7692 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Suzanna Loper
  2. http://learningdesigngroup.org
  3. Middle School Curriculum Director
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Lawrence Hall of Science, Boston College
  1. María González-Howard
  2. http://www.mariagonzalezhoward.com/
  3. Research Assistant
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Boston College
  1. Lisa Marco-Bujosa
  2. Research Associate
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Boston College
  1. Katherine McNeill
  2. http://www.katherinelmcneill.com
  3. Associate Professor of Science Education
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Boston College
  1. Kathryn Quigley
  2. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-chong-quigley-786b6943?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile
  3. Producer and Media Lead
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Lawrence Hall of Science

Constructing and Critiquing Arguments in Middle School Science Classrooms: Su...

NSF Awards: 1119584

2017 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades 6-8

In this research and development project we designed and investigated educative curriculum materials that included videos and other multimedia supports for teacher learning about scientific argumentation. In order to broaden the potential impact of these materials, we have developed teacher learning modules to help teacher educators use these resources in a professional learning environment. The learning modules are available at argumentationtoolkit.org

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Discussion from the 2017 STEM for All Video Showcase (16 posts)
  • Icon for: Brian Drayton

    Brian Drayton

    Researcher
    May 15, 2017 | 08:39 a.m.

    Hi, 

        Nice work.  A question:  In years past, as you know, when the focus was on "inquiry,"  I often encountered teachers who saw it as a technique to deploy at certain times and not others - they'd say things like "When I do inquiry..." or "That's not something I can do inquiry about."  Only a rare teacher had a feel for the way in which "inquiry" is a stance or orientation, rather than one more piece of the repertoire.    How to prevent compartmentalization like this, so that argumentation is an integral and (in a sense) transparent part of the flow of the classroom?    Or — have you seen teachers moving from more self-conscious to less self-conscious support of argumentation — so that it's really a culture?

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Heidi Larson
  • Icon for: Katherine McNeill

    Katherine McNeill

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor of Science Education
    May 15, 2017 | 10:32 a.m.

    We have seen some teachers shift to develop a real culture of argumentation in their classroom, but I absolutely think it is a challenge. We need to help teachers how argumentation, and the science practices more broadly, can be used to really shift the culture of classrooms to be more student-directed and focused on the use and evaluation of evidence. In some of our case study work on this project, we observed some classrooms engaged in "pseudoargumentation" in which they were renaming previous more traditional instruction as argumentation. As a community, I think we need to help teachers problematize and reflect on what this looks like in their classrooms. 

     
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    Heidi Larson
  • Icon for: Steven Rogg

    Steven Rogg

    Facilitator
    Associate Professor of Education - STEM
    May 15, 2017 | 11:23 p.m.

    Would you say that "pseudoargumentation" might be a subset of "pseudodiscourse" in the sense that scientific discourse in the classroom might sometimes be less than authentic inquiry. I have noticed, for example, that students might be responding more to what they might perceive the teacher wants (expectations orientation) rather than focus on interrogation of natural phenomenon. Is this anything like your experience?

  • Icon for: Katherine McNeill

    Katherine McNeill

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor of Science Education
    May 16, 2017 | 02:19 p.m.

    That makes a lot of sense to me. I think previous classroom norms and cultures can offer different images of classroom discourse then the argumentation goals. I agree that students' perceptions can be quite different then what the teacher wants. I also think teachers' perceptions can be quite different then the goals of the curriculum designers. 

     
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    Steven Rogg, Ph.D.
  • Icon for: Heidi Larson

    Heidi Larson

    Facilitator
    Project Director
    May 15, 2017 | 11:40 p.m.

    Thanks for your video! I liked the concept, the animation, and the way you showed how you worked across distance. It did cause me to visit your site, and I'll be sharing it. Will you be able, or were you able, to find the impact of the toolkit? I noticed there's no registration required. 

  • Icon for: María González-Howard

    María González-Howard

    Co-Presenter
    Research Assistant
    May 16, 2017 | 09:21 a.m.

    Hi Heidi, 

    Thank you for your comment! We intentionally did not require a registration because we wanted to create a free resource for all educators to use (in whatever way they needed) as they shift their instruction to meet the demands described in recent reform documents and standards. 

    We have not examined the impact of this website yet, per se, although we have looked at the back end data to see how it's being used (which tabs are people clicking on the most?). We are excited to see that the teacher learning modules are being used frequently! Specifically, since we posted the first module in June 2016 until January 2017 (when we last checked), we have had 10,508 unique page views. And since that time point we know that numerous different people (e.g. teacher educators, district science leaders), including ourselves, have used them to support both pre and in-service teachers' learning of scientific argumentation. 

    We hope you enjoy this resource! 

     
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    Heidi Larson
  • Icon for: Jennifer Yurof

    Jennifer Yurof

    Facilitator
    May 16, 2017 | 10:07 a.m.

    Thanks so much for sharing the toolkit. I really appreciate how you integrated the professional development workshop into your video to showcase how you are having educators work through the process. Like Heidi, I will be sharing your site and toolkit for educators to explore and hopefully implement with their students. 

