Teachers’ support in developing year 7 students’ argumentation skills about water-based socioscientific issues

ABSTRACT

Internationally, there are calls for students to be able to use their scientific understandings to make informed decisions about the world in which they live. Using a mixed methods case study design, this study investigated the impact of behaviours and strategies used by two early career science teachers who taught argumentation about a water-based socioscientific issues (SSI) to their Year 7 students. Students’ argument quality, measured using Toulmin’s argument structure, improved significantly from pre- to post-instruction (p = .0033). There was also a significant increase (p = .0037) in the number of types of categories. Qualitative data comprising classroom audio-transcripts, field notes, student work samples, teacher interviews and student reflections were analysed using inductive analysis to identify four themes related to teacher behaviours and teaching strategies: (1) developing and maintaining a safe classroom environment; (2) providing clear instructions about the features of quality arguments; (3) providing opportunities for all students to think and work individually and collaboratively; and (4) practising oral and written argument construction with gradual removal of scaffolds. While the findings are not generalisable teacher educators can use their expertise to decide the extent to which the teacher strategies and behaviours would support the development of argumentation skills in their particular context.

KEYWORDS:

• Argumentation
• socioscientific issues
• teacher strategies

Introduction

In responding to calls to improve scientific literacy in school science, there is an increasing emphasis on ensuring that young people are able to use their scientific knowledge to construct and critique arguments about important socioscientific issues (SSI) (e.g. human evolution) which impact society now and in the future. Students need regular opportunities to develop and practice their argumentation skills about SSI.

Students should be introduced to SSI alongside scientific concepts from the start of formal secondary school science instruction. It is acknowledged that the science underpinning some SSI may be considered unsuitable for younger students due to their scientific complexity (e.g. human cloning) or emotive content (e.g. abortion). However, there seems to be a perception that the types of critical thinking skills needed to construct arguments about SSI are too difficult to teach to younger or less academically able students (Zohar et al., 2001).

The aim of this research was, firstly, to examine the effect on students’ argumentation skills about SSI of an intervention where Year 7 students aged 11–12 years were taught to construct and critique arguments about water-based SSI as part of a Chemistry unit in a Western Australian secondary school. Students’ abilities to construct an argument were measured before and after the intervention using two methods that have been shown to be effective in measuring argument quality: Toulmin’s parts of an argument (Osborne et al., 2004a; Venville & Dawson, 2010) and the number of types of categories (Dawson & Venville, 2020; Wu & Tsai, 2007). The second aim was to analyse the teacher behaviours and strategies enacted by two early career science teachers in a single school as they introduced their students to argumentation in the context of water management.

Although there is a substantial body of research on argumentation and SSI in science classrooms, this research is significant for four reasons:

1. young age of students;

2. research design;

3. focus of research on teacher; and

4. context of SSI.

The students in this study are aged 11–12 years old, an age some might consider too young to either appreciate the complexity of SSI or be able to construct quality arguments. The focus of research on SSI and argumentation in schools has typically been in the final years of secondary school (e.g. Ottander & Simon, 2021) or with university students (e.g. Sakamoto et al., 2021). However, McNeill (2011) teaching argumentation, Byrne et al. (2014) teaching SSI and Evagorou et al. (2012) teaching argumentation and SSI have shown that younger students (10–12 years old) can engage with SSI and argumentation. In these studies, students experienced difficulty in using evidence and required extensive scaffolding to support them. The outcome of the current study provides detailed guidance about pedagogy for teachers who introduce SSI and argumentation to these younger age groups.

This study employs a mixed methods case study design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) with multiple sources of quantitative and qualitative data including a pre- and post-test questionnaire, classroom audio-transcripts, classroom observation field notes of lessons, students’ work samples of their in-class written arguments, teacher interviews and written student reflections of their learning. The multiple data sources allowed triangulation of the data and contributed to the trustworthiness of the findings. The extensive qualitative data triangulated with the quantitative data enabled insights not otherwise possible.

In designing this study, the author was able to draw on their extensive experience in classrooms researching the effective teaching of argumentation using SSI with adolescents. An SSI and argumentation intervention had been shown to improve Year 10 students’ argumentation skills (Venville & Dawson, 2010). The water-based SSI used by teachers in this study had been trialled previously and shown to be relevant, engaging and accessible to pre-adolescents as well as being suitable for use by secondary science teachers (Dawson & Venville, 2020). A quantitative pre- and post-test on SSI had also been developed and trialled previously with similar-aged students to show that it was age appropriate and generated a range of arguments that could be assessed for quality.

