Final Report Summary - ESCALATE (Enhancing SCience Appeal in Learning through Argumentative inTEraction) The pedagogical idea brought forward in the ESCALATE project was to bring technology to the service of education so to provide environments that make the integration between argumentative and enquiry-based strategies possible. Argumentation is enabled by the Digalo tool that has been developed in the DUNES project (IST-2001-34153), in which some of the participants in this SSA were involved. The Digalo tool provides a graphical platform in which participants may collaboratively construct an argument (on one computer or on different computers in a-synchronous mode) or participate in synchronous discussions. The argumentative map produced during the construction or during the discussion is an artefact that participants can exploit in further activities, as opposed to face-to-face discussions from which students cannot 'physically' extract previous outcomes. The second tool is in fact a series of tools, Microworlds, that fit ideas developed by constructionists, and that are alleged to enable learning through construction, bricolage, and 'instrumentalising' (transforming an artefact into an instrument, through which meaning is mediated) .Microworlds are open to manipulation, construction and deconstruction of virtual objects as well as their behaviours and the relationships between them. Microworld are open for the students, allowing them to change, for example, the initial conditions of a physical phenomenon, isolate a specific factor and see how it influences a certain physical procedure, etc.A list of operative objectives can be described as follows:(1) Implementing our approach to science learning and teaching, through the design of learning environments, by means of state-of-the-art of argumentation-based methods and tools, especially the ones developed in the DUNES project.(2) Using technological tools mainly Microworlds - designed to enhance science learning environments and by which students engage in representation, construction and experimentation with digital artefacts.(3) Conducting the implementation of (1) and (2) above in the framework of several schools, science museums and other science learning environments in five countries: France, Greece, Israel, Switzerland and United Kingdom (UK).(4) Creating a 'critical mass' of teachers, through proper training activities, who are capable of maintaining the argumentation-based science learning environments during and beyond this project's life.(5) Compiling and analysing all the data gathered and preparing a comprehensive volume describing the experience and issuing recommendations to guide the launch of similar initiatives elsewhere in Europe. For the accomplishment of these primary goals, additional objectives were addressed, including:- the design of 'cases' to support learning activities featuring argumentative discourse in science;- the design of computer-based educational scenarios to support enquiry-based learning combined with argumentative discourse in science;- training science teachers to design, animate, and evaluate argumentative activities, based on the above, in classrooms, science museums and other learning environments.Various experiments were conducted in all five countries. From those, several conclusions and recommendations could be drawn. The educational system in the UK and in Israel seems to be very partly ready to the approach suggested by our project. In France, Greece, and Switzerland, it seems that the readiness of the system is less pronounced. The educational system as a whole is not ready to embrace such a complex endeavour. The way teachers were finally recruited was through workshops (in the UK and in Israel), through projects in pre-service teachers' programs and through one-to-one interaction with a teacher that the researchers or designers knew personally (Greece, France, Switzerland). Another population with which the team cooperated was (not surprisingly) university students. These students were not exploited by the researchers. On the contrary, the ESCALATE project allowed them to ask theoretical questions on research design (in Greece) or on learning theories (in France). For university students as well as for pre-service students, ESCALATE cases allowed to understand theoretical ideas.In many of the cases pedagogical teams preferred to use other software or material tools. This preference does not point at a failure of the ESCALATE project, for example in the readiness of technological partners to provide quickly suitable tools for implementing cases. Rather, this preference points at the process that pedagogical partners undergo when presenting the ESCALATE project to educational institutions. This process is always a negotiation. The pedagogical team is always attentive to teachers' and students' needs, so that the choice of a case cannot be done unilaterally by the pedagogical team. After an agreement was reached, the pedagogical partners pondered with the technological partners whether to tailor new tools or to use existing tools. Many times, existing tools were sufficiently good for performing reasonable enquiry based activities. The incorporation of evidence collected in enquiry based activities in e-discussions proved to be extremely complicated. Such an incorporation which represents one bridge between the two systems suggests that the project ESCALATE has a great potential but needs more efforts for broad dissemination. Related documents Final Report - ESCALATE (Enhancing SCience Appeal in Learning through Argumentative inTEraction)
