Examining the effectiveness of argumentation based science teaching on 4th grade students

In this study, it is aimed to determine the effects of using argumentation-based teaching practices on the students' conceptual understanding, attitudes towards science and technology courses, science process skills, academic self-efficacy and the arguments used during written discussion event while teaching the unit called "Knowing Material" in the Science and Technology lesson for 4th grade students. Research was conducted in two different 4th grade classes of an elementary school in Usak Province in the 2013-2014 academic year. Students in the experimental group (N=29) were taught with an approach based on the argumentation and those in the control group (N=28) were taught with a traditional teaching approach. Activities determined in the context of traditional and argumentation based teaching approaches were implemented throughout for 11 weeks. The data in this study utilizing mixed method as a research design has been obtained from using; "Knowing Material Achievement Test" (KMAT), "Science Process Skills Scale" (SPSS), "Attitudes towards Science and Technology" (AST), "Academic Self-Efficacy Scale" (ASS), semi-structured interviews held with teachers and students at the end of the observation units, video recordings, and discussion activities and argumentation interview forms (AIF) used at the end of the research, which were both applied to the experimental group students. In this research, to analyze the quantitative data; Mean, standard deviation, and frequency values were calculated and t-test was used for the comparisons of the groups. For the analysis of the qualitative data, semi-structured interviews, observations, and written discussion activity papers were handled based on the sub-problems. According to the results, the experimental group students' conceptual understanding, attitudes towards science and technology lessons, science process skills, and academic self-efficacy values were found statistically significant compared to the values of the control group students. Also, it was found that argumentation-based learning (ABL) approach had positive impacts on the development of students' conceptual understanding, science process skills, attitudes towards science and technology lessons, and academic self-efficacy, however, no effect to change students' ability to create arguments.