Situated argumentation, learning and science education: A case study of prospective teachers' experiences in an innovative science cours

Various authors had called attention to the significance of argumentation to science education. Nevertheless, argumentation practices had been considerably rare in science classrooms. Moreover, little is know about how people engage in argumentation as science learners to construct knowledge about the natural world and about science.;This study was conducted in a science education course for prospective teachers (PTs) at a university in the Northeast United States. The course was composed of three instructional units, focusing on evolution, light and climate change. In each unity, PTs were confronted with questions, and, working in pairs, they built evidence-based arguments. Various types of technology tools were used to support PTs' in that process. The study addresses the experiences of four prospective teachers, adopting a case study research design informed by grounded theory and phenomenology theoretical frameworks. The research questions were: (1) What is the nature of the arguments that PTs' construct? (2) How PTs's understandings about argumentation develop throughout the course? (3) What accounts for PTs' understandings about argument construction? The primary sources of data for the study were (1) electronic artifacts constructed by PTs and (2) interviews with participants conducted after each unit. The structure of their arguments was analyzed to determine the extent to which PTs explored multiple explanations, provided relevant evidence to support their conclusions, explained how evidence and conclusions were related, and recognized limitations in explanations.;The results of the study suggest that there are some common trends in the development of understandings about scientific arguments. Initially, learners acknowledged the role of evidence in scientific arguments, and tended to provide evidence to support their claims. However, PTs tended not to explain how these pieces of evidence would be related to their conclusions, and saw little value in making that aspect of their argument transparent. Later in the course, participants came to recognize justification as an element of scientific explanations distinct from evidence, and used it to evaluate the quality of evidence. Finally, PTs appeared to consider many aspects of argumentation more as part of a process of presentation of ideas, instead of a process to support knowledge construction. Differences between the pairs were also identified. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).