IMPROVING THE STRUCTURE OF STUDENTS' ARGUMENTS THROUGH A TEACHING-LEARNING SEQUENCE ON NEWTON'S 2ND LAW

The present paper intends to investigate the contribution of a teaching-learning sequence on Newton’s 2^nd Law to the structure of high school students’ written arguments. Instructional material on Newton’s 2^nd Law, based on the constructivist approach towards learning with the use of science practices and the exploitation of the educational software “Interactive Physics”, was developed and was finally implemented to 39 high school students (15 years old). Τhe research data included students’ answers to questionnaires both before and after the teaching-learning sequence. Students’ written arguments were analyzed with the use of a framework for evaluating the presence and the sufficiency of the components of the arguments. The data analysis showed that the teaching-learning sequence significantly contributed to improving the structure of students’ arguments.