The effect of argumentation-oriented teaching approach on the improvement of their top scientific process and critical thinking among high school 10. class students?

21st century has focused on bringing up scientifically literate individuals. Scientific literacy has two main components; understanding the scientific content and the nature of science. These two components are required for both future scientists and for the use of science in everyday life. In recent years, many scientists trained in the scientific literacy of individuals draws attention to the importance of argumentation. However, the importance of argumentation in science education in our country could not be stressed enough. The use of argumentation-oriented teaching approach in science education has been rather rare. Especially the studies about the contribution of argumentation in order to develop students within different skills are almost negligible. On the other hand, little is known about the importance dealing with of argumentation while teaching the students on the key terms of science and how they function.The aim of this study is to compare the impacts of argumentation-oriented teaching approach and the traditional teaching approach on the development of the top scientific process and critical thinking skills among the 10th grade high school students.Throughout the academic year 2008-2009, 34 tenth grade high school students, who attended Aksaray Şehit Ali Er Anatolian High School, constitute to this study sample. The sample was chosen through an easily recognizable method and as it was not possible to move the students involved in the study, a class was determined as the test group and the other one as the control group randomly.In the study a hemi pretest, post test group design was used. In the class, which was determined as the control group, the teaching was done according to the traditional approach, and in the class of test group, argumentation- oriented approach was used.Five input collecting tools were used so as to test the hypothesis in the study. The first tool is The Measurement Test of Scientific Process Skills which is used to test whether the students? top scientific process skills have improved or not. In this study, making determination variables establishing hypothesis out of the top scientific process, planning the experiment, changing the variables and controlling, saving the data (creating table), drawing the graphic and commenting the output (reading the graphic) and improving the skills were all tried to fulfilled. The second tool used to collect data is the Measurement Test of Critical Thinking Skills, which is used to test whether the students? critical thinking skills have been improved. During the implementation, it was aimed to improve the students? critical thinking skills on Recognition of Assumptions, Deduction, Interpretation, and Evaluation of Arguments. Throughout the study, in the test and control groups, chemical reactions, gases, and the thick phases of matter were taught. To compare the success of the students involved in the study, Chemical reactions Concept Test, Gases Concept Test, The Thick Phases of Matter Concept Test were implemented.At the of the study, during testing the hypothesis, t?Test and the ANCOVA, which are parametric analysis techniques, were used in the normally dispersed data, and Mann Whitney U Test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, which are not parametric analysis techniques, were used within the normally not dispersed data analysis.. The results were evaluated as .05.The statistical analysis show that argumentation-oriented teaching approach contribute considerably to the students? scientific process and critical thinking skills as well as their success. The outputs of this study stress that scientific process and critical thinking skills, which are defined as the most significant skills that science education aim to develop can be improved by means of the argumentation-oriented teaching approach.Keywords: Chemistry Education, Argumentation, Scientific Process Skills, Critical Thinking Skills.