Scientific explanations and arguments: Seeing and supporting explanation and argumentation in students' talk

摘要

The recent Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC 2012) and the corresponding Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013) have identified explanation and argumentation as practices that are essential to science and represented argumentation as central to scientists' intellectual activity. But although they are relatively new foci in science education, as we showed in our first article in this series (Falk and Brodsky 2013), explanations and the process of argumentation used to develop and evaluate them have long been central to science. Because students in science classrooms are investigating phenomena, working to make sense of science ideas, and talking with each other in the process, explanation and argumentation are probably already happening in your classroom, whether or not you are always aware of it. In this article, we provide a set of questions useful for thinking about explanation and argumentation in students' talk with each other. With them, our goal is to offer support for recognizing aspects of these practices that are already in your students' talk, so you can build off students' existing capabilities. We also offer some initial strategies for creating more opportunities for students to engage in learning through explanation and argumentation.