Exploring Teacher Contributions to Student Argumentation Quality (original) (raw)
Related papers
Teachers' Theories and Strategies in Practice of Classroom Argumentation
We examine case studies (in progress) of teachers engaging with reflective practice on argumentation. The data comes from three sources i) audio taped meetings where all the teachers share their work with their colleagues, ii) videotaped lessons and iii) interviews of the teacher after each lesson. The aim is to identify the connection between the teachers' stated strategies and intentions (or 'espoused theories') and their 'theories-in-use' (what they actually do). The interviews and the group meetings enable the teachers to reflect on their practice and discuss their 'espoused theories' whereas the video taped lessons give us the opportunity to search for instances of their 'theories-in-use'. In this paper data from one case study will be presented and discussed.
The Structural and Contextual Quality of Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Argumentative Discussions
2021
This study investigates the preservice elementary teachers’ ability to use the components of an argument structure on a given science topic as well as the quality of the developed argument during their sophomore and senior year. In doing so, the study also aimed to discuss the effect of teacher education programs on the development of argumentation skills of students over two years. A qualitative research approach was applied. The data were collected from the same participants at the end of their second and fourth years through having them discuss different generic frameworks. The argumentative discourses were analyzed in four stages. The scientific argumentations' overall quality was at low-level. The participants’ claims were generally established without using data and warrants. They failed to transfer their scientific knowledge into discussion using qualifiers and rebuttals. The quality of the data, claim, and warrants were insufficient and included misconceptions. The teach...
One teacher’s analysis of her questioning in support of collective argumentation
Mathematics Education Across Cultures: Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2020
The use of questioning is an effective strategy for orchestrating collective argumentation. However, teachers with minimal experience facilitating argumentation may conceive of effective support as providing little to no verbal input in the argumentation. In this study, we analyzed one teacher's analysis and critique of her support for collective argumentation during her first three years of teaching. We argue that learning to analyze her support for collective argumentation enriched the teacher's understanding of questioning. More specifically, by explicitly identifying how her questions elicited components of arguments from students, the teacher re-evaluated her questions, focusing on purpose rather than form. Implications from this study draw connections between learning to facilitate argumentation and the dilemma of telling that teachers encounter when trying to teach mathematics in ways that honor students' thinking and sense-making.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2013
This article reports the outcomes of a project in which teachers' sought to develop their ability to use instructional practices associated with argumentation in the teaching of science-in particular, the use of more dialogic approach based on small group work and the consideration of ideas, evidence, and argument. The project worked with four secondary school science departments over 2 years with the aim of developing a more dialogic approach to the teaching of science as a common instructional practice within the school. To achieve this goal, two lead teachers in each school worked to improve the use of argumentation as an instructional practice by embedding activities in the school science curriculum and to develop their colleague's expertise across the curriculum for 11-to 16-yearold students. This research sought to identify: (a) whether such an approach using minimal support and professional development could lead to measurable difference in student outcomes, and (b) what changes in teachers' practice were achieved (reported elsewhere). To assess the effects on student learning and engagement, data were collected of students' conceptual understanding, reasoning, and attitudes toward science from both the experimental schools and a comparison sample using a set of standard instruments. Results show that few significant changes were found in students compared to the comparison sample. In this article, we report the findings and discuss what we argue are salient implications for teacher professional development and teacher learning. ß 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 2013
Walton's types of argumentation dialogues as classroom discourse sequences
Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 2019
Dialogic argumentation has thus far been proposed as a way to analyse, understand, and promote meaningful classroom interactions. However, currently there is a lack of systematic proposals for conceptualising argumentation dialogue goals as part of teachers' pedagogical repertoire. Our main goal is to operationalise an existing framework of argumentation dialogue types, the one proposed by argumentation theorist Douglas Walton. To do so, we first identify a set of epistemic criteria for meaningful, from an argumentation point of view, discursive interactions, which we use as 'framing indicators' to enrich Walton's existing typology of four argumentation dialogues (information-seeking, inquiry, discovery, persuasion). We applied the resulting pragmatic framework to teacher-student interactions found in 20 transcripts of both science and social sciences secondary education lessons. We found that affordances for these four types of dialogues were also present in teacher-student discourse, where the implied argumentation goal was not fulfilled. We discuss these findings in terms of the need to be able to identify the dialogic potentiality and accountability within teacher-student interactions so that the argumentative potential of these interactions can be fulfilled, resulting in productive classroom discourse within secondary education classroom settings.
