The effect of argumentation based laboratory applications on scientific process skills, views of nature of science and scientific epistemological beliefs

In this study, the effect of argumentation based laboratory applications on the prospective classroom teachers' understanding of scientific process skills, nature of science and scientific epistemological beliefs were investigated. Pretest - posttest experimental and control group research method was used in this study. The study was conducted in the spring term of 2018-2019 with 37 people in the argumentation based study group and 37 in the classical laboratory applications study group. In this study, random selection was not made in the selection of experimental and control groups and criterion sampling was preferred among the purposeful sampling methods in determining the participants. The dependent variable of the research is scientific epistemological beliefs, views on the nature of science and scientific process skills; the independent variable is Argumentation Based Laboratory Applications. It was checked that the pretest of the experimental and control groups were equal in terms of independent variables. In this study, three different data collection tools were used: Doğ The Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale, Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Scale and Scientific Process Skill Test '. Before the analysis of the data, it was examined whether the variables showed normal distribution and normality tests were performed for this purpose. The pretest and posttest scores of the Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale and the pre-test and post-test scores of the Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Scale of the participants in the experimental and control groups were observed to be normal and the pre-test and post-test scores of these two scales were compared. As a result of the pre-test comparison of the experimental process control group of Scientific Process Skills Test, it was found that pre-test scores showed normal distribution. Since the pre-test scores of the participants in the control group and the experimental group from the Scientific Process Skills Test were found to be normally distributed but the post-test scores were not normally distributed, the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was used when comparing the pre-test and post-test scores in the control group for these two scales. It is possible to say that the scientific process skills test post-test scores of the participants in the experimental and control groups are not normally distributed. For this reason, Mann Whitney U-Test was used when comparing the final test scores for this scale. It was found that there was a significant difference between the prospective teachers in the control group and the scores obtained from the scientific process skill test (U: 208.5, p <.05). When the average scores were taken into consideration, it was found that the scientific process skills of the prospective teachers in the experimental group were higher. It is remarkable that it is high. This finding may indicate that argumentation-based laboratory practices are effective in developing scientific process skills. It was found that laboratory applications based on argumentation had an effect on students' views on the nature of science [t (66) = 2.58, p <.05]. The scores of the students in the experimental group (X̄: 2.91) were higher than the scores of the students in the control group (X̄: 2.74). This finding can be interpreted as a positive effect of the argumentation laboratory practices on the nature of scientific knowledge. It was found that there was no significant difference between the scores of the prospective teachers in the experimental group from the Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Scale and the scores of the prospective teachers in the control group. [t (47) = 1.69, p <.05]. The score of the students in the experimental group (X̄: 2.91) was higher than the score of the students in the control group (X̄: 2.74), but this difference was not statistically significant. Keywords: Argument, Argumentation, Scientific Process Skills, Nature of Science, Scientific Epistemological Belief