Nielsen (2020) states that much of the published literature on SSI use in schools is focussed on students, rather than their teachers. He found that without professional development teachers using SSI tended to focus on content rather than the issues arising from the SSI. It is important to recognise that the teacher is at the centre of learning not the curriculum, resource or lesson plan. In this study, the focus is on teachers’ support in developing students’ argumentation skills about SSI.

In this study, the SSI context is water use. Water as a topic may not normally be considered controversial when compared to complex problems such as population control, climate change and genetic engineering. However, the SSI used in this study do require an understanding of water use and limited resources, weighing up of views of stakeholders, consideration of alternative solutions and decision-making. The topic is appropriate for all school types and water use is locally and personally relevant. The SSI were intentionally introduced in context as part of the regular science curriculum rather than as a special intervention unrelated to students’ learning.

Literature review

The theoretical framework for this study was informed by research on SSI, argumentation, SSI-based argumentation interventions and the role of the teacher.

Socioscientific issues

Socioscientific issues are topics that are complex and have a scientific basis although aspects of the science may be contested or uncertain. Typically, SSI are contentious with different stakeholders holding alternative viewpoints. Making decisions and finding solutions to SSI involve a consideration of not only the science but often economic, legal, societal, religious, ethical and other aspects. Students engaging with SSI need to be able to understand the underlying science, source of evidence and weigh up appropriate evidence, ask relevant questions and consider the perspectives of stakeholders. SSI may be global (e.g. climate change, pandemics) or local (e.g. protecting a localised endangered species). Students can be motivated to learn science when SSI are used as they can see the real-life relevance of school science (Sadler & Dawson, 2012).

Hancock et al. (2019) suggest that care needs to be taken in selecting an SSI so that it is complex, but not too broad in scope for students to engage with. The research of Garrecht et al. (2021) using the SSI of animal testing found that familiarity with the context of an SSI is more likely to engage students and promote argumentation skills as it makes the SSI more accessible to students.

Models of SSI instruction

Most reported approaches to teaching SSI have used a multi-step student-centred collaborative structure. These approaches align with contemporary sociocultural theories of learning. The theories underpin the importance of the teacher providing students with scaffolding to support their thinking and opportunities to practice and discuss their learning with peers. The following examples illustrate various approaches to teaching using SSI.

Owens et al. (2021) identified teaching practices for SSI instruction that involved contextualising teaching and learning about the issue, challenging students to look at multiple perspectives, and being sceptical. They described the steps taken by an experienced science teacher engaging in SSI instruction using the context of antibiotic resistance. The teacher demonstrated four key strategies: (1) linking SSI to students’ personal lives and current learning; (2) continually referring to the SSI during teaching; (3) ensuring students examined the SSI from different viewpoints; and (4) encouraging students to think critically about information from different people associated with the SSI. They recommended further research on SSI instruction to identify which factors are most effective in developing students’ abilities to engage with SSI.

The SSI Teaching and Learning Model used by Kinslow et al. (2019) comprised an introduction to the SSI, extensive exploration and a culminating activity. The authors examined field-based learning in a water context. Effectiveness of the SSI Teaching and Learning model was determined by measuring improvement in students’ socioscientific reasoning (SSR) before and after the field-based learning. SSR has four components which target students’ understanding of the complexity of an issue, perspective-taking to be able to consider solutions from perspectives of multiple stakeholders, asking questions for ongoing inquiry, and scepticism about sources of data.

Lee and Grace (2012) reported on two classes of high achieving 13-year-old Chinese students who engaged in decision-making about slaughtering of chickens to manage avian flu. The two groups were taken through a structured decision-making framework over three lessons. The framework comprised a structured process of identifying stakeholders, collecting evidence, generating decisions with pros and cons and making decisions with justifications. Students then reflected on, and shared their decisions with other students. A pre- and post-test showed a significant increase in the number of types of justifications (e.g. science/health, environment).

Water use as an SSI

The SSI of water use was selected for three reasons: local and global significance; presence in the Western Australian Year 7 science curriculum; and issue familiarity. The availability of clean drinkable water is a global SSI, such that ‘clean water and sanitation’ is one of the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (UNESCO, 2022). Locally, since Europeans colonised Australia and introduced water-intensive farming practices, clean drinkable water has become increasingly scarce. In Australia, water is currently obtained from desalination plants, artesian basins and rainwater catchment areas. One-third of the Australian continent is desert.

The teachers in this study were teaching Year 7 science where water management forms part of the mandated Year 7 science curriculum. There is more likely to be uptake by teachers if SSI are aligned with the mandated curriculum, student textbooks and existing resources. The geographical location of this study has limited fresh water. More recently, climate change has led to reduced rainfall which impacts agriculture. Summer water restrictions and regular water-saving campaigns ensure that students have some awareness of the issue of water use.

