Examination of the Evidences Used by the Secondary School Students in the Process of Socio-Scientific Argumentation: Example of Global Climate Change

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the functions of the evidence used by the sixth, seventh and eighth grade students during the whole group and small group socio-scientific argumentation, and to determine the differences with respect to grade level. In this single case study conducted with the participation of a totally 70 secondary school students studying in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades of a public school firstly, an knowledge test with three open-ended questions was applied to determine the students' conceptions about global climate change. Then, the students were included in small and whole group discussion through two different socio-scientific scenarios in the context of global climate change. The whole and small group discussions among the students of each class level were recorded with the voice recorder. The evidences that students used during their small and whole group discussion were analyzed with the analytical evidence assessment tool that includes different categories of evidence Analysis of collected data; found out that the eighth grade students who were better in terms of their level of knowledge compared to the other students were leading the use of total evidence. Besides, it is also among the important results that students tend to refute the counter-claims predominantly and use evidence to support their own claims. The results were discussed on the basis of relevant literature and specific recommendations were given.