Chapter 2: Teaching and Learning Chemistry through Argumentation

This chapter focuses on teaching and learning of chemistry through argumentation. It focuses on chemistry educators’ uptake of argumentation, provides a summary and critique of argumentation studies conducted in the field of chemical education across K-16 classrooms, and discusses implications of the findings reported in these studies for practice and future argumentation studies in chemistry education. One critical piece of this chapter is a discussion on the nature of chemical knowledge and how to promote the philosophy of chemistry in argumentation-based teaching and learning. This chapter also provides a sample argumentation task that can be adopted and used by high school chemistry teachers, professors of introductory chemistry courses and pre-service teacher educators.