relevant supporting evidence
summaryThe research on students’ abilities to use evidence when writing scientific arguments suggests that students usually try to use data as evidence (Sandoval & Millwood, 2005), but routinely use inappropriate evidence that is either irrelevant or non-supporting (L. Kuhn & Reiser, 2005; McNeill & Krajcik, 2007; Sandoval, 2003). This is noteworthy because relevancy and support impact the quality of scientific evidence, and, therefore, the quality of the argument as a whole (NRC, 2012). We define relevant evidence as measurements or observations that addresses (or fits with) the science topic. Relevant data has the potential to be of high quality if it is also supportive of the claim. Therefore, supporting evidence can be defined as evidence that exemplifies the relationship established in the claim. For instance, if a claim were based on a trend in the data (e.g. earthquake are stronger when their focus is closer to the Earth’s surface), relevant evidence would address the science topic (e.g., depth can impact the strength of an earthquake) and supporting evidence would exemplify the relationship (e.g. Earthquake’s A and B were shallow and were also stronger than the other earthquakes). The goal, therefore, is for students to recognize that the quality of scientific evidence is dependent on both relevance and support.
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definitions
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Construct map
A construct is a characteristic of an argument. Construct maps use research on student learning as well as expert knowledge to separate the construct into distinct levels that characterize students' progression towards greater expertise (Wilson, 2005). The writing relevant-supporting evidence (RSE) construct map (see below) has three levels: 1) some RSE 2) RSE for claim, and 3) RSE for science & claim.
assessments
We developed four different writing items. While the topic of two of the items focuses on earthquakes, the other two items focus on volcanoes. The students’ response to a writing item is used to place their ability at one of the levels on the construct map. For instance, if a student only uses a personal story to justify their argument, then he would be placed at the “no RSE" level of the relevant-supporting evidence construct map. However, the relevant-supporting evidence construct is only 1 of 5 different ways the students’ written response will be assessed. In addition to relevant-supporting evidence, we encourage you to consider forms of justification, sufficiency of evidence, multiple views, and reasoning (maps and rubrics are provided for each). While the students’ of highest ability will score high on all of the constructs, students of lower ability levels may have different strengths and weaknesses.
rubrics
Each of the four items are constructed response. Therefore, we developed a rubric to grade/score each of the constructed response items. Each rubric includes sample student responses for each level.
teaching strategies
It is our hope that, over time, students’ abilities will move towards the “RSE for science & claim” level of the construct map. To assist teachers with this goal, we have developed teaching strategies. The following teaching strategies are intended to support students in moving to higher levels for Forms of Justification, Relevant Supporting Evidence and Sufficiency of Evidence, since we've found that it is difficult to focus exclusively on one area when teaching, and improvement in all of these areas can be seen when focusing on similar learning experiences that enhance the learning of all levels at once.
Construct Level
Level 2 & 3
(Mixture of Justification & More Important Justifications) Levels 0 & 1 (No justifications & Less Important Justifications) |
Description of Teaching Strategies
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Resources
Lesson 1: American Eel Population
Lesson 2: Baking Soda and Vinegar
Lesson 1a: Fossil Tooth Lesson 1b: Fossil Tooth |
Tech reports
The tech report provides the psychometric analyses from pilot studies with middle school students.
references
Kuhn, L., & Reiser, B. (2005). Students constructing and defending evidence-based scientific explanations. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Dallas, TX.
McNeill, K. L., & Krajcik, J. (2007). Middle school students’ use of appropriate and inappropriate evidence in writing scientific explanations. In M. Lovett & P. Shah (Eds.), Thinking with data: The proceedings of the 33rd Carnegie symposium on cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Sandoval, W. A. (2003). Conceptual and epistemic aspects of students’ scientific explanations. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12, 5-51.
Sandoval, W. A., & Millwood, K. A. (2005). The quality of students’ use of evidence in written scientific explanations. Cognition and Instruction, 23(1), 23-55.
National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and core ideas. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences.
McNeill, K. L., & Krajcik, J. (2007). Middle school students’ use of appropriate and inappropriate evidence in writing scientific explanations. In M. Lovett & P. Shah (Eds.), Thinking with data: The proceedings of the 33rd Carnegie symposium on cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Sandoval, W. A. (2003). Conceptual and epistemic aspects of students’ scientific explanations. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12, 5-51.
Sandoval, W. A., & Millwood, K. A. (2005). The quality of students’ use of evidence in written scientific explanations. Cognition and Instruction, 23(1), 23-55.
National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and core ideas. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences.