Scientific argumentation in chemistry education: implications and suggestions

Abstract

The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2012-2025 reveals the aspiration of government to prepare Malaysian children to meet the challenges of a 21st century economy. Nonetheless, Malaysia has a long way to go to achieve this target. PISA (2015) result indicates that Malaysian students have problems in reasoning skills. To achieve the target, Educational Blueprint advocates infusion of inquiry-based instruction in classrooms for students to acquire critical thinking skill. Critical thinking skill is a 21st century learning skill the students need to possess in today’s global economy. This skill includes the ability of individual to reason effectively. Scientific argumentation is a skill to promote critical thinking of students. Being the essential element of scientific inquiry and important activity in scientific reasoning, scientific argumentation helps students to develop and refine scientific knowledge. It is imperative to implement scientific argumentation in science classrooms. The purpose of this paper aims to raise some issues, including the results of previous studies about the impact of scientific argumentation on science achievement, the rationale for focusing on monological models in the three classification of argumentation models, and address the issues about the appropriateness of Toulmin argument model (an example of monologoical models), which is prevailed in science education to promote students’ scientific argumentation skills. Finally, this paper will outline some suggestions regarding implementation of Toulmin argument model to promote scientific argumentation in chemistry education.