When Structure and Content of Socioscientific Argumentation Develop in an Unbalanced Way: A Case Study

To cultivate the capability of making informed decisions on socioscientific issues, ideally, we hope students would engage in discerning and evaluating justifications for and against different positions while constructing well-structured, persuasive arguments. When argumentations do not develop ideally, it is important to understand the constraints presented. This study explores a case where socioscientific argumentation (SSA) in a fifth-grade classroom showed unbalanced structural and content quality. The students’ oral arguments and post-discussion written arguments both demonstrated quality structure in terms of justification use, multiple perspective-taking, and rebuttals, and low accuracy level of knowledge-based justifications. Tracing the development of the SSA, we identified a few teaching and learning features that shaped this discourse pattern, including an overemphasis on structure, side-taking setting, context knowledge provided in brief points, and the students’ lack of content and context knowledge. Implications for practice and future research were discussed in reflection.