IMPROVING SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTATION SKILLS OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN SCIENCE LEARNING BY EMPLOYING PHENOMENON- BASED LEARNING WITH VIDEO ASSISTANCE THROUGH A MODIFIED "FLIPPED CLASSROOM" APPROACH

One of the epistemic purposes in science learning is developing scientific argumentation skills. Scientific argumentation skills become important because learning occurs through the process of scientific discussion between students and teachers in the classroom. Collaborative argumentation activities will help the students explore the relationship between ideas, change student conceptions, find evidence for claims so that a whole conceptual understanding formed. In fact, the application of the argumentation activity is rarely be used in science courses. Based on the questionnaires that had been given to eight Junior High School teachers in the province of Bengkulu related to science learning problems, the result was that students' argumentation skill is still very low compared with the other skills. The low ability of students' scientific argumentation might be caused by demonstration method applied and dominated by teachers in the classroom due to the lack of availability of tools and practicum materials. There is an effort that can be done by teachers in developing students' scientific argumentation skill, it is by implementing phenomenon-based learning with video assistance through a modified "flipped classroom" approach. The learning video may contain interesting science phenomena related to the material courses. These kinds of videos will be watched by students before classroom learning session begins in order to stimulate students' curiosity about the material they will learn. In addition, students will also be given individual worksheets based on the video they have watched. Through video, it is expected it can develop the thinking ability of learners to express their ideas and opinions so that it can develop their ability in writing their argumentation. The classroom learning sessions will contain phenomenon-based learning that is considered sufficiently appropriate to be applied in the flipped classroom approach as it corresponds to the video containing the phenomena of science. In phenomenon-based learning, students are involved in a series of scientific activities through the stages of learning. The dominant stages in facilitating the students to develop their argumentation skills in phenomenon-based learning is at the stage of orienting students on observing phenomena and stages of developing and presenting the work. If in the phenomena observation stage is expected to foster students' written argumentation skills, then in the stage of developing and presenting the work, it is expected to foster students' oral argumentation skills. At this stage, students are given the opportunity in the group to present the results of their group experiments. The teacher's role is to direct the class discussion, in which the other students respond to the group statement in the presentation, approve or refute the statement if it is not in accordance with the outcome of their group. This class discussion aims to get a true and complete explanation of the material being studied until all students gain the same conceptual understanding. Based on this rationale, it is hoped that by applying phenomenon-based learning with video assistance through modified flipped classroom approach can facilitate students in improving their scientific argumentation skills.