Tatsuya Tanaka’s research while affiliated with Kobe Tokiwa University and other places

This investigation aimed to create a pedagogical approach to enhance students’ argument self-assessment skills and assess the efficacy of the novel strategy by conducting primary science classes. The teaching approach devised in this study is “argument self-assessment utilizing a rubric.” The teacher instructs the students on how to use the rubric, incorporating the assessment perspectives outlined therein, after which the students utilize the rubric to evaluate the appropriateness and problems of their arguments. Primary science classes that implement the developed pedagogical strategy were conducted with Grade Four students. A survey was administered on the argument self-assessment skills, the argument skills, and the use of rubrics in the self-assessment. The survey findings indicated that: (1) Students’ ability to self-evaluate their arguments improved after the class, (2) Students employed the assessment perspectives described in the rubric when they assessed their arguments, and (3) There existed a correlation between students’ argument self-assessment skills and argument skills. These findings imply that the pedagogical strategy developed in this study has the potential to promote students’ argument skills and enhancement of students’ argument self-assessment skills.

In science education, the improvement in students’ ability to construct arguments at the primary school level has been reported. Although these studies have identified difficulties in arguments written by primary school students, they do not indicate areas that require improvement in teaching methods. This study aims to explore the possibility of improvement in early primary school students’ ability to construct arguments and identify the types of difficulties encountered. Sixty-seven Japanese third-grade students (9–10 years old) were taught to write arguments as specified by Zembal-Saul et al. (2012). The students were given two writing tasks before and after the lesson. To examine the students’ written arguments, each component of claim, evidence, and reasoning was scored based on a rubric. On comparing the scores of the pre-test and post-test writing tasks, it was found that 27 out of 67 students still had difficulty writing arguments during the post-test. An analysis of the students’ writing revealed four types of difficulties: ‘Incompleteness of components’, ‘Inappropriateness of components’, ‘Confusion between evidence and reasoning’, and ‘Confusion between claim and evidence’. This study offers insights pertaining to teaching implications and research recommendations. Keywords: difficulties in writing arguments, elementary/primary school, explanation construction, small-sample quantitative study

The purpose of this study was to examine whether there is a relationship between children’s ability to self-assess arguments and argument skills, and if so, what kind of relationship exists. For this study, in order to examine the relationship between the two, a total of 65 children were surveyed via the task of describing their arguments as well as though the task of having the children self-evaluate their own arguments. These investigations were conducted during the implementation of the third- grade unit “Things and Weights,” which introduces an argument that included claim-evidence-reasoning. The results of the two surveys suggested the following: (1) children with high ability to self-assess arguments tended to have high argument skills, and (2) children with low ability to self-assess arguments tended to have low argument skills. Next, Interviews were conducted with 16 children who demonstrated varying levels of improvement in argument skills, asking for details of their self-assessment of their arguments. The results of the second survey revealed the following correlations: (1) children who were able to judge the success or failure of their own augments and to explain the problems of their own augments tended to have better argument skills, while (2) children who were unable to explain the problems of arguments tended not to have improved upon their argument skills.