Analysis of Teachers’ Knowledge on Argumentation: A Study of Portfolios of Chemistry Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

This study aims to analyze which teaching knowledge pieces on argumentation are mobilized by pre-service chemistry teachers in their teaching portfolio when those pre-service teachers have experienced a course in which teaching argumentation was explicit; the study also aims to evaluate the contributions of using the portfolio in forming future teachers’ knowledge on argumentation; lastly, what those contributions would be. A set of a priori categories and also categories emerging from our data were used to analyze the pre-service teachers’ portfolios. The results show that the pre-service teachers demonstrated teaching knowledge related to logical-structural aspects of argumentation, teaching strategies, and materials that support argumentation in the classroom. Moreover, they expressed reflective teaching knowledge on those elements, which all support the argumentation. The conclusions of this study suggest the expression of all this knowledge can be related to the combination of building portfolios with the explicit context of teaching training programmes throughout the entire course. In addition to the fact that the portfolios have had the potential to map argumentative teaching knowledge, they also offered support to the expression and development of knowledge on this topic.