Introduction We conducted research in a post-secondary, large-enrollment science literacy course that asks students to apply multidisciplinary scientific evidence when providing an argument about the potential social and ecological consequences of policy solutions to socioscientific issues (SSI).Methods Coding schemes were developed to describe students' levels of proficiency in constructing arguments about the nature of SSI systems and were created through inductive coding of student arguments about SSI systems embedded within a structured decision-making process.Results The coding schemes included student practices in 1) providing reasoning about the potential consequences of multiple solutions for an SSI, 2) linking evidence to reasoning, and 3) sources of evidence. In the highest level in the reasoning coding scheme, students used clear and traceable scientific evidence to address an assumption by specifying how (a mechanism) or by how much, an SSI solution might satisfy a desired policy objective.Discussion The resulting framework describes how students apply multidisciplinary scientific evidence to support their SSI reasoning, which may aid researchers and educators in exploring how students interpret and integrate scientific evidence in an SSI-context, with the ultimate goal of bolstering students' ability to reason about evidence outside the classroom.

Socioscientific issues (SSI) are often used to facilitate students' engagement in multiple scientific practices such as decision-making and argumentation, both of which are goals of STEM literacy, science literacy, and integrated STEM education. Literature often emphasizes scientific argumentation over socioscientific argumentation, which involves considering social factors in addition to scientific frameworks. Analyzing students' socioscientific arguments may reveal how students construct such arguments and evaluate pedagogical tools supporting these skills. In this study, we examined students' socioscientific arguments regarding three SSI on pre- and post-assessments in the context of a course emphasizing SSI-based structured decision-making. We employed critical integrative argumentation (CIA) as a theoretical and analytical framework, which integrates arguments and counterarguments with stronger arguments characterized by identifying and refuting counterarguments. We hypothesized that engaging in structured decision-making, in which students integrate multidisciplinary perspectives and consider tradeoffs of various solutions based upon valued criteria, may facilitate students' development of integrated socioscientific arguments. Findings suggest that students' arguments vary among SSI contexts and may relate to students' identities and perspectives regarding the SSI. We conclude that engaging in structured decision-making regarding personally relevant SSI may foster more integrated argumentation skills, which are critical to engaging in information-laden democratic societies.