1.1.2. Argumentation and argument construction
Viewing science as a form of knowledge building emphasizes the role of scientific communities in the growth of scientific
knowledge (Kuhn & Reiser, 2005; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Scardamalia (2002) stressed that the construction of
knowledge is supported by engaging students in continuous dialogue and discourse to improve ideas within a community. In
this context, learners should engage in sustained discussion to support their claims and in dialogues to argue like scientists. In
science, argumentation is not a competition involving justification and debate to determine winners and losers but rather a
form of logical discourse used to extract relationships between claims and evidence (Duschl & Osborne, 2002). Golanics and
Nussbaum (2008) observed that collaborative argumentation is important in an educational context because it helps students
extract relationships between ideas, alter their conceptions, and deliberate on the meaning of evidence for claims. Not only
does practicing argumentation help in constructing explanations, but science educators also believe it is a core scientific
practice that students should learn (Sandoval & Millwood, 2005).