Examining the effect of reporting based on science writing heuristic approach on written argument quality in general biology laboratory

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to investigate pre-service science teachers’ development of the quality of written arguments using science writing heuristic approach and pre-service science teachers’ views about the science writing heuristic and its argument components in a General Biology Laboratory Course II. The study was carried out with 21 sophomore pre-service science teachers enrolled at a public university. A case study design was used and eight science writing heuristic approach experiments were implemented over 14 weeks. Data included a grading rubric to analyze pre-service science teachers’ written arguments and a survey to explore their views about the science writing heuristic approach and its components. Data gathered from the grading rubric were analyzed using ANOVA and data gathered from the survey were analyzed using content analysis. The results of the ANOVA analysis indicated that the quality of pre-service science teachers’ argumentative writing significantly increased over time. The survey results highlighted that the science writing heuristic approach increased pre-service science teachers’ research skills and contributed to their permanent learning. Moreover, the pre-service science teachers were able to make connections between components of the science writing heuristic approach and claim, evidence and reflection components were the most useful and challenging components.

KEYWORDS:

• Science writing heuristic approach
• biology laboratory
• laboratory report
• pre-service science teachers
• written argument quality

Acknowledgments

This study incudes a part of the second author’s master’s thesis, completed under the supervision of the first author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.