Secondary School Students’ Views About the Use of Argument-Driven Inquiry in the Science Courses

Abstract

The vision of science teaching is to train individuals who can produce and evaluate scientific
knowledge by following the scientific processes like the scientists in order to understand and
be able to produce solutions to the problems they encounter in real life. Ensuring this is only
possible by using effective teaching methods. One of these methods is the argument-driven
inquiry method. In parallel, the purpose of the study is to identify secondary students’ views
about the use of the argument-driven inquiry in the science courses. In the research, the case
study has been adopted. Participants of the study consists of twelve seventh-grade students in
a secondary school located in the Aegean region in the 2016-2017 academic year. The research was carried out in six weeks. In the research, the 7th grade "Electric" unit was taught with
argument-driven inquiry activities. In the research, the participants were given an electrical
situation (serial-parallel connected circuits etc.). The research data was collected by a semistructured
interview form regarding the use of argument-driven inquiry method in science
classes which is consisting of 18 open-ended questions in order to determine students' opinions.
Content analysis method was used for analysis of the data obtained from the research. As a
result of the research, it was determined that the participants mostly gave a positive opinion on
the use of the argument-driven inquiry in science lessons. Students who gave negative opinions
about the argumentation-based inquiry method said that they did not like this model on the
grounds that they were afraid to express their own opinions in the lesson and they did not like
to talk in the lesson. As a result, it can be said that the literature contributes to the determination
of student opinions on the use of the model.