Argumentation in Secondary School Students' Structured and Unstructured Chat Discussions

Abstract

Joint construction of new knowledge demands that persons can express their statements in a convincing way and explore other people's arguments constructively. For this reason, more knowledge on different means to support collaborative argumentation is needed. This study clarifies whether structured interaction supports students' critical and elaborative argumentation.The study compares the quality of secondary school students' argumentation during structured and unstructured chat interaction. The data consist of 16 dyadic chat discussions: 8 discussions concerned vivisection and 8 gender equality. Half of the discussions were carried out through structured chat, and the other half through unstructured chat. The results suggest that a structured chat environment evokes counterargumentation, also in topics that do not spontaneously provoke conflicting viewpoints. Further, structured chat seems to equalize communication between females and males. Overall, the results indicate that the further investigation and design of pedagogical means to structure collaborative argumentation is a worthwhile enterprise.

Working on Understanding During Collaborative Online Reading

“…Prompts during the task were not given. In argumentative tasks, a topic has been found to have an important role in students’ engagement in active, argumentative discussions (Salminen, Marttunen, & Laurinen, in press; Udell, 2007; Zohar & Nemet, 2002). The topic of Internet censorship was chosen for several reasons.…”

Defending either a personal or an assigned standpoint

“…On the other hand, while in the previous studies male students have been found to be dominating and to have a more assertive, competitive, and adversarial conversation style compared to females (Prinsen et al 2007;Carr, Cox, Eden, and Hanslo 2004), female students have been found to be more attuned to the task and willing to collaborate (Prinsen et al 2007). Thus, from the point of view of learning through constructive argumentation, gender differences in communication styles should not be seen as an obstacle but, rather, as a benefit for both male and female students (Robertson, Hewitt, and Scardamalia 2003;Salminen, Marttunen, and Laurinen 2012). Males, through their assertive and adversative communication style can provide a challenging space for knowledge construction, while females, for their part, can maintain argumentative discussion and facilitate argument elaboration through collaborative efforts.…”

“…The significance of discussion topic and situation for students' argumentation has been noticed in many studies. Topics which include authentic problems or provide relevant connections to students' lives may foster their argumentation performance (Salminen, Marttunen, and Laurinen 2012;Udell 2007;Zeidler, Sadler, Applebaum, and Callahan 2009;Zohar and Nemet 2002). Previous studies have also shown that even young children understand and are able to generate the main components of an argument in social situations personally significant to them (see Stein and Albro 2001).…”

“…Many studies showed also gender differences in peer-to-peer argumentation. For example, females seem to focus more on collaboration during argumentative discussions than males (Asterhan, Schwarz, and Gil 2012;Erkens and Janssen 2008;Salminen, Marttunen, and Laurinen 2012). On the other hand, males seem to be more inclined to respond to critiques, expressed by females, in particular, with rebuttals (Jeong and Davidson-Shivers 2006) and show more openness to argue in general (Jeong 2007) than females.…”

Diálogo Y Empatía en Estudiantes De 10 a 14 Años

“…Algunos trabajos sobre buenas prácticas en el diálogo se han centrado en analizar las habili dades sociocognitivas, de carácter instrumen tal, para razonar y argumentar un punto de vis ta (GarcíaMila, Gilabert, Erduran y Felton, 2013;Salminen, Marttunen y Laurinen, 2012). Otros han subrayado el papel de las habilidades dialógicas de colaboración, entre las cuales ocu pa un lugar destacado la escucha activa, que requiere manejar adecuadamente las preguntas, dar o pedir explicaciones adicionales para clari ficar las posiciones y pedir confirmación para asegurarse de que se ha entendido (Meadows, 2013).…”