This exploratory study examines how a series of laboratory activities designed using a new instructional model, called Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI), influences the ways students participate in scientific argumentation and the quality of the scientific arguments they craft as part of this process. The two outcomes of interest were assessed with a performance task that required small groups of students to explain a discrepant event and then generate a scientific argument. Student performance on this task was compared before and after an 18-week intervention that included 15 ADI laboratory activities. The results of this study suggest that the students had better disciplinary engagement and produced better arguments after the intervention although some learning issues arose that seemed to hinder the students' overall improvement. The conclusions and implications of this research include several recommendations for improving the nature of laboratorybased instruction to help cultivate the knowledge and skills students need to participate in scientific argumentation and to craft written arguments.

This study examines whether students enrolled in a general chemistry I laboratory course developed the ability to participate in scientific argumentation over the course of a semester. The laboratory activities that the students participated in during the course were designed using the Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) an instructional model. This model gives a more central place to argumentation and the role of argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge. The development of the students' ability to construct a scientific argument and to participate in scientific argumentation was tracked over time using three different data sources. These data sources included a performance task, which was administered at the beginning, middle, and end of the course, video recording of the students participating in episodes of argumentation, and the lab reports the students wrote as part of each lab activity. As time was the independent variable in this study, a repeated measure ANOVA was used to evaluate changes in the ways students performed on each task over the course of the semester. The results of the analysis indicate that there was significant growth in the quality of the students' written arguments and nature of their oral argumentation. There also was a significant correlation between written and oral arguments. These results suggest that the use of an integrated instructional model that places emphasis on argument and argumentation can have a positive impact on the quality of the arguments students include in their investigation reports, the argumentation they engage in during lab activities, and their overall performance on tasks that require them to develop and support a valid conclusion with genuine evidence. # Science educators, with the goal of increased science literacy, have developed numerous new curricula and instructional approaches over the last decade in order to give students a more

This article presents a new instructional model called Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) that can be used in undergraduate college chemistry laboratory courses. ADI is designed to provide students with an opportunity to develop their own method to generate data, to carry out investigations, use data to answer research questions, write, and be more reflective as they work. In addition, the ADI instructional model integrates opportunities for students to engage in scientific argumentation and peer review. This article describes the ADI instructional model, provides the empirical and theoretical foundation for it, and presents a detailed semester pacing schedule for general chemistry I laboratories, peer-review guides, and instructor scoring rubrics.

This paper presents preliminary evidence supporting the use of peer review in undergraduate science as a means to improve student writing and to alleviate barriers, such as lost class time, by incorporation of the peer-review process into the laboratory component of the course. The study was conducted in a single section of an undergraduate general chemistry laboratory course offered at a large two-year community college located in the southeastern United States. The chemistry laboratory course was taught using Argument-Driven Inquiry, an instructional model that incorporates double-blind group peer review of student laboratory reports, and allows students to revise their reports based on the peer reviews. The reports written for each laboratory activity were used to examine changes in the students’ writing skills over time and to identify aspects of science writing that were the most difficult for the undergraduates in this context. The reviews generated by the students were used to evaluate student engagement in the peer-review process. The results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the reports and reviews indicate that the participants made significant improvements in the their ability to write in science and were able to evaluate the quality of their peers’ writing with a relatively high degree of accuracy, but also struggled with several aspects of science writing.

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