The research site was a metropolitan co-educational high school with an enrolment of 960
students in years 8 to 12. The school is located in a middle class suburb of Perth, Western
In July, 2006, Mr. D agreed to trial the introduction of argumentation skills with his two
year 10 classes. Initially, Mr. D was given a briefing paper written by the authors which
summarised the principles of argumentation and how it could contribute to conceptual
understanding and scientific literacy. Mr. D then participated in a 90-min one-on-one
professional learning (PL) session with the first author using the Ideas, evidence and
argument in science (IDEAS) materials (Osborne et al. 2004a).