The Use of Anticipation Guides in Reading Activities to Support College Students in Developing Scientific Written Arguments

Abstract

This study focused on the use of anticipation guides (AG) as a reading strategy to support science reading and explored the level of students’ scientific written arguments as a result. An AG consists of four components that address the topic of the reading activity: statements about the content, what I think, what the texts say, and evidence in the text. These components create a bridge to explore and assess students’ scientific written arguments at the end of the course. We employed a case study with an embedded quasi-experimental design to analyse the impact of using an AG, along with a thematic analysis to report students’ perceptions. The present study involved 40 college students (prospective physics teachers) in the Department of Physics Education, taking a course in the Fundamentals of Physics. The findings show that the use of an AG significantly affected students’ scientific written arguments, specifically in proposing a claim-reasoning-evidence (CRE) structure. The student participants found that using an AG in reading activities was challenging but interesting because they had to find evidence in the texts to support their initial statements regarding what they thought. We also discuss the implications of this study.