  • Icon for: María González-Howard

    María González-Howard

    Co-Presenter
    Research Assistant
    May 16, 2017 | 10:11 a.m.

    Hello Jennifer,

    We are so glad that you will be sharing this resource with others. I should mention that educators really enjoy having the opportunity to work with colleagues and to experience this science practice from the perspective of students. It helps them better understand challenges that their students might face. Also, we have found that giving teachers the opportunity to then reflect on these learning experiences with colleagues is invaluable! 

  • Icon for: Jennifer Knudsen

    Jennifer Knudsen

    Senior Mathematics Educator
    May 18, 2017 | 11:52 a.m.

    Great work! I work on math argumentation and can take a lot of inspiration from your toolkit. I would like to hear more about the card sorting activity.

  • Icon for: María González-Howard

    María González-Howard

    Co-Presenter
    Research Assistant
    May 18, 2017 | 01:06 p.m.

    Hi Jennifer! Thank you for your message. We'd love to hear how you apply some of these ideas to your work in math education. In terms of the card sorting activity- this is a very popular approach for supporting students as they make sense of evidence. There are a few variations of the card sort. For instance, it can be used to help students consider whether potential evidence supports, doesn't support or maybe supports a particular claim (check out Card Sort 1 here: http://www.argumentationtoolkit.org/session-12....). In another version, students might consider which of two competing claims the evidence best supports (check out Card Sort 2 here: http://www.argumentationtoolkit.org/session-21....). In both variations of this argumentation task, we encourage students to voice their rationales during the sort (i.e., why are they sorting cards the way that they are?). We've found this to be very useful for helping them articulate their reasoning. 

    The wonderful this about this argumentation activity is that it can be used in many ways in order to best fit the need of students. It's also very social in nature (as students are usually working in pairs or small groups during it) so it also attends to the interactive nature of argumentation. 

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Heidi Larson
  • Icon for: Rachel Shefner

    Rachel Shefner

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 18, 2017 | 04:57 p.m.

    This is a great resource that I know we will consult regularly, both to raise our own level of understanding about argumentation and to think about utilizing this resource in our teacher professional development programs. I did find myself thinking one thing as I watched the video a few times; and that was a wondering about the emphasis on ranking the evidence. I had never really thought about that, and we do use the CER in our work with teachers, and are very inspired by Katherine's work. This could very well be something I just plain missed- and if so I don't want to derail the discussion. I know that critically examining the relationship of the evidence to the claim is central to using the framework, and see that evaluating the veracity of sources of evidence is a really important skill we want students to have, but am not familiar with the notion of ranking the evidence pieces as a critical part of the process. Is this something that you started adding more recently? How do you feel this adds to teachers' and students' understanding of the process of argumentation? 

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Steven Rogg, Ph.D.
  • Icon for: Katherine McNeill

    Katherine McNeill

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor of Science Education
    May 18, 2017 | 10:14 p.m.

    Thanks for your feedback and question Rachel! It is a new activity structure to me that my colleagues at the Lawrence Hall of Science (Suzy Loper) introduced me to. Your comment made me think that I don't think we have published anything that uses this activity (though we are working on a practitioner piece now). I really like the activity, because it makes students think about the quality of the evidence - such as the source - and what counts as strong scientific evidence. To me, evidence is observations and data about the natural world. Furthermore, evidence should be able to be replicated by others. Students (and teachers) are inundated with information from the media, some of which I think counts as "evidence" and other information that I do not think counts. The act of ranking evidence can help them think and talk about what counts as strong evidence. 

    If you go to this webpage - http://www.argumentationtoolkit.org/session-2.html - you can download a sample activity where students consider a variety of pieces of evidence from a journal article, a friend, an opinion piece, etc. 

  • Icon for: Rachel Shefner

    Rachel Shefner

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 18, 2017 | 11:10 p.m.

    Thanks Katherine! I'm glad I didn't completely miss something! I do agree that this is a timely addition to the way we think about evidence-and want to encourage our students to think about it. Being able to sift through and evaluate evidence is a critical part of scientific literacy-and life, these days. I will certainly take a look at the activity on the website, and look forward to further discussion of this aspect.

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Katherine McNeill
  • Icon for: Bridget Dalton

    Bridget Dalton

    Researcher
    May 18, 2017 | 06:44 p.m.

    Thank you for this excellent resource. You've stimulated my thinking about how to support other genres of argumentation, and application in other disciplines!

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Katherine McNeill
  • Icon for: Suzanna Loper

    Suzanna Loper

    Lead Presenter
    Middle School Curriculum Director
    May 18, 2017 | 10:33 p.m.

    Thanks so much Bridget! We'd love to hear your insights as well!

  • Icon for: Kathy Perkins

    Kathy Perkins

    Director
    May 22, 2017 | 02:53 a.m.

    Love it, Suzy! Argumentation is such a key component and one that can be a challenge for teachers to address. You've also gotten me thinking about whether we can use some of these approaches with our project too. 

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.