Students arguments to creation and evolution

The study is in the German-speaking area the first and only one, which empirically evaluates the argumentation skills of students at the high school level. It furthermore draws consequences for the research in youth theology. As the technical didactical background served creation as a narration about a good beginning, and evolution as a description of the origin and development of different species. This made it possible to explore the communication form arguing in this fundamental research of the pedagogy of religion not only subject-specific but across different subjects. In view of the theory of argumentation, a typology of patterns of argumentation according to Kienpointner (1992) has been used. The data has been gathered at two high schools (Gymnasien, n=48) in Germany. The data gathering was guided by a piloted impuls: The students were given the task, to take on the role of a theologian/biologist and to write a text of 3 to 5 A4-pages, where they would argue their respective position. The evaluation of the data was conducted in two steps. In the first evaluation phase, the patterns of argumentation used subject-specific and across different subjects have been identified using the qualitative analysis of content according to Mayring (112010). In the second evaluation phase, the question of plausibility of the argumentation has been evaluated in a hermeneutic interpretation. The connection between the use of patterns and subject-specific content has then been identified using selected texts (n=8). The results show that the researched students argue and thereby use different patterns subject-specific but also across different subjects. However, it remains unclear, whether they use these patterns consciously. The evaluation of the interpretation part shows that the most written argumentation do not stand the text of a subject-specific examination: Partly this result is caused by the vagueness of the use of subject-specific concepts, partly the students are not aware of the extent of theological and evolution-biological statements. They often conceive, for example, of creation and evolution as mutually exclusive theories. At the end of the study, some religious- pedagogical reflections on youth theology have been put into a relation with the empirical findings. We can conclude that the ability to argue theologically can be improved by corresponding learning tasks. This implies for the research in the pedagogy of religion: An application-oriented research is needed, which connects to this study.