摘要
The present study defined four types of stances/positions in students' argumentation regarding socio-scientific issues (SSIs): affirmative (A), oppositional (O), multiple (M), and non-committal (N) positions. The central goal of this study was to examine the effect of students' positions toward an issue on the science conceptual understanding and quality of their arguments. Three types of debates were concerned due to their abundant production of arguments: the debates between the (1) O vs. A, (2) O vs. M, and (3) O vs. N position students. The quasi-experimental design was adopted in which three 11th grade classes totaling 108 students were invited. They were assigned to the three required types of debate according to their positions regarding two given SSIs. The results showed that there were significant differences among the three debates on both the conceptual understanding and arguments produced by the students. The OA debate exhibited the best performance no matter in the conceptual understanding and the use of claims, warrants, and rebuttals. Moreover, the OM debate exhibited the best performance in terms of the use of qualifiers, whereas the ON debate students exhibited the lowest abilities and improvements.