Argumentation in Chemistry Education

Research, Policy and Practice

Sibel Erduran

• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781788015790
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Investigación en educación

Many studies have highlighted the importance of discourse in scientific understanding. Argumentation is a form of scientific discourse that plays a central role in the building of explanations, models and theories. Scientists use arguments to relate the evidence that they select from their investigations and to justify the claims that they make about their observations. The implication is that argumentation is a scientific habit of mind that needs to be appropriated by students and explicitly taught through suitable instruction.

Edited by Sibel Erduran, an internationally recognised expert in chemistry education, this book brings together leading researchers to draw attention to research, policy and practice around the inclusion of argumentation in chemistry education. Split into three sections: Research on Argumentation in Chemistry Education, Resources and Strategies on Argumentation in Chemistry Education, and Argumentation in Context, this book blends practical resources and strategies with research-based evidence. The book contains state of the art research and offers educators a balanced perspective on the theory and practice of argumentation in chemistry education.

CHAPTER 1

Argumentation in Chemistry Education: An Overview

Sibel Erduran^a

^a University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
*Email: [email protected]

1.1 Introduction

Many chemistry lessons include activities that promote a sense of awe and wonder in students. Consider, for instance, the demonstration where a solution of ammonia is poured into three beakers which contain (unknown to the students) small amounts of phenolphthalein, lead nitrate and copper(II) sulfate solutions. The beakers’ contents turn red, milky white and deep blue respectively. Pouring the contents of the beakers into acid reverses the changes, to give a colourless solution.¹ The changes in colour are impressive. The activity is likely to enthuse and engage the students but what does it communicate about chemistry? Does the observation of these colour changes count as doing ‘chemistry’? What is ‘chemical’ about this demonstration? What chemistry do students learn by observing such a demonstration? From the standpoint of students who have not been introduced to the background information on the chemicals involved, without a language to explain why the colour changes, the observation practically amounts to magic!

Next, suppose that the teacher explains to the students that the solutions in the beakers are phenolphthalein, lead nitrate and copper sulfate. Phenolphthalein turns red, the lead nitrate forms a milky white precipitate of lead(II) hydroxide and the copper sulfate forms the deep blue [Cu(NH₃)₄(H₂O)₂]²⁺. Furthermore, the teacher explains, the colour changes because the following reactions are taking place.Pb(NO₃)₂(aq)+2NH₃(aq)+2H₂O(l)→Pb(OH)₂(s)+2NH₄NO₃(aq)[Cu(H₂O)₆]²⁺(aq)+4NH₃(aq)→[Cu(NH₃)₄(H₂O)₂]²⁺(aq)+4H₂O(l)

In the subsequent step, the reactions are reversed in acid as follows:Pb(OH)₂(s)+2HNO₃(aq)→Pb(NO₃)₂(aq)+2H₂O(l)[Cu(NH)(HO)]²⁺(aq)+4H+(aq)+4HO(l)→[Cu(HO)]²⁺(aq)+4NH +(aq)

The teacher uses the formulae and equations to explain the chemical reactions that account for the changes in colour. Students might ask questions about particular aspects of the equations that might be confusing to them and eventually the class settles on an understanding of how the colour change is a result of the chemical reactions represented in the equations. Let us examine how the teacher and the students engage in this demonstration if the demonstration proceeds as described above. From the onset, the teacher already has the background knowledge including knowledge of the chemical formulae and equations that help interpret the changes in colour. The students do not. From their point of view, this is an aesthetic experience. The teacher then tells the students what the chemical composition of the liquids are and what accounts for the colour changes. When the teacher explains what is happening through chemical terminology and conventions like chemical equations, he or she makes a claim about what is in the beakers and why the colour changes.

Obviously, the chemical formulae and equations do not appear in the demonstration itself. They are in the mind of the teacher. They are abstract notions that chemists have produced as part of a language to explain chemical phenomena. They are representations that are institutionalised in the professional community of chemists. The language gives chemists a means to interpret phenomena but the phenomena themselves at the observation level do not provide any direct clues about the chemicals represented in the symbolism. The symbolism itself has been produced over centuries and it needs to be learned. It is not accessible through direct experience with chemical phenomena. If the observer does not have the chemical language, the entire experience has no basis in chemistry. In the worst case scenario, the activity is mere entertainment. In the best case scenario in many lessons, it is about a dogmatic expression of a series of claims superimposed onto some visually stimulating phenomena. As observers, the students have to take the word of the teacher that the provided explanations and the reasoning are true, making the teacher the owner of indisputable knowledge. In terms of the dynamics of interaction, the teacher disseminates the knowledge and expects it to be believed. The students assume the position of having little knowledge, ready to accept the claims being made by the teacher.

