The purpose of this literature review is to investigate what kinds of research have been done about scientific inquiry in terms of scientific argumentation in the classroom context from the upper elementary to the high school levels. First, science educators argued that there had not been differentiation between authentic scientific inquiry by scientists and school scientific inquiry by students in the classroom. This uncertainty of goals or definition of scientific inquiry has led to the problem or limitation of implementing scientific inquiry in the classroom. It was also pointed out that students' learning science as inquiry has been done without opportunities of argumentation to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Second, what is scientific argumentation, then? Researchers stated that scientific inquiry in the classroom cannot be guaranteed only through hands-on experimentation. Students can understand how scientific knowledge is constructed through their reasoning skills using opportunities of argumentation based on their procedural skills using opportunities of experimentation. Third, many researchers emphasized the social practices of small or whole group work for enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills through argumentations. Different role of leadership in groups and existence of teachers' roles are found to have potential in enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand science as inquiry. Fourth, what is scientific reasoning? Scientific reasoning is defined as an ability to differentiate evidence or data from theory and coordinate them to construct their scientific knowledge based on their collection of data (Kuhn, 1989, 1992; Dunbar & Klahr, 1988, 1989; Reif & Larkin, 1991). Those researchers found that students skills in scientific reasoning are different from scientists. Fifth, for the purpose of enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed, other researchers suggested that teachers' roles in scaffolding could help students develop those skills. Based on this literature review, it is important to find what kinds of generalizable teaching strategies teachers use for students scientific reasoning skills through scientific argumentation and investigate teachers' knowledge of scientific argumentation in the context of scientific inquiry. The relationship between teachers' knowledge and their teaching strategies and between teachers teaching strategies and students scientific reasoning skills can be found out if there is any.

This study examined the knowledge and practices of scientific inquiry displayed by three student teachers and two beginning teachers at secondary levels. Observations using the instrument of OTOP designed by the research team of OCEPT (Oregon Collaborative for Excellent in the Preparation of Teachers) generalized similar teaching strategies of scientific inquiry between student and beginning teachers, such as using group work for students' first hand experience, using concrete materials for experimentation or visual tools for demonstration, using questions for factual knowledge mainly without opportunities to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Those scientific inquiry activities were very confirmative ones to follow the steps without opportunities of understanding nature of science or nature of scientific inquiry. However, all participants in this study hold knowledge of scientific inquiry envisioned by the National Science Education Standards [NSES] (NRC, 1996), where students identify their hypothesis, use critical and logical thinking, and consider alternative explanations through argumentation as well as experimentation. An inconsistent relationship between participating teachers knowledge and practices about scientific inquiry resulted from their lack of pedagogy skills of implementing it in the classroom. Providing opportunities for these teachers to reflect on their beliefs and practices about scientific inquiry was recommended for the future study. Furthermore, increasing college faculty interest in new teaching approaches for upgrading the content knowledge of student teachers and beginning teachers was recommended as a solution, since those teachers showed evidence of influence by college faculties at universities in their pedagogy skills.