Argumentation

Put simply, an argument can be considered the product while argumentation is the process (Toulmin, 2003). An argument comprises a claim or assertion and reasons to support the claim. The process of argumentation is a central component of critical thinking (Ennis, 1985) and also an essential scientific process (Newton et al., 1999). As a result, considerable effort has gone into promoting the development of students’ argumentation skills in school science. Despite the theoretical benefits of learning to argue, researchers (e.g. Osborne et al., 2013; Sadler, 2004) claim that student-centred argumentation is not widely practised in the classroom. Reasons include: a lack of time coupled with a crowded curriculum; lack of familiarity with appropriate teaching strategies; difficulty of assessing argumentation skills; and teacher beliefs about how science should be taught.

Measuring argumentation skills

Ways of measuring argument quality have been hotly debated (Erduran, 2008; Sampson & Clark, 2008) with multiple methods of measuring argumentation quality emerging. Two methods are described here. The first method is to examine the presence or absence of the structural components of an argument. According to Toulmin (2003), an argument should include a claim as well as data to support the claim, warrants to connect the data to the claims, backings, qualifier and/or rebuttals. A weakness of this method is that an argument may possess all of the structural elements of an argument but use incorrect scientific knowledge, weak evidence (e.g. anecdotal) or express values and perspectives that are devoid of evidence. Thus, alternative frameworks have emerged to measure argument quality.

Wu and Tsai (2007) examined Year 10 Taiwanese students’ argumentation skills about the SSI of nuclear power. They used multiple methods to measure argument quality including the presence of claims, counter claims and rebuttals as well as four categories or reasoning modes (social, ecological, economic, science/technology). It was inferred that students who presented more categories or reasoning modes were better able to argue from multiple perspectives. Other researchers (e.g. Lee & Grace, 2012; Sadler & Donnelly, 2006) have used the number of categories or types of justifications to support a claim to measure argument quality.

It is asserted that using at least two different methods of measuring argumentation helps to overcome weaknesses in one method alone. The use of robust and replicable methods for measuring argumentation quality are particularly important when measuring argument quality before and after an intervention. Methods of assessing argument quality also need to be relatively simple so that teachers can use them to monitor their students’ developing skills.

Developing argumentation skills

Improving argumentation skills in younger students can be difficult. Means and Voss (1996) suggest that students need some content knowledge if they are to engage in the argumentation process and construct arguments. However, content knowledge alone is insufficient (Osborne et al., 2004a). Since Zohar and Nemet’s (2002) ground-breaking study in Israel where they demonstrated that teaching of argumentation about SSI significantly improved year 10 students’ conceptual understanding and argumentation skills their study has been replicated with varying degrees of success in many countries (e.g. Khishfe, 2014; Osborne et al., 2004a; Sadler & Donnelly, 2006; Venville & Dawson, 2010).

Evagorou et al. (2012) conducted a study with 12–13 year olds from two different UK schools about an SSI where imported grey squirrels competed with indigenous red squirrels. Students developed their written arguments in pairs. It was found that students used evidence that supported their decision but ignored other evidence. The study looked at differences between the arguments of each student pair. In one school, 7/14 pairs demonstrated improved arguments. In the other school, only 3/13 pairs improved. The teachers were not instructed about how to teach argumentation but the behaviour and strategies used varied. In the school that improved the teacher modelled argumentation, allowed more time for peer discussion, provided positive feedback and facilitated discussion.

More recently, Kuhn and Lerman (2021) examined the argumentation skills of a group of Year 8 (13–14 years old) students in the US and found flaws in their argumentation around using types of evidence. They suggested students have a ‘cognitive limitation’ (p. 1037). These particular students were high achieving, all university bound and experienced regular inquiry-based instruction. Yet, they still struggled to identify relationships between claims and evidence or identify weaknesses in evidence. This led to extrapolating from anecdotal evidence. However, Kuhn and Lerman (2021) did find some transfer of learning about the strength of evidence and the relationship of the claim to evidence following a brief one-lesson intervention.

Role of the teacher

Few studies have focussed on teachers and how they enact SSI in their teaching (Hancock et al., 2019; Nielsen, 2020). However, there is an emerging trend in SSI research to focus on the nature of classroom discussion which is facilitated by the teacher (Bossér & Lindahl, 2019). In their study, a teacher worked with his 15–16 years old students using a climate change SSI. Over two lessons the students worked in groups of 5–6. The authors found a tension between dialogic student talk and authoritative talk where the teacher gives the answers. It seems that a balance of teacher–student interactions that helps students examine different sources of knowledge from multiple perspectives independently is difficult for teachers to achieve.

