Eun-Ae Kim

Elementary School Students` Decision-Making Change through Refutation Materials and Empathic Situation on Socio-Scientific Issue

This study is to investigate an argumentation level for elementary school students after analysing an argumentation structure about a socio scientific issue(SSI), and inquire a change of the decision-making according to the refutation materials and empathic situation. This data was collected from the semi-structured interview with the 14 students, grade 6th. For this, the first stage is to present the reading materials about the SSI to the students, let them decision-making and make them argue pro and con about the SSI during the interview. After that, facing with the refutation materials against the existing contention and the empathic situation, the change of the decision-making of the students was conducted. After the research, the level of the argumentation of the students was low, and the students who didn`t have the background knowledge about the theme made the decisions according to the values, emotions or intuitions of their own. And the decision-making of the students changed more when presented with the refutation materials and the empathic situation, they were difficult to make the decision because of new information and various stances. Besides, they lacked in the ability that recognize the situation related with their own life, just used the fragmentary knowledge associated with value of life respect. Through these result, it is necessary to produce the refutation materials and empathic materials about the SSI to the students for improving the level of argumentation.