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Designing Educative Tools for Scientific Argumentation: A Case Study of DBR Before and During the Pandemic

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Learning, Design, and Technology

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Abstract

Design-based research is uniquely positioned to adapt instructional resources quickly to meet the needs of teachers and students. This chapter explores how researchers adapted and improved two educative tools over the course of two academic years. The educative tools were designed to support scientific argumentation through supporting students to develop task models of NGSS storyline routines. Both educative tools were developed, field-tested, and improved in the context of two different middle school science curricula in the city of Chicago. Iterations were informed by teacher feedback, analysis of student-written work, classroom observations, and analysis of teacher and student surveys. Changes to the educational supports were designed to support student task models, support NGSS storyline routines, support areas of student difficulty in argumentation, and to support the rapid, unexpected, and unprecedented transition to online instruction due to COVID-19 pandemic. Implications suggest benefits to continually revising and improving educative tools through field-testing and user feedback. Future research will explore whether there is a causal relationship between use of these educative tools and quality of student-written arguments.

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Acknowledgments

The authors were supported in part by National Science Foundation grants 1813802, 1821146, 0535942 to The Learning Partnership. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Learning Partnership, Chicago, IL, USA

    Kathleen M. Easley, Steven McGee & Randi McGee-Tekula

  2. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA

    Anne Britt, Kathryn E. Rupp & Karyn Higgs

Authors
  1. Kathleen M. Easley
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  2. Steven McGee
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  3. Randi McGee-Tekula
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  4. Anne Britt
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  5. Kathryn E. Rupp
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  6. Karyn Higgs
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steven McGee .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Info, Ste G150, Univ of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

    Michael J Spector

  2. School of Education, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Barbara B Lockee

  3. School of Education, Baker University, Overland Park, KS, USA

    Marcus D. Childress

Section Editor information

  1. Organization, Information, and Learning Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Stephanie L. Moore Ph.D.

  2. Instructional Psychology and Technology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Heather Leary

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Easley, K.M., McGee, S., McGee-Tekula, R., Britt, A., Rupp, K.E., Higgs, K. (2023). Designing Educative Tools for Scientific Argumentation: A Case Study of DBR Before and During the Pandemic. In: Spector, M.J., Lockee, B.B., Childress, M.D. (eds) Learning, Design, and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17727-4_178-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17727-4_178-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17727-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17727-4

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