Teaching and Learning Rhetorically Complex Argumentative Writing in a High School Biology Classroom

• In Event: Division C Virtual Roundtable

Abstract

A recent study in U.S. middle and high school classrooms found that the dominant science writing task is short response that limits students’ efforts to argue or to think deeply about scientific concepts. The instructional challenge is how to support students’ efforts to not only describe phenomena but also connect pieces of information and describe causal relationships. Using methods from design-based research, this microethnographic discourse study considers how a biology teacher supported shifts in her 9th graders’ epistemic practices, including both dialogic and authoritative approaches to oral and written argumentation, across two instructional units. Analysis of the students’ responses to a more rhetorically complex writing task suggest that there was more but limited appropriation of scientific discourse.

Authors

• George E. Newell, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Guofu Ma
  Non-Presenting Author