Christodoulou and Osborne (2014) also claim that argumentation research has focussed primarily on students’ written and oral arguments and proposed that argumentation research needs to explore the role of teacher dialogue in initiating and facilitating student thinking and reasoning. Teachers need to prompt students to provide evidence and justifications as part of their arguments. In the study conducted by Ottander and Simon (2021), teachers created opportunities for productive conversations that allowed students working in groups to express their thinking, engage in meaning-making and broaden their understanding of sustainability SSI.

This study is predicated on the belief that the teacher is crucial to student learning in science, no less so when learning to argue about SSI. Teacher behaviours and strategies are critical in creating an environment conducive to learning how to construct arguments about SSI.

The following research questions are addressed in this study.

1. How effective is the use of water-based SSI be used by early career teachers in improving their Year 7 students’ argumentation skills about water-based SSI?

2. What teaching strategies and behaviours are used by early career teachers to teach their Year 7 students argumentation about water-based SSI?

Method

Underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm, a mixed methods case study design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) was utilised to examine the impact, and types of behaviours and strategies used by two early career science teachers as they taught argumentation about SSI to their Year 7 students. Multiple sources of qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed concurrently which enabled triangulation of the findings from the multiple perspectives of the participants. The quantitative data enabled the impact of the intervention to be measured while the qualitative data was triangulated and contributed to the trustworthiness of the findings about how SSI argumentation was implemented.

Human research ethics approval was obtained from the University. The principal, teachers, parents and students were provided with an information sheet and consent form explaining the purpose of the study, the intervention and the type of data to be collected. Participation was voluntary. The School is not identified and pseudonyms are used for the teachers and the students.

Following professional development on SSI and argumentation, each teacher explicitly taught argumentation skills using water SSI over three consecutive lessons. For all six lessons, classroom audio-transcripts, field notes and student work samples were collected. Student reflections were obtained from one class. Teachers were individually interviewed at the end of the final lesson about their perceptions of the lessons and student outcomes. Students also completed a pre- and post-test comprising 10 multiple choice questions on water chemistry and a question where they constructed an argument about an SSI on the future use of a country dam.

Context and sample

The school in which the study was conducted is a co-educational independent school in an outer metropolitan suburb. The school has an ICSEA of about 1100 which is above the Australian mean of 1000. ICSEA is a measure of socio-educational advantage and is calculated based on parental education and income. The school community encompasses a range of cultural backgrounds with more than half of the students speaking English as a second language. In 2021, two Year 7 classes (Class A and Class B) and their early career teachers (Miss Thomas and Mrs Rosa, both pseudonyms) participated in the study. Both teachers were in their third year of teaching and were eager to participate. There were 58 students in total, 30 in Class A and 28 in Class B. Class A had several students with low literacy skills in reading and writing with an Education Assistant being present in all lessons to assist these students one-on-one.

The students were aged 11–12 years old and were in their first three months of secondary school. The science classes were not streamed for ability and were described as general science classes. The teachers were teaching a nine-week Chemistry unit as per the state science curriculum. Students used the Oxford Science 7 Student Book (Sylvester & Yap, 2016) which introduced them to mixtures and solutions, states of matter, water cycle, environmental effects on the water cycle, human water management and water as a resource. Argumentation using SSI was taught towards the end of the unit.

Argumentation intervention

Both teachers participated in a three-hour professional development workshop where they were introduced to SSI and argumentation using materials adapted from Ideas, Evidence and Argument in Science Education (IDEAS) (Osborne et al., 2004b). Prior to the workshop, the teachers were provided with a curriculum resource on water use, SSI and argumentation. During the workshop, the teachers were provided with sample lesson plans which they were encouraged to adapt and modify to suit their students and teaching preferences. The lesson plans included a PowerPoint presentation illustrating an argument about marine conservation and two water-based SSI writing frames to use in class. The writing frames contained questions to scaffold the construction of an argument. The SSI writing frames had been previously trialled with Year 7 students (Dawson & Venville, 2020).

Both teachers introduced argumentation about SSI using a similar sequence as per below.

1. Introduce the concept of SSI using a familiar and engaging example where there are opposing claims, data and multiple stakeholders. For example, best football team.

2. Role play authentic example of a socioscientific argument – fishing in protected marine reserves with data provided on opposing claims by different stakeholders.

3. Explicitly introduce Toulmin’s structure and parts of an argument.

4. Use writing frame to construct arguments about a dam water SSI.

5. Review names and definitions of parts of an argument.

6. Use writing frame to construct arguments about a bore water SSI.

7. Reflect on decision-making process and learning about argumentation.

Quantitative data sources and analysis

Students completed a written questionnaire before and after studying the Chemistry unit.

The first part of the questionnaire comprised 10 multiple choice questions sourced from the Oxford textbook. The pre- and post-test scores were calculated and entered into SPSS. The pre- and post-test scores were compared using a one-way repeated measures ANOVA.

