Scrutinizing the positions of students and teacher in argumentation in a high school physics classroom

Scientific argumentation is a critical skill in the authentic activities of scientists. In science education, argumentation is a significant activity for science learners to generate conclusions from data through discussion and negotiation. Despite its significance, argumentation rarely occurs in science classrooms. There exists a gap between the theoretical importance of argumentation and its practical insufficiency in classrooms. Researchers have tried several strategies to disseminate the practices of argumentation in schools. However, these efforts have limited and short-term impacts on transforming existing classroom practices.;Previous research mainly perceives argumentation as a learning outcome. In actuality, argumentation is a linguistically social interaction. It is necessary to go beyond understanding the input and output of argumentation and comprehend the interactive process of argumentation. In this case study, my focus dealt with understanding how teachers and students perceive argumentation innovations that educators have been trying to implement into classes. I used the positioning method to gauge the relational process of argumentation in a high school physics classroom. Through scrutinizing the positions of a physics teacher and 23 high school students, I closely examined the ways in which individual variation resulted in classroom communities adopting and evolving the argumentative practices.;After summarizing the patterns of positions that stood out, I constructed a dynamic model of argumentation. In this model, argumentation was impacted by inner factors in terms of arguers' properties and outer factors in terms of the nature of an argumentation task. With this model, I compared the differences between authentic argumentation among scientists and the argumentation practice I observed in the physics class. The differences were four-fold: the goal of argumentation being exploration versus verification, the arguers being enthusiastic experts versus slack novices, the environment of argumentation being unrestricted versus refrained, and the norm of argumentation being evidence oriented versus authority oriented. These differences shed light on the reasons for the incompatibility of authentic argumentation in a classroom context. Finally, I suggested a student-friendly pattern of argumentation as the solution for bridging the gap between the theoretical importance of argumentation and its insufficient practice in science classes.