MAKING THE ARGUMENT: Students use a free, authoritative online resource for environmental health issues that supports argument-based inquiry.
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: The effects of environmental pollutants on human and environmental health are a growing concern. Several years after Hurricane Katrina, water quality continued to be monitored in New Orleans (Roper, Weiss, and Wheeler 2008). First responders to the September 11, 2001, attack in New York City continue to suffer health problems caused by exposure to toxic pollutants (Gardner 2011). In 2003, mercury was found in Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., in the school science lab, on student's clothing, and in some of the students' homes (EPA 2012). More recently, the Environmental Working Group found chromium-6, the toxic chemical made famous by environmental activist Erin Brockovich, in the tap water of 31 U.S. cities (Sutton 2010). These examples raise important questions, such as How do we know what we can safely drink? What is our exposure to toxins? and How can we respond to growing environmental health challenges? Little science curriculum focuses specifically on environmental health, and little data exists on the extent to which environmental health is taught on a national level (Brown 2004). Students have the right to access information that can enable them to make informed choices. Scientific argumentation In the political arena, legislators, lobbyists, environmental groups, and other stakeholders argue from vastly different perspectives issues of environmental health, such as the causes and consequences of global warming. Scientists, for their part, use argumentation to make progress in developing and supporting coherent theories (NRC 2007). For several decades, education researchers have argued for the need to integrate scientific argumentation into the high school science classroom (Driver, Newton, and Osborne 2000; Kuhn 1993; Sampson and Grooms 2010). Scientific argumentation involves making claims, supporting them with evidence, providing warrants or reasoning for how the evidence supports the claims, anticipating counterclaims, and preparing to respond to those counterclaims (Toulmin 1958). Students often have difficulty differentiating between their causal beliefs or explanations and the evidence that could support those beliefs and explanations (Kuhn 1989) and thus may struggle with scientific argumentation. Other evidence suggests that, given appropriate opportunities and support, students can argue productively (Berland and McNeill 2010). In the secondary classroom, scientific argumentation can occur both informally, as students discuss possible explanations for scientific phenomena, and formally, through structured debates or mock legislative hearings about socio-scientific issues. Such argumentation has a role in scientific progress and is fundamental to understanding the nature of science (NRC 2007). About Tox Town This article will describe a sequence of lessons surrounding a mock legislative hearing to help students learn about environmental health and participate in argumentation. The lessons, appropriate for biology, chemistry, or environmental science classes, use Tox Town (see On the web), a free online resource developed by the National Library of Medicine, as the main source of information. Tox Town offers: * knowledge of everyday locations, such as cities, farms, or schools, where toxic chemicals may exist * authoritative, nontechnical information about chemicals * descriptions of how the environment can impact human health * online resources on environmental health topics Tox Town, which uses graphics, sounds, and animation, is a companion to the extensive TOXNET collection of data-bases typically used by toxicologists and health professionals. Figure 1 shows the Tox Town home page. The school water use and safety legislative hearing For this mock legislative hearing, some students serve as members of a committee taking testimony to prepare a report to a state legislature about possible state involvement in the control of school water resources; other students serve as representatives of witness groups who try to influence the committee's decisions in ways that favor their interests. …
Source: PubMed
Institution: University of Maryland, College Park
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W305949947