A study of students’ ability in building scientific argumentation about acid-base concepts viewed from adversity quotient and self-efficacy aspects Available to Purchase

Building scientific argumentation is one of the students’ abilities in expressing ideas based on evidence, data, and theories that support the ideas related to scientific phenomena. This ability is important and interesting to study, especially when viewed from aspect of student’s ability to solve problems/difficulties (adversity quotient) and the aspect of student self-efficacy. This study has a purpose to examine students’ ability to build scientific argument about the concept of acid-base viewed from two aspects, namely their ability to solve problems (adversity quotient) and self-efficacy. The present study employs a descriptive-quantitative approach, in which the researcher does not treat certain content learning. The respondents consist of 100 students majoring in chemistry at one of the state universities in Northern Indonesia. Furthermore, the instruments used are adversity quotient (AQ), self-efficacy (SE), and ability tests to build scientific arguments about acid-base concept. The results shows that no relationship between students’ ability to build scientific argumentation and their ability in AQ and SE. It is also found that students with high AQ ability are only able to explain the concept of acid-base in the manufacture of salt crystals. Further, they tend to be weak in explaining the phenomenon of acid rain, the use of antacids for ulcer disease, the use of dolomite fertilizers, and the acidity of HCl and H₂SO₄ solutions. In addition, there is no student with high SE, and most of them tend to be weak in explaining the previous five science phenomena of acid-base. Thus, these findings become an important input for the development of learning strategies in the future.