Assessment of Students’ Science Knowledge Levels and Their Involvement with Argumentation Hanife Hakyolu, Feral Ogan-Bekiroglu Dogus University 1 , Marmara University 2 Abstract Research on argumentation in science education has expanded noticeably over the past two decades. Whereas there are some studies presenting the effects of argumentation on science knowledge development, there are only a few studies discovering the interrelationship between knowledge and argumentation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate a possible relationship between students’ science knowledge levels and their involvement with argumentation. Case study design was guided to the research. The participants of the study were pre-service physics teachers. Argumentations were embedded in the method class. The participants’ knowledge levels were assessed with open-ended questions. Although there are a few connections, the findings demonstrate no relationship between the students’ knowledge levels and their involvement with argumentation. 1. Introduction “It is an argument that we are likely to find the most significant way in which higher order thinking and reasoning figure in the lives of most people” [1]. Argumentation promotes critical thinking as well as an essential quality of the discourse to be acquired in academic education [2]. The practice of argumentation means the sociocultural activity of constructing, presenting, interpreting, criticizing, and revising arguments [3] [4] [5] [6]. An argument is a product of that practice meaning that typically it is the outcome of a process of arguing that involves both the arguer and the other [3] [4] [5] [6]. Although argumentation research in science education has increased for two decades, there is still a need to analyze the discourse of argumentation in the classroom and to find ways of explaining it that make the process clear and enable others to emulate it [7]. Therefore, students’ engagement in scientific argumentations and their understanding of science was investigated in this current study. 2. Argumentation and Science Learning Mason [8] pointed out that sharing cognition through collective reasoning and arguing could be an important pedagogical strategy to be promoted for knowledge construction and reconstruction in the classroom. She added that by explicating, comparing, and challenging ideas and explanations, students could recognize limitations, anomalies, and fallacies as well as values in their representations of the world. Whereas there are some studies presenting the effects of argumentation on science knowledge development, there are only a few studies discovering the interrelationship between knowledge and argumentation. Crossa, Taasoobshirazib, Hendricksc and Hickeya [9], for example, reported that students tended to feel more comfortable and be more competent in arguing about concepts when they were sufficiently knowledgeable about that subject. Sadler and [10] suggested that science content knowledge could affect the manner in which individuals defended and justified their positions. Additionally, the results stated by von Aufschnaiter, Erduran, Osborne and Simon [11] proposed that students could acquire a higher quality of argumentation that consisted of well-grounded knowledge with a relatively low level of abstraction. This current study would contribute to the literature toward a better understanding of how argumentation is associated with knowledge levels in science. 3. Purpose of the Study Students’ willingness to acknowledge and deal with situations that may involve argument depends on their perceptions and interpretations of the purpose and the context of the task, and the learning situation [12]. However, within both Vygotskian and Piagetian traditions, the focus has been on the interaction process itself so that cognitive capacities of the individuals have not been examined [13]. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate a possible relationship between students’ International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education (IJCDSE), Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2011 Copyright © 2011, Infonomics Society 264