The second part required students to read a paragraph about a water-based SSI on whether or not they should be allowed to swim in a dam that also provided drinking water. See Appendix A for a copy of the SSI. Once students made a decision of ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’ (claim) they were asked to write an argument to support their claim. This water SSI had been developed and trialled previously with different Year 7 students at other schools (Dawson & Venville, 2020). The trial established that the SSI was discriminating (i.e. could elicit a range of arguments of varying quality) and appropriate for Year 7 students with a range of literacy skills. In the trial, a coding scheme was developed based on Toulmin’s argument structure and types of categories.

Using Toulmins’ argument structure, each student’s argument was assigned a Level from 0 to 4: Level 0 (no response or nonsense), Level 1 (claim only), Level 2 (claim and data), Level 3 (claim, data and backing or qualifier), Level 4 (claim and data and backing and qualifier or rebuttal). The types of categories were coded as environmental/science, economic, human health, human rights, ethical, solutions or other. The pre- and post-test scores were entered into SPSS. Because the data were non-parametric, the argumentation levels and the number of types of categories before and after the argumentation intervention were compared using a Wilcoxon signed rank test. The effect size was determined using Cohen’s d. Table 1 provides an example of each argument level and type of category.

Table 1. Exemplars of student arguments and types of categories.

Argument level	Exemplar
Level 1 (claim)	I don’t know. I have never seen/heard of this place so I not entirely sure. (pre 205)
Level 2 (claim and data/warrant)	No because there might be animals in the dam and drinking the water from the dam might be bad for people’s health (data). (pre 214)
Level 3 (claim, data, backing OR qualifier)	No we don’t have enough water due to lack of rainfall. We need to drink water to survive (data), so if we waste water we won’t be able to grow our crops as much and our population will slowly decrease (backing). Also you can swim, canoe, kayak and fish in other places. (pre 211)
Level 4 (claim, data, backing and qualifier OR rebuttal)	I would not vote to swim in the dam. Firstly because if people stop swimming and canoeing in it will be changed so that we can drink from it. There is only 2.5% of fresh water for us humans to drink (data). Secondly it is better to use the dam water instead of the underground water, we need it for in case and we can’t waste it (data) and it is better for the environment and friendly to the ecosystem (backing). Thirdly, it will reduce the cost of water treatment which they use for the dam, which isn’t as essential as drinking water which we need to survive (backing). Lastly, there are way more places to swim and canoe not just the dam. (Rebuttal). (post 213)
Category
Science/Environment	No … Using a dam instead of groundwater is much, much better for the ecosystem and provides a friendly alternative as the rainfall decreases. To save the ‘no recreation’ problem, the government could build a recreational centre specifically for canoeing, etc. that’s eco-friendly and uses recycled, treated water. (post 226)
Human health	No … . Because the dam water it needs to stay clean and non-toxic. If people swim in the dam or go fishing diseases could be spread and many people will get sick and possible die. (pre 218)
Human rights	Yes, we all have enough water to drink on this earth. Most people have fresh water in their homes. People like to swim, fish and canoe. If it’s a small town people look forward to doing fun things. (post 228)
Economic direct/indirect	… they could help raise money  … . (post 218)
Ethics	…  it [the dam] probably has a lot of history of the land so it is great to keep the values of the land. (post 210)
Solutions	No … Even though you won’t be able to canoe, fish or swim there are lots of different places to go and do that like a swimming pool or maybe a lake or even a river … . (post 227)

Qualitative data sources and analysis

Three 40 min lessons for each of the two teachers were observed and audio-recorded (six lessons in total). The audiotapes were fully transcribed. Extensive field notes were collected with the focus being on the teacher’ behaviours, teaching strategies and dialogue between the teacher and the students. Teacher interviews at the end of the argumentation lessons were also transcribed. Due to the University ethics approval and the School’s approval process, it was not possible to interview individual students regarding their perception of the impacts of the argumentation lessons. The qualitative data of field notes, audio-transcripts and teacher interview transcripts were analysed using a grounded theory approach to identify key themes related to teacher behaviours and strategies. In the first instance, the transcripts and field notes were read several times. Open coding related to teacher behaviours and strategies was conducted with constant questioning and comparison in relation to the data and then analytic induction was used to construct four themes. Mrs Rosa’s class also completed a written reflection with six questions at the end of the argumentation lessons about what they had learnt. The SSI writing frames used in the lessons were also examined.

Results

The quantitative and qualitative data were analysed to answer the two research questions.

