Profile of Students’ Argumentation: A Case Study on Human Cloning

Abstract

Skills argue is one of the crucial role in developing the science. Extensive knowledge not only presents the facts, but more than that. Broadly science can construct an argument and have consideration and debate something obvious about the phenomenon that occurs. This research conducted to capture the profiles of students' argumentation on issues of human cloning. Students were chosen purposively with the subject of 170 high school students from three high schools in Bandung City, West Java, Indonesia. A case study approach with a descriptive analysis to analyze student test results of argumentation is used in this research. Instruments given are questions context of human cloning. The argumentation is adapted from Toulmin’s argumentation pattern, which contains the structured argument by Claim, Grounds, Warrant, Backing, Qualifier, and Rebuttal. The result shows the general pattern of students’ argumentation skills is the Claim only as much as 8,82%, Claim- Data - Warrant argument 81,76 % and the remaining 9,42% is a combination pattern of the six argumentation components.  The percentage of higher coherence of students' arguments is 49% in the lower public school, better than the medium private school (33%) and medium public schools (21%). The interview of the teacher due to confirm the teaching-learning process on facilitating students' argumentation skills.