Abstract
In recent years, science education has focused on the importance of argument. However, it is noted that even fifth- and sixth-grade elementary school children have difficulty supporting their arguments with reasoning. This study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of a class that incorporates teaching strategies for constructing arguments that are comprised of claims, evidence, and reasoning. In this study, a class was given on "pendulum movement," a unit taught in science education for fifth graders, with the goal of clarifying factors that affect the pendulum period. Four teaching strategies were incorporated into the unit's preparatory phase and eight strategies were incorporated into the unit's implementation phase. In the content knowledge test, both the children's rate of giving correct answers and their degree of confidence both improved significantly compared with having studied the unit. In an argument task concerning the content of the unit, children scored over 80% in all having criteria concerning claims, evidence and reasoning, with the exception of only one criterion. In another argument task given before and after the unit, both of which concerned matters that had already been learned by the children, their arguments showed significant improvement in some criteria concerning evidence and reasoning. Connections in performance were identified between the argument tasks concerning the content of the unit and those concerning matters already learned. These results demonstrate that the class in this study is effective in developing arguments that are specifically comprised of claims, evidence, and reasoning. As a challenge for the future, we will endeavor to resolves the problem of omission of description, often detected in elementary school children's arguments.
