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Arguing from Spectroscopic Evidence
journal contribution
posted on 2019-08-21, 12:09 authored by Ryan L. Stowe, Melanie M. CooperConstructing and critiquing evidence-based
claims is centrally
important to aspiring medical professionals and to scientists more
generally. Accordingly, The National Academy of Science’s Framework for K–12 Science Education describes engaging
in argument from evidence as one of the practices that characterize
work in science. However, despite the central role argumentation plays
in construction and refinement of evidence-based explanations and
models, it is very often absent from K–16 science learning
environments. Here, we frame argumentation from spectroscopic evidence
in terms of flexible application of a series of procedures to pull
information from spectroscopic traces and use this evidence to inform
claims as to the structure of an unknown molecule. Through analysis
of responses to several multipart assessment items, we examined how
students analyzed, interpreted and used spectroscopic evidence to
inform their claims. We found that students were fairly adept at analyzing
and interpreting data from infrared and 13C NMR traces
as well as indicating correspondence between proton environments in
their structural prediction and appropriate 1H NMR peaks.
Unfortunately, none of these tasks were significantly associated with
student success in proposing a claim consistent with an entire corpus
of spectroscopic data. Further, scaffolding of the task prompt had
no impact on student ability to successfully construct evidence-based
structural predictions. Our findings indicate that students will require
significant support to use their procedural knowledge flexibly in
order to iteratively construct and critique claims supported by spectroscopic
evidence.