The Preliminary Study On Secondary School Students' Argumentation Ability In Science Inquiry

The purpose of this study was to explore the differences and characteristics of secondary school students' science argumentation abilities under the treatment of scientific inquiry activity. The data were collected through interview and participant observation. The interview tool used a self-developed scientific inquiry activity, whose theme was about "rice water- iodine- lemon". 30 middle school students and 30 high school students were invited to participate. The students' science argumentation abilities were assessed by 6 dimensions:the quality of reason, the quantity of reason, the quantity of claim, the quality of backing, quality of rebuttal and argument epistemology. The data were classified to quantitative data and qualitative data. The quantitative data were used to analyze the argument element and the qualitative data were used to analyze the argumentation procedure.The results indicated that high school students' argumentation skills were much better than middle school students. High school students were significantly different from middle school students on the scores for formulating supportive arguments, the quality of backing, and argument epistemology. Both high school students and middle school students are not good at quality of rebuttal. Students' main argumentation defects and difficulties were the argumentation framework was uncompleted, especially lack rebuttal to support its claims; demonstration ability is abate when facing the real situation problems; relying too heavily on the outside when argument process encounter difficulties.