ARISE: Argumentation Infused Scale-Up Environment

Scientific argumentation and decision-making abilities are critical for our college graduates to become active participants in the 21st century workforce. Research has shown that by learning the skills of scientific argumentation, students can become more effective problem solvers. There have been few efforts to help students in large enrollment gateway undergraduate science classes develop these skills. The project will transform an introductory physics course for future engineers into a format that integrates scientific argumentation. The main objective of this project is to develop strategies to help students to engage in scientific argumentation when they work in groups to solve problems and complete labs. Additionally, the project will prepare faculty and teaching assistants to learn strategies that help students develop argumentation skills. The project will assess the impact of these changes on student learning, attitudes, and retention.

Prior research has shown that argumentative tasks can enhance conceptual understanding, epistemic beliefs and problem solving skills. This project will develop strategies to foster scientific argumentation in novel contexts including context-rich problems and contrasting cases. Prompts supporting both written and oral argumentation will be adapted and refined to create design principles for argumentative tasks. These strategies will be first implemented in the SCALE-UP format and then be adapted to courses in other formats. A two-phase concurrent mixed methods approach will be utilized to assess the impact of these interventions on students' conceptual understanding, epistemological beliefs, problem solving and argumentative skills, attitudes, and retention. The investigators anticipate higher gains in students' conceptual understanding, problem solving skills, and attitudes, as well as a drop in DFW rates.

NSF Program: Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE)

CITATIONS

Beardmore, D., Towle, B. & Rebello C. M., (2017). Impact of contrasting cases on students’ problem solving. Contributed poster at the 2017 Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers, Atlanta, GA.

Munsell, J., Rebello, N. S., & Rebello, C. M. (2021 - Accepted). Using natural language processing to predict student problem solving performance. In M. Bennett, B.W. Frank, & R.E. Vieyra (Eds.), 2021 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings [Virtual Conference, August 4-5, 2021]. AAPT PERTG. https://www.compadre.org/per/items/detail.cfm?ID=15767

Rebello C. M., Asunda P. A., & Wang H. H. (2020). Infusing evidence-based reasoning in integrated STEM. In C. Johnson, M. Mohr-Schroeder, T. Moore & L. English, (Eds.). Handbook of Research on STEM Education (pp. 184-495). Routledge/Taylor & Francis.

Rebello, C. M. (2016). Argumentation prompts mediating student resource use on conceptual problems. In D. L. Jones, L. Ding, & A. Traxler (Eds.), 2016 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings. Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics.

Rebello, C. M., Piedrahita-Uruena, Y., Magana, A. D., & Dasgupta, C. (2019). Scaffolding evidence-based reasoning in a technology supported engineering design activity. The 2019 European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) Conference. University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.

Rebello, C. M., & Piedrahita-Uruena, Y. (2019). Using a hybrid of argumentation and problem-solving prompts to facilitate undergraduates’ problem-solving performance and confidence. The 2019 European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) Conference. University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.

Rebello, C. M., (2018). Contrasting designs and argumentation scaffolds impact pre-service elementary teachers’ science ideas in engineering design tasks. Paper presented at the 2018 Annual International Conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), Atlanta, GA.

Rebello, C. M., Beardmore, D., & Towle, B., (2017). Argumentation with contrasting cases: Facilitation of deep structure learning. The 2017 European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) Conference. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland.

Rebello, C. M., (2017). Pre-service teachers’ reasoning resources on argumentative conceptual physics problems. Paper presented at the 2017 Annual International Conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), San Antonio, TX.

Rebello, C. M. (2017). Utilizing contrasting cases paired with argumentation to facilitate deep structure learning. Talk presented at National STEM Education Research and Practice Summit, Purdue University.

Rebello, C. M., Beardmore, D. M., & Towle, B. A. (2017). Impact of various contrasting case scaffolds on students’ problem solving. Invited symposium talk presented at the 2017 Physics Education Research Conference, Cincinnati, OH.

Rebello, C. M., Uruena, Y. P., Dasgupta, C., & Rebello, N. S. (2017). Infusing argumentation in an integrated unit for future elementary teachers. Poster presented at the 2017 Summer American Association for Physics Teachers Conference, Cincinnati, OH.

Piedrahita-Uruena, Y., Rebello, C. M., Dasgupta, C., Magana, A. J., & Rebello, N. S. (2017). Impact of contrasting designs and argumentation scaffolds on elementary pre-service teachers’ use of science ideas in engineering design tasks. In D. L. Jones, L. Ding, & A. Traxler (Eds.), 2017 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings. Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics.

Piedrahita-Uruena, Y., & Rebello, C. M., (2019). Facilitating undergraduates’ problem-solving performances and confidence using blended argumentation and problem-solving prompts. Paper presented at the 2019 Annual International Conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), Baltimore, MD.

Piedrahita-Uruena, Y., Rebello, C. M., Dasgupta, C., & Rebello, N. S. (2017). Impact of contrasting cases and various scaffolds on elementary pre-service teachers’ engineering design challenge. Poster presented at the 2017 Physics Education Research Conference, Cincinnati, OH.

Seah, Y. Y., Magana, A. J., Rebello, C. M. (2020). Fostering informed design decision-making using argumentation. Paper submitted for the 2020 Annual International Conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), Portland, OR. (Conference cancelled)