Study On Junior High School Students’Argumentation About Soco-scientific Issues

Science can not progress without criticism and argumentation.Critical and rational questioning spirit is an important trait for the scientists. Theory raised by the scientists has been challenged or refuted continuously. That scientists debate with each other on the theory continuously has contributed to the progress of science Therefore, the argument is an important foundation and process for the development of science.This research was done through the questionnaire on argumentation ability about Socio-scientific Issues among Junior high school students. From the statistics and analysis, we can see that most of the students from the sample schools have a low level of argumentation ability. The demonstrated validity is reduced mainly due to the following aspects:junior school students just put forward the supporting reasons from the single perspective rather than multiple perspective, and they seldom analyse from various aspects;they cannot make effective evidence corresponding to reason, which often results in no evidence,non-evidence and incomplete evidence; they are not quite clear about the rebuttals of others or do not consider other views; they are unable to propose a new reason to refute the questions raised in the rebuttal, and just repeat the original proposition. Scientific academic achievement has an effect on the demonstrated ability of junior high school students, but the effect on the middle achievers and low academic achievement among students is not significant. For the group of high academic achievement and the group of low academic achievement, demonstrated ability rises slightly with the grade increasing, while the group of middle academic achievement shows the opposite trend. The reason for this phenomenon may be that the students of middle academic achievement in a class are often ignored. On this basis, it is suggested that argument teaching be adopted in the junior science education and that themes related to argumentation be selected and that argument teaching be performed in various forms.