Abstract
The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a new lesson design based on existing lesson designs from previous studies with a focus on “supporting epistemic understanding of evidence in argument” to further support the development of students’ argument construction skills and foster the use of more appropriate and sufficient evidence. The new lesson design consisted of the following two elements (1) A framework for “learning goals” regarding what kind of content should be supported in epistemic understanding for Japanese elementary school students to be able to use appropriate and sufficient evidence in their argument construction, and (2) Development of learning content to help elementary science classes achieve these learning goals. The lesson design was applied in the fourth-grade elementary school class on “Metals, Water, Air and Temperature” for a total of 17 hours of class time with 66 learners. Results demonstrated that the students’ use of appropriate and sufficient evidence in argument structure improved, respectively, but there remained a significant number of learners who did not reach a satisfactory level in the sufficiency of their evidence. These results indicate that the new lesson design is as effective as existing lesson designs. On the other hand, when we examined the relationship between the tasks related to argument construction and epistemic understanding of evidence, we found that “the relationship between claims and evidence in argument” had a significant positive correlation with the sufficiency of evidence in pupils’ argument structure. These results suggest that this lesson design, when improved upon as a design that more strongly supports epistemic understanding of the sufficiency of evidence, has the potential to further support the development of students’ argument construction skills more effectively than existing lesson designs.