1.2 Infusing Argumentation in Teaching and Learning

At this point, we can ask: are the students actually engaged in chemistry in this episode? What makes a demonstration scientific as opposed to magical? What are some key features of science that school science should include such that students experience authentic science? A significant aspect of science, including chemistry, is its reliance on the justification of claims with evidence. Without evidence, science could not operate. Indeed, the reliance on evidence is a central defining feature of science.² Can we identify claims and evidence in the hypothetical scenario about ammonia and colour changes? We can certainly attribute the teacher's assignment of the chemicals to each test tube's content as a claim but what can we make of the evidence provided? It is as if further claims are being made about what the chemical formulae are and how the equations underlying the demonstration explain the observations. From the standpoint of the observing students, the entire demonstration is a set of claims, some of which are treated as evidence. Indeed, the information that is being presented to explain the observations is symbolic and abstract, and does not have any direct link to the observed colours, for instance. Could not any other formula, for instance, account for a similar colour change? How would the students be able to differentiate another set of chemicals corresponding to the observations or not? Of course, is not always easy for students to access the evidence in the first place. How are the students supposed to guess what is in the beakers or the liquid that is being added to the beakers? Much of chemistry actually relies on many similar macroscopic properties (e.g. colourless liquids) that, unless one has the chemistry language to define and reason with, are impossible to decipher unless advanced chemical testing such as high-performance liquid chormatography or gas chromatography is conducted.

Such testing would be inconceivable for the purposes of school chemistry to determine the component of every single chemical that the students might be expected to use. Indeed this would provide a major distraction to the pedagogical goals that the teacher might have for learning about a particular chemical phenomenon. Can we, then, at least engage students in some modes of thinking that resemble evidence-based reasoning even if they still need to take the teacher's word for many aspects of what they are exposed to? In the hypothetical example of the ammonia demonstration, how can students be put into a role where they are more empowered to reason with some form of evidence to reach some conclusions themselves rather than being told about these conclusions as claims made by the teacher? Suppose that in this scenario, the students were given the main formulae on separate pieces of paper and they were tasked to figure out how they can put them together to account for the observations from the demonstration. The students can get together in groups, research each formula and reason what goes with what in order to produce the end colour. Furthermore, they can be expected to justify why they think so.

Suppose also that in a classroom, some students end up generating wrong chemical equations or attributing the wrong equation to the particular observation. The diversity of ‘claims’ about the chemical equations can be a rich ground for discussion between groups in order to provide some reasons for why one equation is appropriate and also why another is not. Being put into a position to justify your own claim, and to refute an opposing claim, would at least engage the students in a mode of thinking that is typical of scientists. Alternatively, the tasks could be ‘biased’ in a way so as to actually get the students to refute a wrong claim. A wrong equation could be presented in a list of correct ones and students are asked to choose and justify which equation they agree with and which they do not, providing their reasons for either case. Without such potential strategies to engage students in discussions about evidence and justifications, it is difficult to imagine how students could adopt a scientific mindset. Watching the teacher and believing in what he or she claims to be the case is possibly the most unscientific role that students could be expected to play in a science lesson.

In science education research, the work surrounding students’ as well as teachers’ reasoning with evidence, justifications and claims is referred to as ‘argumentation’. There is now a substantial body of work in this area as evidenced by content reviews of key journals³ and the presence of books dedicated to this theme.⁴ In its simplest definition, an argument consists of a claim justified with evidence, and argumentation refers to the process of constructing arguments.⁴ The intention of this book is to contextualise argumentation in chemistry education by drawing on accounts from research, curriculum policy and practice. Although there is vast amount of work on argumentation in science education at the present, there are few studies in the context of argumentation in chemistry education.⁵ Hence the overall purpose of the book is to contribute to knowledge on how argumentation can be infused in chemistry education in various senses: the curriculum, teaching strategies, learning resources, assessment, professional development of teachers as well as particular topics (including organic and physical chemistry) and contexts (including the laboratory and social issues and the cultural environment). In the following sections, a brief review of the main rationale for including argumentation in chemistry education is presented, along with a synopsis of how argumentation is represented in school curricula.

1.3 Curriculum Context of Argumentation

There are at least five potential contributions of argumentation to science education.⁴ Argumentation can support: (a) the access to the cognitive and metacognitive processes (i.e. evidence-based reasoning) that characterise expert performance and model such processes for students; (b) the development of communicative competences and particularly critical thinking; (c) the achievement of scientific literacy and empowerment of students to engage in ways of talking in science; (d) the enculturation into the practices of the scientific culture and the development of epistemic criteria for knowledge evaluation; (e) the development of reasoning, particularly the choice of theories or positions based on rational criteria.

