Putu Anindita Widhiya Putri, Sri Rahayu, Hayuni Retno Widarti, Yahmin Yahmin
Students' participation in scientific argumentation activities demonstrates the validity of their understanding of scientific concepts. Scientific argumentation skill is important for students to become scientifically literate citizens. They must be able to think critically and collaborate with others to solve complex problems. Therefore, research to measure students' scientific argumentation skills is necessary to conduct. This study aims to identify the argumentation skills of undergraduate chemistry students. The subjects are 25 chemistry students from a public university in Indonesia. The students' argumentation skills were collected through a scientific argumentation skill test (Cronbach's alpha r= 0.807), which consisted of 5 items: 3 semi-structured questions and 2 open-ended argumentation questions related to chemical reaction rates. From the test, 125 responses were obtained, coded, tested for interrater reliability, and analyzed descriptively. The findings show that most of the students could only argue by including evidence to support their claim without providing a solid explanation or identifying the limitations of the problem. Other interesting findings also showed that students' capacity to conclude was still lacking, as 54 responses (43.2%) contained false claims. This finding needs to be followed up to identify the position of students' conceptual understanding regarding the topic of chemical reaction rates because students may (a) understand the concept but are unable to evaluate the conditions given to the problem, so they are wrong in concluding, (b) not understand the concept, or (c) experience the alternative concept. Another implication is the need to integrate argumentation into learning, such as designing and implementing argumentation-based learning strategies. © 2024 Author(s).
Chemistry Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, Universitas Negeri Malang, Malang, 65245, Indonesia
