Investigation of fifth, sixth and seventh grade students' argumentation quality in science lessons

The aim of this study is to analyze argumentation quality of fifth, sixth and seventh grade students according to rubric developed by the Erduran et al. (2004). This research is descriptive study of case analysis approach and qualitative research methods were used in this study. The study group of this research have been selected according to the homogeneous sampling method. In this regard, the research was conducted with 5th grade students (n = 129), 6th grade students (n = 127), 7th grade students (n = 131) and with their science teachers (n = 12) in four secondary schools located in the central province of Muş. Students' discussions were recorded with a tape recorder during 48 lessons, in 12 classrooms. Audio recordings and observations are done as data of this research. The data set which obtained by the wording of the audio recordings was evaluated according to the approach of descriptive analysis. In the analysis of the obtained data, it is found that all grades used the Level 1 a lot more than other levels; all grades used Level 2 less than Level 1; Level 3, Level 4 and Level 5 arguments were not used. It was concluded that these students used the claims a lot more than the other argumentation components; they used more less the data, justification and counter-claims than the claims. The rebuttal, backing and qualifier were not used in students' dialogues. Also there was no relationship between the questioning rates and argumentation quality.