Education Commons^™

Instructional Practices That Foster Argumentative Discourse In Secondary Science Classrooms, Alicia N. Herrera

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

To remain competitive in an innovative world, American classrooms are promoting careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by utilizing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Students are engaged in inquiry by applying scientific practices like argumentation. However, science teachers are finding it difficult to respond to, as well as deepen students’ argumentative conversations. Therefore, research must uncover what instructional practices (or combinations) are used to overcome classroom obstacles, along with fostering students’ discourse and sensemaking. A teacher research approach was taken to investigate how the researcher, a secondary science teacher herself, effectively combines three under-researched instructional practices for …