Promoting the role of data and scientific models in students’ argumentation on socio-scientific issues through communication scaffolds. Twelfth conference of EUROPEAN RESEARCHERS IN DIDACTICS OF BIOLOGY- ERIDOB 2018. Anna Marbà Tallada, Jordi Domènech-Casal.
Writing essays on SSI is a candidate didactic space, but students are not used to such linguistic genera or argumentation. Linguistic scaffolding has been proposed by several authors as a way to improve and assess high-order cognitive skills as comparison, justification and argumentation (Lemke, 1989). Other authors have claimed that specific attention to scientific vocabulary linked to a dilemma is a key aspect to an adequate deepening in scientific models. We have proposed didactic scaffolds available (http://bit.ly/2zjxVxO ) and include: Two examples of essays on other subjects, a step-guide with grammar support to write an essay, and a Rubric developed ad-hoc to assess the scientific quality of an essay. This rubric, called McLeares, assessed separately 5 items: 1) using
scientific models for argumentation; 2) using contexts and data for argumentation, 3) using appropriately scientific vocabulary 4) using grammar particles in argumentation 5) developing the discourse structure for scientific essays: context, data, argumentation, conclusions. Student’s abilities to use scientific models and data can be promoted by communicative scaffolds. McLeares rubric has resulted to be an effective tool to implement SSI in the classroom.
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[slideshare id=101655320&doc=postercsc-180609210038&type=d]