Effect of SSI and argumentation on students’ argumentation skills and water knowledge

A total of 48 students completed both the pre- and post-test. When asked if they should be allowed to swim in the dam, in the pre-test 40% of students wrote ‘yes’, 18% wrote ‘I don’t know’ and 40% wrote no. One student did not answer. In the post-test only 23% said ‘yes’, 8% wrote ‘I don’t know’ and the majority (69%) wrote ‘no’.

In addressing Research Question 1, the quality of students’ written arguments about the water SSI was analysed using two coding schemes. The arguments were scored from 0 to 4 using Toulmin’s argument structure and the number of types of categories. Tables 2 and 3 summarise the argumentation levels and the number of types of categories before and after the argumentation lessons. After the argumentation lessons, there was a significant increase in the mean argumentation level from 2.09 ± 0.73 to 2.41 ± 0.57 z = 2.95 (corrected for ties), p = .0033, with a medium effect size of d = 0.49. Overall, there was an increase in the proportion of students providing backings or qualifiers after the lessons. There was also a significant increase in the mean number of categories from 1.31 ± 0.86 to 1.82 ± 0.91 z = 2.91 (corrected for ties), p = .0037, with a medium effect size of d = 0.58. There was an increase in the categories of science/environment, economic and providing solutions.

Table 2. Argumentation level before and after argumentation lessons (n = 48).

Level	Pre (% of students)	Post (%)
No response	2	0
1	14	2
2	58	57
3	24	39
4	2	2

Table 3. Percentage of types of categories before and after lessons (n = 48).

Category	Pre (%)	Post (%)
Science/environment	9	29
human health, clean water	54	48
human right to swim, recreation	29	28
economic direct/indirect	7	22
ethics	7	6
solutions	22	31
other	4	4

In order to determine whether students’ water knowledge improved, students’ pre- and post-test scores were compared. The pre- and post-test scores were 4.02 ± 1.92 and 6.20 ± 2.40, respectively. The ANOVA indicated that there was a significant increase F(1,49) = 43.84, p < .0001 with a large effect size of d = 0.91.

Teaching strategies and behaviours used to teach SSI and argumentation

Four themes emerged from the qualitative data. The themes were: (1) developing a safe classroom environment; (2) providing clear instructions about argument structure and quality; (3) providing opportunities to think and work collaboratively and individually; and (4) practising constructing and critiquing oral and written arguments with the gradual removal of scaffolds.

Developing a safe learning environment

Both Miss Thomas and Mrs Rosa demonstrated specific actions to create a learning environment where students were able to state their arguments, listen and respond to questions from their teachers and peers. Mrs Rosa explicitly stated classrooms rules about how students needed to listen to each other. At the start of the first lesson, she said:

Today let’s just quickly go over the rules of how we conduct ourselves.

If you have something that you would like [to say] we’re going to be doing hands up okay instead of just yelling out and talking over each other so that we can hear what each person has to say.

Remember that this is a safe classroom, because what we’re going to be doing today is we’re going to be making lots of different decisions and ideas and everyone [is] going to have different ideas and different ways of saying. This is a safe classroom so we respect everybody’s ideas, because that is a really important part of learning to make decisions. Two things [are] really important – make sure that you’re listening to others, that you’re putting hands up and being respectful of others. (Transcript)

At the start of the third lesson, she praised students for the way they had respected one another.

Awesome, it’s a safe classroom and I really loved how you guys were all sharing and respecting other people’s ideas yesterday. So, you really did a great job being able to respect and think about other people over yours. So well done. You guys did an awesome job. (Transcript)

She also praised students for their thinking.

First of all, you guys did an amazing job yesterday. I was super proud of how you guys were thinking. You use some really good thought processes. I love that you had a good feel. Some of you even changed your mind. [inaudible] Well done you guys did a really great job. (Transcript)

Finally, she acknowledged the difficulty some of the students faced when thinking and making decisions.

Yes, it is difficult as some dilemmas have pros and cons to weigh up. Things are not always black and white and sometimes hard to decide. (Transcript)

Feedback from the student survey of Mrs Rosa’s class showed their awareness of the importance of listening with 20/24 students stating it was useful to hear the views of others ‘to understand advantages and disadvantages’ and ‘hear different opinions’. Reasons for the importance of listening were that ‘their ideas and reasoning can change point of view’ and to ‘hear better arguments’.

