Explaining Variation in How Classroom Communities Adapt the Practice of Scientific Argumentation

Research and practice has placed an increasing emphasis on aligning classroom practices with scientific practices such as scientific argumentation. In this paper, I explore 1 challenge associated with this goal by examining how existing classroom practices influence students' engagement in the practice of scientific argumentation. To do so, I present discourse data from 2 middle school classes engaged in argumentation activities. For each class, I compare existing classroom practices to a discussion designed to facilitate argumentation. My analysis reveals that the existing classroom practices influenced the way in which students responded to the disparate ideas being discussed and that the immediate learning environment influenced the frequency with which students justified their ideas and directly responded to one another. This study suggests that the goal structures that aligned with the existing classroom practices carried over to students' argumentative interactions, influencing how they responded to the disparate ideas. However, the immediate learning environment—including activity structure, software tools, and teaching strategies—seemed to foster student-to-student interactions and justification of ideas. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Kathleen Crucet, Elizabeth Davis, David Hammer, Lisa Kenyon, Victor Lee, Carol Lee, Taylor Martin, Stephanie Peacock, Brian Reiser, and Bruce Sherin for their invaluable feedback and support on this paper. This research was funded by a doctoral fellowship from the Center for Curriculum Materials in Science funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant ESI-0227557 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and by National Science Foundation Grants ESI-0101780 and ESI-0439493 to the Investigating and Questioning our World Through Science and Technology project at The University of Michigan and Northwestern University, respectively. The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation. Notes 1One day in Mr. S's class yielded only one 3-min interval because the class engaged in one brief whole-class discussion (the remaining time was spent in small groups). 2In CitationBerland and Reiser (2011), we presented a similar coding scheme. Slight variation is seen here in the analysis of how students responded to one another and whether they revised their arguments. This variation reflects the refinement to the coding scheme that occurred when the non-argumentative class discussions were introduced into the data set. 3I rounded up so that the second coder was looking at complete, coherent sections of discourse. 4These supports were simplified and included in the version of the curriculum enacted by Mr. S. However, as seen in the description of his enactment, he did not use them. 5This student was not a consented member of the study. 6Throughout the unit, this class created a list of "big ideas" that they were learning. For example, one big idea was that animals compete for resources such as food, water, and space. This list is the big ideas sheet to which Ms. B was referring.