Finding the place of argumentation in science education: Epistemics and Whole Science

Argumentation constitutes an important element in nature of science education. However, its virtues and scope can be overstated. Here, we survey in detail the place of argumentation in science education. Our benchmark is the range of epistemic processes relevant to citizens and consumers as they assess the reliability of scientific claims in personal and public decision making. We consider multiple epistemic stages in the development (or ontogeny) of such claims: (a) observation and material investigation; (b) the crafting of concepts through individual cognition; (c) the checks and balances of the scientific community; (d) the challenges of credibility and expertise in a cultural context; and (e) the interpretation of “science in the wild,” where authentic scientific claims mingle with imitators and misinformation on the Internet and social media and in public discourse. We conclude that many conventional rationalist assumptions haunt current approaches to argumentation and limit its effectiveness, especially in the implicit goal of achieving intellectual independence for students as autonomous scientific agents. A more fruitful approach, from the perspective of functional scientific literacy, is a Whole Science perspective, which gives full expression to the spectrum of epistemic processes in science and science communication.