Many curricula from around the world, from Chile to Taiwan have recognised the contributions that argumentation can make to science teaching and learning.⁵ For example, since the 1990s seminal curriculum standards in the United States have been advocating the inclusion not only of scientific knowledge but also how we get to construct scientific knowledge.^6,7 In England and Wales, there have been a series of science curricula that emphasised argumentation-related themes, for example through the Ideas and Evidence⁸ and How Science Works⁹ components of the National Science Curriculum. The latest national science curriculum for GCSE is organised around four main themes that are applied to each subject area of biology, chemistry and physics: (a) working scientifically, (b) experimental skills and strategies, (c) analysis and evaluation, and (d) vocabulary, units, symbols and nomenclature. The document includes learning objectives such as “being objective, evaluating data in terms of accuracy, precision, repeatability and reproducibility and identifying potential sources of random and systematic error” and “presenting reasoned explanations, including relating data to hypotheses.”¹⁰ Such references emphasise the epistemic aspects of argumentation that concern the generation and evaluation of evidence. There are other references in the curriculum documents that stress the importance of debate and communication of arguments, for instance as suggested by the learning objective of “…recognising the importance of peer review of results and of communication of results to a range of audiences.”¹⁰

Despite such curriculum reform rhetoric, the effective implementation of argumentation in everyday chemistry classrooms remains a challenge. How can learning objectives on argumentation be transformed for teaching and learning purposes? What teaching strategies need to be in place to ensure that students can engage in argumentation effectively? What tools including technology can be used to support the teaching and learning of argumentation? How can argumentation be linked to cross-curricular subjects? How can it be assessed? How can teachers be supported in their professional development to infuse argumentation into their lessons? What does argumentation look like in different contexts such as the laboratory or a classroom with limited resources? This book is intended to address such questions by providing some insight into the theoretical underpinnings of argumentation in chemistry education and to offer some practical guidelines for teachers, curriculum developers and teacher educators.

1.4 Overview of the Book

The chapters in this book are organised around three themes: overview of research, resources and strategies and finally, the context of argumentation in chemistry education. Most chapters conclude with some practical examples for teaching and learning summarised at the end of the chapter. These concluding sections are meant to distil ideas presented in the chapter for practical use and to provide some concrete suggestions to teachers. Sometimes these might include actual lesson resources that teachers could use (Chapters 2, 4 and 10) including examples of online tools (Chapter 5). Some chapters illustrate the richness of argumentation discourse at secondary (Chapter 12) and tertiary (Chapter 11) levels of education. Links are made to related interdisciplinary concepts such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) (Chapter 3) and socio-scientific issues (Chapter 9) as well as particular learning contexts such as the laboratory (Chapter 8). As a relatively unfamiliar strategy, argumentation may present challenges for chemistry teachers. In this respect, teacher education including pre-service and in-service teacher education becomes critical for successful enactment of argumentation in lessons. Hence, one chapter tackles the issue of teacher education providing some insight into how teacher education practices need to be reformed to infuse argumentation (Chapter 7). In a similar fashion, assessment of argumentation skills or understanding of argumentation demands new perspectives and strategies, and some examples are presented (Chapter 6).

An important framework for the definition of argumentation has been Toulmin's Argument Pattern (TAP) which has been used extensively in research in science education.¹¹ In Chapter 2, Aydeniz provides a summary and a critique of argumentation studies conducted in chemical education and discusses implications for practice and future research. A critical part of this chapter is the discussion on the nature of chemical knowledge and how to promote philosophy of chemistry in argumentation-based teaching and learning.¹² This chapter also provides a sample argumentation task that can be adopted and used by high school chemistry teachers, professors of introductory chemistry courses and pre-service teacher educators.

Considering argumentation concerns issues of language, knowledge construction and social interaction, it is, by definition, an interdisciplinary concept. Hence, in Chapter 3, Crujeiras-Pérez and Jiménez-Aleixandre target the issue of interdisciplinarity in addressing the role of argumentation in chemistry education. The authors discuss the characterisation of interdisciplinary learning, understood as the capacity to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking from two or more disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement in ways that would have been impossible or unlikely through single disciplinary means. The benefits and challenges for implementing interdisciplinary learning are addressed. The chapter includes examples of interdisciplinary chemistry tasks set in real-life contexts that require participants’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Chapter 1 Argumentation in Chemistry Education: An Overview
• Chapter 2 Teaching and Learning Chemistry through Argumentation
• Chapter 3 Interdisciplinarity and Argumentation in Chemistry Education
• Chapter 4 Lesson Resources and Teaching Strategies on Argumentation for Secondary Chemistry Education
• Chapter 5 Using Computer Technology to Support the Teaching and Learning of Argumentation in Chemistry
• Chapter 6 Assessment of Argumentation in Chemistry: A Model for Designing Items
• Chapter 7 Research and Practice on Science Teachers’ Continuous Professional Development in Argumentation
• Chapter 8 The Development of Argumentation Skills in the Chemistry Laboratory
• Chapter 9 Argumentation within Societal Contexts in Chemistry Education
• Chapter 10 Argumentation in Organic Chemistry Education
• Chapter 11 Argumentation in Physical Chemistry
• Chapter 12 Supporting Argumentation in Chemistry Education in Low-income Contexts
• Subject Index