A Case Study of Elementary School Students’ Epistemic Understanding of Sufficiency of Evidence in Argument

Abstract

This study aimed to acquire basic information for addressing the “problem of improving the sufficiency of evidence in argument construction” by focusing on the “epistemic understanding of the sufficiency of evidence in argument” and clarifying the epistemic understanding of the sufficiency of evidence in a case study.

First, the results of an interview survey on the epistemic understanding of sufficiency of evidence in argument revealed that the respondents do not necessarily believe that all appropriate observations/experimental results should be used as evidence when constructing an argument. This could be associated with the idea of using representative evidence or integrating multiple pieces of evidence.

Next, we clarified how the epistemic understanding of sufficiency of evidence in argument relates to the selection of appropriate observations/experimental results to be used as evidence in the argument and the description of the selected observations/experimental results as evidence. It was suggested that the epistemic understanding of the sufficiency of evidence is affected by the “problem of improving the sufficiency of evidence in argument construction,” in which appropriate observations/experimental results that should be used as evidence for the argument are not always described as evidence.