Further evidence of a safe learning environment was provided in Miss Thomas’ interview when she noted that:

The aim of the lessons, I want them to start thinking, [they] did a lot more than they usually do. A lot of students who don’t usually speak did. This time, a lot of kids actually had their hand up, a lot that normally wouldn't tend to participate. (Interview)

Clear instructions about argument structure and quality

Both teachers provided clear instructions about argument structure and quality at multiple times over the three lessons. At the start, Miss Thomas asked students for characteristics of a good argument and why. Students mentioned ‘data to support them’, ‘clear structure’, ‘persuasive’ and ‘not purely opinions’. She explained the difference between facts and opinions. She then presented students with two arguments and asked them which one was better and why. A PowerPoint slide was then introduced with definitions of parts of an argument (claims, data, warrants, backings, qualifiers and rebuttals). Students wrote these terms into their notebooks. Below, Miss Thomas explains the concept of argumentation and why it is important.

What we’re going to be doing today is we’re actually going to be learning about argumentation or how to be able to justify your decisions that you make. In science it’s not all about just rote learning, … How we need to make an informed decision and how do I argue my point to others. (Transcript)

The following lesson, Miss Thomas wrote the first letters of the parts of an argument on a whiteboard and asked students, ‘what were the names of the new terms from yesterday?’ At the conclusion of the final lesson Mrs Rosa asked students: ‘How do you convince others you are right?’ to which students responded:

Get more people on your side. Give an example. Show them what it is like having clean water versus polluted and the consequences. Rebuttal – show people they are wrong. For every argument give against. Research their views. Come up with solutions. (Field notes)

Opportunities to think and work collaboratively and individually

Students had multiple opportunities to think and work both collaboratively with their peers in pairs, in groups of 3–4 or as a whole class. They also had time to think and write individually. To encourage individual thinking, Mrs Rosa, in her interview, noted that she needed to ‘be okay with students taking a longer amount of time to come up with an answer because you feel kind of uncomfortable when they’re just sitting there going, “Uhhh  …  I don’t know”’. (Interview)

She asked students to think and write before introducing water as an SSI.

Let’s talk about water quality. Even though we know that water can be a renewable resource free fall water is not always a renewable resource. How do you use our water wisely? Should we use water wisely and why, so there’s an example. What else would you think about water usage. So, write a couple of things down. Then we’re going to have a discussion about it. What other problems could you see about the way that we use water? (Transcript)

Both teachers used different strategies for collaborative work. For example, Miss Thomas in eliciting characteristics of an argument said, ‘you have one minute to discuss what you know about arguments’. On several occasions, she asked students to respond to open-ended questions ‘in your pairs’.

Practising argument construction and critique

Over the course of the three lessons, students in both classes participated in a role play and worked through creating arguments about two SSI using writing frames with questions to scaffold their argument construction. Both teachers gradually provided more student autonomy. For example, with the first dam water SSI, Mrs Rosa read the SSI out to the students, and asked students to highlight three reasons for or against within the text. She then asked students to decide ‘yes, no or I don’t know’ and write their reasons by themselves. She set a timer for 20 min on the whiteboard and circulated around the class assisting students one-on-one. She then recorded on the board the numbers of each claim and managed a whole class discussion where she elicited reasons from students and asked them probing questions. In the next lesson, students were introduced to the bore water SSI. This time she asked them to read the SSI by themselves and ask her questions. She encouraged them to write and asked them ‘what do we need to do?’. The field notes from this lesson indicate the increasing student autonomy.

T (teacher) asks students to form small groups of 2-4 and reminds students to listen to each other. T says talk to each other, give your position and reasons, talk to others.

S (students) move quickly to their groups – engaged in discussion.

T says even if you all have same claim – still discuss reasons.

Some groups off task but most are speaking about bore water SSI.

S very passionate, talking over each other, noisy.

T says remember to be respectful and listen to each other. (Field notes)

Discussion

It was found that after instruction on argumentation about SSI, Year 7 students’ ability to construct an argument improved significantly with an increase in argument quality and an increase in the number of types of categories. In this case, an intervention of targeted teacher professional development and instruction about argumentation over three lessons does seem to enable younger students to learn how to construct better quality arguments. As in other research in this field, it is not possible to generalise the findings and assume that the teacher strategies that seemed to be effective would be effective in other school contexts. It is up to the reader to infer the extent to which the findings would be transferable to his/her particular contexts.

What is difficult to ascertain though is what aspect or aspects of the intervention contributed to this improvement. It may be queried whether the improvement was due to argumentation instruction or increased water knowledge as water knowledge did significantly improve. Alternatively, the improvement may be due to familiarity with SSI related to water use as Garrecht et al. (2021) concluded in their quasi-experimental intervention in a pre- and post-test design with a comparison group. It is not possible to tease out the impact of these three variables. However, it has been shown that knowledge alone does not improve argumentation skills (Osborne et al., 2004a; Venville & Dawson, 2010). Nor is argumentation likely to improve in the absence of instruction (Crowell & Kuhn, 2014). The role of SSI is less clear as familiarity and engagement may encourage students to persist in writing an argument. To explore this, a research design with four groups of (1) no intervention, (2) SSI only, (3) argumentation only and (4) SSI and argumentation instruction would be required. This design requiring four different classes may not be feasible.

