Exploring Socioscientific Issues Through Evidence-Based Argumentation with MEL Diagrams

Abstract

Critical thinking skills are best taught as students participate in the scientific practice of argumentation. When engaged in scientific argumentation, students are expected to engage in active listening and social collaboration through the process of negotiation and consensus building. Socioscientific issues are ideally suited for such activities. Model-Evidence-Link (MEL) diagrams provide an ideal scaffold for helping students learn to build arguments that can help them make connections between evidence and scientific explanations. In these activities students compare competing models by making plausibility judgements, then comparing how well scientific evidence supports each model. In research-based activities, these scaffolds have been shown to help students better understand scientific concepts, to shift students’ plausibility judgments, and to provide insights into how students negotiate consensus through argumentation. In this article we share both the resources and instructional methods for including MEL diagrams in the middle school classroom.

KEYWORDS::

• Earth/Environmental Science
• Argumentation
• Critical Thinking Strategies
• Teaching Strategies

ONLINE RESOURCES

The MEL Project: Lateral Model-Evidence Link Diagrams Project—https://serc.carleton.edu/mel/index.html

The Science Learning Research Group: Publications—https://sciencelearning.umd.edu/publications

Additional information

Funding

The MEL project is supported in part by the NSF under Grant Nos. DRL-2201012, DRL-2201013, DRL-2201015, DRL-2201016, DRL-2201017, and DRL-2201018. Previous support came from Grant Nos. DRL-2027376, DRL-1721041, and DRL-1316057.

Notes on contributors

Donna Governor

Donna Governor ([email protected]) is an associate professor and Lorraine Ramirez Villarin ([email protected]) is an assistant professor, both in the Department of Middle Grades, Secondary and Science Education at the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega.

Lorraine Ramirez Villarin

Donna Governor ([email protected]) is an associate professor and Lorraine Ramirez Villarin ([email protected]) is an assistant professor, both in the Department of Middle Grades, Secondary and Science Education at the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega.