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Description
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of chemistry-based STEM activities on students’ argumentation quality. The study involved 22 tenth graders in 2023–2024. Over 10 weeks, three STEM activities were implemented, each incorporating relevant learning outcomes from the chemistry topics of “Mixtures,” “Acids, Bases and Salts,” and “Chemistry Everywhere.” Students followed Hynes et al.’s (2011) nine-step Engineering Design Process and answered 16 open-ended questions across its steps. However, within the scope of this study, we focused on the responses to the five questions corresponding to the first two steps of the Engineering Design Process. The questions were written on Padlet platform and asked students to response them individually on Padlet as a homework study. The responses were analyzed using the rubric developed by Venville and Dawson (2010), which includes levels representing argumentation quality. For instance, while Level 1 includes only a claim, Level 3 includes arguments in which students use a claim, data or warrants and backing. The responses were coded independently by two researchers, and disagreements were resolved through discussion. The findings showed that in Activity 1, most individual written arguments were at Level 1, whereas fewer were at Levels 2 and 3. In Activity 2, the distribution of argumentation levels was 163, 74, and 3, respectively. In Activity 3, the corresponding frequencies were 128, 79, and 7. Although Level 1 arguments were predominant across all three activities, the frequencies of Level 2 and Level 3 arguments increased from Activity 1 to Activity 3. This finding indicates that students gradually moved beyond merely presenting claims and began to justify and support their arguments with evidence. The improvement in argumentation quality suggests that chemistry-based STEM activities may enhance students’ academic achievement. Therefore, it is recommended that such activities be implemented more widely in chemistry education.
Keywords: STEM, Chemistry Education, Argumentation