the revised arguments revealed that students, when scaffolded, could build Cluster 4 or Cluster 5 arguments. An example of how students’ argument evolved through their effort to build a new argument and revise their previous one is illustrated in Table 1. In the revised argument, students presented the general rule, which was suggested in a previous lesson, as data to backup their claim, they then justified the connection between the data and their claim by proposing a warrant that explained the significance of the general rule in terms of the problem and finally, they suggested an experiment they had performed during a previous lesson as a backing to justify the authority of their warrant.

  

Table 1. An example of a group’s initial and revised argument about the question

on hydrostatic pressure.

  Group 2 Initial Argument Group 2 Revised Argument Because as the water is next to It would be better if the wall was built diagonal the wall, the hydrostatic because the deeper the water the more the pressure is very big. So, if they hydrostatic pressure increases so as the wall was built built a vertical wall it would diagonal then it can bear the hydrostatic pressure collapse. That is why they built more than a thin wall. The deeper the water the more it in this way so that it can hold the hydrostatic pressure increases because it depends the hydrostatic pressure and on the depth of the water. An experiment that we’ve not collapse. done and supports this is when we had a bottle and we opened 3 small holes on its side. Then we filled it with water and we saw that from the last hole more water was flowing than the first and the second because the deeper the depth of the water the more hydrostatic pressure is applied.

• The picture was a part of students’ written answer.

  Instance 4

  The groups which had constructed the best argument in terms of structure in the question related to hydrostatic pressure during Instance 3 were given the opportunity to read aloud their argument in the following lesson. During a whole class discussion that followed, students were given the opportunity to comment on the quality of the arguments through which they were able to revise the structure of the argument, based on TAP, and the names of its constituent components. Their effort was scaffolded by the teacher and their peers.

  Instance 5

  Students were given an additional opportunity to revise TAP in a lesson that followed after three weeks. The question related to a non-scientific subject so that students could realise that structured argumentation, based on TAP, could be utilised in various social instances as well. The question required students to argue who they considered the most successful Greek singer was. Through a whole-class discussion that followed, students had the opportunity to revise and name the components of the argument, based on TAP, construct a complete argument and realise in a better way the nature of the warrant and the backing of the argument, related to a non-scientific subject. A diagram of TAP with the complete argument built about the question concerning the most successful singer was placed in students’ textbooks and was also portrayed in the classroom through a poster that was placed on the notice board for future reference (Figure 4).

  Data – Clues Claim

  Some data to backup our Our answer to our question initial claim e.g., e.g.,

  Michael Chatzigiannis 

   So, Michael Chatzigiannis

  has won many prizes / has a good voice / has sold

  Connecting Clause (Warrant) Rebuttal (Exception Clause)

  A statement that attempts to connect A statement that may reveal our claim with our data e.g., a situation in which our

  Since whoever wins many prizes,  “verifying assertion” may not must be considered as the most be in effect e.g., successful singer.

  IFPI’s record does not take  Since whoever has sold so many

   into account the online records’ sales, so it is

  Verifying Assertion (Backing)

  A statement that helps us to verify and be completely sure that the Connecting Clause we have expressed and support is correct e.g.,

  According to IFPI, which keeps record of  singers’ records sales, the most successful singer is considered the one with the biggest records’ sales.

  The singer who wins the most prices in the X 

  

Figure 4. The argument built concerning the question about the most successful

Greek singer.

  Instance 6

  The next argumentation instance related to a bonus question administrated to students in an evaluation test on electricity and electrical circuits; the question required students to work in their groups and produce an argument on whether the Christmas lights were connected in parallel or in a series circuit. Students’ effort was scaffolded by the poster depicting TAP, which was on the notice board, and the TAP diagram that was placed in their textbooks during Instance 5. A group’s argument is following presented as a representative example of the arguments built by the groups; letters in brackets suggest the constituent components of the argument as these emerged from the post-analysis that was performed based on TAP:

  If one bulb is burned out then all the others will continue to work [D] because electricity can go through the other wires [W]. This is observed when we have a circuit where lights are connected in parallel [W]. We have proved this with the experiment that we did with the light bulbs that were connected in parallel and when we took out a bulb the electricity could still go through and the other bulbs worked [B]. But they might have placed the lamps in series and when one is burned out then all the others will stop working, but maybe there is a problem with the electricity in the entire house and that’s why all the lights went out [R]. (Written answer, Group 1)

  A post-analysis of students’ arguments revealed that all group arguments that were produced could be classified as Cluster 4 or Cluster 5 arguments (CDBW or CDBWR).

  Instance 7

  Group arguments constructed during Instance 6 were read aloud during the next lesson. Afterwards, each group had the opportunity to name the components of their argument and explain why they believed their argument could be considered as a complete argument, based on TAP. Students’ effort was scaffolded by the teacher and their peers. This was considered as the final instance in which students had the opportunity to revise the use of TAP.

  Conclusions and Implications

  The findings of the research suggest that positive improvement of primary school students’ argumentation skills can be observed through explicit teaching of argumentation by utilizing Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (Toulmin, 2003) and by scaffolding students’ argumentation efforts. This seems to be in agreement with what other researchers have suggested (e.g., Kuhn & Udell, 2003), that through explicit teaching, students’ argumentation skills can be enhanced.

  This research study notes the importance of the structure of the argument for supporting students’ argumentation skills, as other researchers have suggested (e.g., Erduran et al., 2004; Walker & Zeidler, 2007), and proposes that it should be considered as an integral part of argumentation efforts employed in science education, prior to engaging students with the process of examining and assessing the inner validity of arguments.

  Nevertheless, it needs to be noted that, for results to last, the effort needs to be continuous, aiming at assisting students reach a point when they internalise TAP, resulting in them being able to structure an argument without any external scaffold as well as being able to assess the adequacy of the structure of their arguments. Additionally, the study stresses out the role of the teacher as a supportive mediator of students’ efforts and as a facilitator of argumentation opportunities through which students can be enabled to structure and assess their arguments.

  Lastly, the research suggests that Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (Toulmin, 2003) can be considered as a significant mental scaffold for students, as its well-structured form can be a significant mediator of students’ argumentation efforts. It is also proposed that through the use of TAP students can be enabled to assess their arguments and keep track of the development of their argumentation skills; something that could be considered as an intrinsic motivation for them.

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