Coordinating Scientific Argumentation and the Next Generation Science Standards through Argument Driven Inquiry

AbstractScientific argumentation is an essential activity for the development and refinement of scientific knowledge. Additionally, fostering argumentation related to scientific concepts can help students engage in a va+riety of essential scientific practices and enhance their science content knowledge. With the increasing prevalence and emphasis on argumentation skills within the current standards movement, i.e. Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, teachers need access to productive approaches for engaging their students in this essential practice of science in order to promote students' development toward science proficiency. This article provides teachers with one possible instructional model, Argument-Driven Inquiry, that will allow them to structure their laboratory activities to support students' engagement in scientific argumentation while also emphasizing the disciplinary core ideas and cross cutting concepts of science.Keywords: argumentation, instruction, standards, proficiency, scienceWhat Is Scientific Argumentation and Why Is It important in Science?Scientific argumentation "is a mode of logical discourse whose goal is to tease out the relationship between ideas and the evidence" (Duschl, Schweingruber and Shouse, 2007, p. 33). In many ways scientific argumentation is the process by which science, as a discipline, develops and refines knowledge. When scientists put forth arguments in support of new ideas, the claims, supporting evidence, and rationales or justifications of evidence, are critiqued and evaluated by other scientists. The cyclical process of critique, refinement, and evaluation then leads to scientific arguments that are robust and supported by sound evidence and scientific reasoning. Scientific argumentation is a key epistemic activity of the scientific community (Duschl, 2008), and is a characteristic that differentiates science from other bodies of knowledge. Given the importance of scientific argumentation within the scientific community, scientific argumentation should also play a prominent role in science education and science classrooms. The new framework for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (NRC, 2012) further supports the role of scientific argumentation as a bridge between the scientific community and the science classroom by suggesting that, "engaging in argumentation from evidence about an explanation supports students' understanding of the reasons and empirical evidence for that explanation, demonstrating that science is a body of knowledge rooted in evidence" (p. 44).How Is Argumentation Addressed in the NGSS Framework?The conceptual framework for the NGSS is intended to set the tone for the development of new national science standards as well as promote a renewed vision of science and engineering education. The NGSS framework provides an enhanced vision of science education that focuses on developing students' deeper understanding of the major crosscutting concepts and practices of science and engineering. Central to this new vision are "important practices, such as modeling, developing explanations, and engaging in critique and evaluation (argumentation), that have too often been underemphasized in the context of science education" (NRC, 2012, p. 44). Thus, these fundamental practices within science and engineering have been placed at the forefront of the new framework and identified as eight practices essential to the K12 science and engineering curriculum, which include:1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering);2. Developing and using models;3. Planning and carrying out investigations;4. Analyzing and interpreting data;5. Using mathematics and computational thinking;6. Constructing explanation (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering);7. Engaging in argument from evidence; and,8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information (NRC, 2012, p. …