Exploring Small Group Argumentation Shown in Designing an Experiment: Focusing on Students' Epistemic Goals and Epistemic Considerations for Activities

The purpose of this study is to explore students` epistemic goals and considerations in designing an experiment task and to investigate how a shift in the students` epistemology affected their argumentation. Four 7th grade students were selected as a focus group. According to the results, when they designed their own experiment, their epistemic goal was `scientific sense-making` and their epistemic considerations - the perception of the nature of the knowledge product was `this experiment should explain how something happened`, the perception of the justification was `we need to use our interpretation of the data` and the perception of the audience was `constructor` - contributed to designing their experiment actively. When students tried to select one argument, their epistemic goal shifted to `winning a debate`, showing `my experiment is better than the others` with the perception of the audience, `competitor`. Consequently, students only deprecated the limits of different experiment so that they did not explore the meaning of each experiment design deeply. Eventually, student A`s experiment design was selected due to time restrictions. When they elaborated upon their result, their epistemic goal shifted to `scientific sensemaking`, reviewing `how this experiment design is scientifically valid` through scientific justification - we need justification to make members accept it - acting as `cooperator`. Consequently, all members engaged in a productive argumentation that led to the development of the group result. This study lays the foundation for future work on understanding students` epistemic goals and considerations to prompt productive argumentation in science classrooms.