The effects of argumentation based instruction process on academic achievement and argumentation levels

The purpose of this study is examining the effects of scientific argumentation based instruction on academic success in science classes and in developing scientific argumentation levels of Primary School 4th grade students. Multi-approach method has been used in the study and semi-empirical method with pre and post testing control groups, which is one of the many quantitative methods, has been used in examining the effects of the argumentation to academic success; and document analysis method, which is one of the quantitative methods, has been used in examining the change in scientific argumentation skills. The universe of the study consists of 4th grade students from a Primary School in Amasya in the 2012-2013 Academic Year; and the exemplification group of the study consists of 29 students, 14 of whom are experimental group, and 15 of whom are control group. 10 weeks of education has been conducted with argumentation-based activities in the experimental group; and in the control group, activities were conducted with the former styles with the science and technology books. A 25-Item academic success test which was prepared by the researcher for the purpose of data collection was used. Specialist viewpoints were obtained for this test beforehand. The reliability score of the success test has been calculated as 0.78. The activities to be used in the qualitative dimension of the study were prepared by the researcher. 12 activities have been developed on the achievement points of the Unit Matter and Change by taking the concepts stated in Toulmin Argumentation Model into consideration. The quantitative data have been analyzed with the program SPSS 18. The descriptive analysis has been use in qualitative data. In quantitative analyses, the Mann Whitney U test and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test have been used. The oral and written discussions obtained with the argumentation activities have been assessed according to the Sadler and Fowler (2006) Argumentation Rubric. The consistency coefficient has been calculated as 0.92 by using the codes given by 3 different people in encoding the worksheets. According to the results of the study, argumentation, which is one of the scientific discussion methods, has increased the academic success of the students in 4th Grades in Primary School. It affects the scientific discussion skills in a positive way. An increase has been observed in the students' usage levels of the items stated in Toulmin's Argumentation Model. The students' written argumentation averages is greater than verbal argumentation. The students' argumentation levels were not found significant difference according to stundents' gender.