Two key practices in the United States’ Next Generation Science Standards are “developing and using models” and “engaging in argument from evidence.” Although researchers have long recognized that scientific argumentation can and usually does involve claims grounded in models as well as those based directly on evidence, the NGSS framing, and much literature on argumentation, seem to prioritize – often almost exclusively – the role of empirical evidence. We argue that this is too limited a view of how scientists work to arrive at and justify satisfactory explanations of phenomena, and that both model-based and evidence-based claims can and should have a place in classroom science argumentation. We describe and interpret two case studies that provide examples of elementary school students engaging in productive scientific reasoning and argumentation about energy that draws both on evidence from direct observation and on agreed-upon principles of their preliminary model of energy. These examples show that even young children, given the right context, and even without explicit instruction in argumentation, are able to negotiate, if imperfectly, the delicate and crucial interplay between evidence and models in seeking to arrive at reasoned arguments in support of their scientific explanations.
Tobin et al. (Mon,) studied this question.