Professional development programs to improve science teachers’ skills in the facilitation of argumentation in science classroom—a systematic review

Abstract

Argumentation is crucial to fostering scientific reasoning and problem-solving in science education. However, researchers and teachers still report problems facilitating argumentation in the classroom. This may be influenced by the design of the corresponding professional development programs (PDPs) and the focus of the underlying research. To describe the state of the research regarding science teacher PDPs on facilitating argumentation, we systematically reviewed publications from the last 20 years in terms of their design, with selected low- and high-inference characteristics, for example, in terms of the addressed professional competence and the argumentation framework. The results illustrate a broad spectrum of teacher PDPs on argumentation in terms of formal-structural aspects (e.g., sample size) and interests (e.g., methodology). We found, for example, that pre-service teachers’ argumentation PDPs are less frequent than in-service teachers’ argumentation PDPs and that research rarely focuses on situation-specific competencies, such as professional vision or decision-making. Additionally, we report challenges in analyzing the argumentation framework and discuss possible reasons for this. We critically evaluate these and other findings, point to fruitful directions for further research and reviews, and inform practitioners of professional development of argumentation.