Influences of Argument Instruction on Children's Use of Evidence in Socioscientific Issues

• In Event: 72.043 - Supporting Students' Evidence-Based Reasoning Across Content Areas and Grade Levels

Abstract

Objectives
This study aims to investigate how a semester of science instruction influences children’s use of inscriptional evidence (e.g., diagrams, photos, and other images).

Perspectives
Engaging science in everyday situations often means not advancing knowledge but evaluating available evidence for given claims (Author et al., 2014). It is long assumed that school science develops children’s ability to manage such evaluation, but we have little evidence this happens (Feinstein, 2011). A key question to be explored is what children think counts as evidence.

Methods
Fifty-six 5th-graders in an intact classroom completed two written argument tasks at the beginning and the end of a semester (task A on energy use and task B on genetically modified organisms). Each task provides 2 tables, 2 diagrams, 2 photos, and 2 drawings, for students to support their arguments. Presentation of tasks was counter-balanced in two randomly divided halves to mitigate order effects. The two science teachers participated in a work circle program to develop instructional routines of coordinating claims and evidence. Science lessons specifically geared towards promoting argumentation were videotaped and logged throughout the semester (approximately 40 hours).

Results
Our previous study revealed that students’ functional use of inscriptions changed from the pre- to post-task (Author & Author, 2014). Interaction analysis we present here investigates how classroom instruction over the semester influences such change. We have identified teachers’ discursive practices that elicited argumentation, such as “how could you prove to him that you’re right” (press for persuasion) and “so you’re saying dot edu is more reliable” (revoicing epistemic criteria). For this session we will pursue two further analyses. Episodes of argumentation around these codes will be transcribed, from which we will examine how students functionally coordinate claims and evidence in verbal arguments. For example, students could undermine the importance of a fact by claiming it is singular rather than typical. Alternatively, students might overlay assertions about what a photo “shows” without clear reference to its content. Teachers’ talk in these episodes will also be coded regarding how they shape students’ use of evidence (e.g. “how do you know it’s reliable”). Students’ use of evidence in the classroom will then be mapped onto their arguments in the tasks. A time-indexed visual display will show to what extent changes in the tasks are corresponding to trends in the classroom. The full analysis thus traces students’ arguments in the two tasks back to classroom interactions, and then to instructional practices that elicit, support, or shape interactions. As our preliminary analysis suggests students often co-opt different types of evidence in rhetorical ways to make their particular claims persuasive, we hypothesize that teachers pressed students for comparing value judgments with scientific claims and thinking of what counts as evidence to reliably support each, which influenced their use of inscriptions in the post-task.

Significance
Understanding influences of instruction has implications about how teachers can make different forms of evidence available and relevant to specific arguments, and how instructional routines can be organized to facilitate persuasive use of evidence.

Authors

• Sihan Xiao, University of California - Los Angeles

• William A. Sandoval, University of California - Los Angeles