Investigation of the Effect of Teaching the Unit "Chemistry is everywhere" by Argumentation on Academic Achievement and Some Variables

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the effect of argumentation-oriented instruction on students’ academic achievement, argumentation skills, attitudes towards chemistry, understanding the nature of scientific knowledge, science process skills and willingness to argumentation in teaching the unit “chemistry is everywhere”, by comparing with the existing teaching method. Method: The research was conducted via embedded design of mixed research method simultaneously combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The sample consisted of 66 10th grade highschool students. Data collection tools were ‘Chemistry is everywhere’ Unit Achievement Test (CEAT), Attitudes Scale towards Chemistry (ASTC), Science Process Skills Test (SPST), Nature of Scientific Knowledge Test (NSKT), Argumentativeness Scale (AS), interviews and verbal-written discussion. Independent samples t-test and Mann-Whitney U test were utilized to analyze the scores of CEAT, ASTC, SPST and NSKT, while Wilcoxon test was used for the analysis of AS. The data of interviews, verbal and written discussion were exposed to content analysis. Findings: The results of the study found statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups’ mean scores of the CEAT, ASTC, SPST and NSKT in favor of the experimental group. For the experimental group, there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of AS and the students’ argumentation levels mainly remained level 2 containing claim and warrant.