A Learning Progression For Scientific Argumentation Research

Emily Stewart

Learning Progression Reflection 5

26 February 2016

A Learning Progression for Scientific Argumentation: Understanding Student Work and Designing Supportive Instructional Contexts In the research article, A Learning Progression for Scientific Argumentation: Understanding Student Work and Designing Supportive Instructional Contexts (2010), the researchers design a learning progression for the process of scientific argumentation. The researchers begin their article by providing the definition of argumentation and its relevance to scientific education. Then, they define and discuss three different “dimensions” that helped to outline their progression (Berland & McNeill, 2010, p.767). They explain their progression for each of

The researchers define this dimension as “a reasoned piece of discourse in which a claim has been justified” (Berland & McNeill, 2010, p. 772). When developing their learning progression for this concept they identified four levels or traits that can become increasingly complex. The first level is that students are able to make an opinion about the concept and then provide their reasoning to support it. The second level focuses on how students can defend this opinion or “claim” to their peers when challenged about their claim, or the students “response to counterarguments” (Berland &McNeill, 2010, p.773). The third level is described as providing a “causal claim”, the researchers believe this is more sophisticated argumentation than a “noncausal claim” (Berland & McNeill, 2010, p 774). Finally, for this characteristic of argumentation, the final level addresses both the amount and relevance of the student’s evidence to defend this opinion they have created about a scientific concept. The researcher’s included a table of transcripts to illustrate their

I believe the researchers presented an organized and well developed learning progression. The dimensions they chose were appropriate and well thought out to illustrate their learning progression. The researchers explain that they use evidence from four different classrooms. It may not have been completely realistic but I think that more evidence could have been obtained to support their learning progression. Also, as the researchers explain, their data comes from students from the fifth grade through high school. I believe by starting in the fifth grade they missed out on important data that illustrates how young students develop this process of argumentation in science