Researching argumentation in educational contexts: New methods, new directions
2008
The ability to engage in reasoned discussion is a skill that is needed in many different workplace and community contexts. The capacity to argue effectively can enhance an individual’s democratic participation in contemporary society through, for example, online communication with political representatives, or participation in the political blogosphere. Yet studies have shown that many citizens’ argumentation skills are ‘only of the most elementary sort’ (Kuhn 1991, 264). This is despite the fact that both the process (argumentation) and the product (argument) of putting forward and negotiating ideas and perspectives is a fundamental aim of education. Educational argumentation, and the methods and tools of analysis for investigating it, are the focus of this special edition. In combination, the papers present an array of different means by which educational argumentation is currently being researched by key scholars in the field. The methods discussed have been shaped by a number of...
Argumentation Theory in Education Studies: Coding and Improving Students’ Argumentative Strategies.
This paper is aimed at combining the advances in argumentation theory with the models used in the field of education to address the issue of improving students’ argumentative behavior by interacting with an expert. The concept of deeper or more sophisticated argumentative strategy is theoretically defined and used to advance two new coding schemes, based on the advances in the argumentation studies and aimed at capturing the dialectical, or structural, behavior, and the argumentative content of each dialogue unit. These coding schemes are then applied for a qualitative analysis of a study designed to investigate how students’ argumentative behavior can be influenced by the interaction with an expert, who used specific types of attacks to the interlocutors’ positions. The twofold coding shows at which dialogical level expert–peer interactions can directly and more stably affect students’ argumentative behavior, and what effects such more sophisticated strategies can have on the discussion and the analysis of disagreements. In particular, this paper shows how a specific type of deep-level attack, the underminer, can open dialogues of a different level, focused on unveiling and debating background beliefs underlying a specific position
Journal of Science Education and Technology, 2021
We present lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens. The system-named DiALoG (Diagnosing Argumentation Levels of Groups)-includes a digital scoring tool that allows teachers to assess oral classroom argumentation across two primary dimensions: one to capture the Intrapersonal, discipline-specific features of scientific arguments, and another to capture the Interpersonal, group regulatory features of argumentation as a dynamic social act. Coupled with the digital assessment are responsive mini-lessons (RMLs), which provide follow-up curriculum for teachers to respond to different levels of classroom argumentation proficiency for each item assessed. We use classroom observations, interviews, and surveys from piloting science teachers in two different states to iteratively refine this multifaceted formative assessment system of oral classroom argumentation. Lessons learned include the realization by pilot teachers that using the DiALoG system fine-tunes their professional vision to notice student practices they had not previously considered, and the accompanying RMLs help fill gaps in their pedagogical content knowledge and repertoire. Furthermore, while the DiALoG system is intended to be a formative assessment, we learned that the mere presence of numerical scores can queue teacher schema for summative assessment. This prompted us to do away with numbers entirely in the latest version of our digital scoring tool. Such lessons learned from teacher experiences with the development of a novel formative assessment system like DiALoG can be instructive to the development of science educational technology more broadly.
Journal of Research in STEM Education
Argumentation is a practice that spans STEM disciplines and is an explicit goal for K12 students in reform-based standards documents. The purpose of this study was to investigate the applicability of Douglas Walton’s theoretical model for describing the types of argument dialogue encountered in elementary classrooms focused on learning concepts in science, mathematics, and computer coding. We examined two elementary teachers’ STEM classrooms to explore the types of argument dialogue that were evident. We found evidence of six types of dialogues: persuasion, negotiation, information-seeking, deliberation, inquiry, and discovery based on Walton’s model. Our findings demonstrate the applicability of Walton’s types of argument dialogue to argumentation in elementary STEM contexts. Even though our work takes place in the United States with teachers of children in grades 3-5 (ages 8-10 years), we believe our approach is applicable to other dialogues found in K12 STEM education. We postula...