One feature of this research was that the teachers were both early career teachers.

Early career teachers were selected because the strategies and behaviours of expert teachers or external researchers are not necessarily transferable to other teachers. Following the professional development session, the teachers took ownership of the provided resources and taught argumentation in a way that suited them and their students.

The qualitative data analysis identified a need for teachers to create a safe learning environment where students can take risks with their thinking. Osborne et al. (2016) in their study with Grade 6–8 students concluded that the practice of argumentation is not one that students have likely been exposed to before and thus there is a need for ‘psychological safety’ (p. 841). The teachers enthusiastically reinforced that being able to construct and critique arguments is a worthwhile process. They allowed students time to think and write and not just talk and discuss and regularly checked in on where students were with their thinking and writing. The teachers asked open-ended questions that encouraged students to justify their claims. The teacher behaviours and strategies in the observed lessons held some resemblance to what Sandoval et al. (2019) termed ‘collective sense-making’ (p. 1866). In their study, two elementary teachers introduced scientific argumentation to their Grade 3/4 students. Like their study, for Mrs Rosa and Miss Thomas, student knowledge had authority and students were accountable to themselves and each other for the viability of their answers. The purpose of discussion was consensus building rather than finding one correct answer.

There are several limitations of this study. First, this is a case study with two early career teachers and their students in a single school. The teachers were given the freedom to implement argumentation as they thought appropriate. The findings and the themes cannot be generalised. However, the themes arising from triangulation of the lesson transcripts, teacher interviews and classroom observation field notes support transferability of the findings to other Year 7 classes. Furthermore, in order to determine cause and effect relationships, it may be necessary to implement research strategies and research designs that produce theoretical concepts to explain causal relationships between teacher behaviours and strategies and subsequent changes in students’ understandings. Research methods such as qualitative comparative analysis could be used in the design of future studies or analysis of case studies to determine whether particular variables are or are not responsible for the findings (Larsson, 2009; Oana et al., 2021).

Another weakness of this case study is that the data sources and analysis do not shed light on the reasons ‘why’ students’ argumentation skills improved. The addition of student interviews may have assisted in understanding ‘why’. However, the University ethics approval and school approval processes did not allow for student interviews.

Second, there is no control group. Thus, it is not possible to know if improvement in argumentation is due to improved knowledge about water, argumentation instruction, engagement with SSI, or other unknown factors. As stated earlier, the Head of Science nominated the two teachers. After the PD, both teachers expressed a desire to continue to teach argumentation to their students in the future.

The percentage of students for whom English was an additional language was high which necessitated an Education Assistant in Miss Thomas’ class. It is possible that the English language level of some students may have underestimated their written argumentation skills and water knowledge before and after the argumentation lessons.

Based on the outcomes of this study, it is recommended that the intervention be replicated in other Year 7 classes especially those with students of variable ability. These students were not streamed for ability and replication with less academically able classes would be informative. Students in their first year of secondary school Year 7 vary considerably in their thinking skills. Differentiated instruction with scaffolding is needed to recognise and cater for different starting points in argument skills. The study should also be repeated with younger school children aged 8–11 years to see if they have the capacity to improve their argumentation skills about socioscientific issues.

Larsson proposes five lines of reasoning to support generalisability of qualitative research, one of which is ‘context similarity’ (p. 32). The findings are maybe useful for those who conduct research in relation to argumentation about socioscientific issues. While the findings are not generalisable those who offer PD can use their expertise to decide whether the teacher strategies and behaviours would support the development of argumentation skills in their particular context. To promote better quality arguments, teachers need to focus on exceptions (qualifiers) to decisions and the disadvantages of alternative claims. Osborne et al. (2016) also found that younger students experienced difficulties in critiquing the arguments of others. Teachers in similar contexts (e.g. age groups) should consider creating an environment where students are able to take risks with their thinking and understand that they don’t have to think the same as their teacher or peers. Finally, teachers of this age group may need to be prepared to take longer to teach this important skill and provide regular opportunities to engage in quality argumentation.

Conclusion

This study demonstrated that two early career teachers, provided with minimal professional development, could successfully improve their students’ argumentation skills through a modest intervention. By using SSI to develop argumentation skills in their formal schooling it is hoped that when students are faced with these and other issues in their adult lives they will draw upon their prior learning about negotiating SSI. This is more likely to occur if SSI are explicitly introduced from a young age and then re-visited throughout all years of schooling.

Ethics statement

The research conducted in this study was approved by the [University] Human Research Ethics Committee, 2019/RA/4/1/8425.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).