Abstract:

Children’s argumentation has been studied from different perspectives, as a means of constructing knowledge and social practice inscribed in specific institutional contexts. Previous research (Convertini & Arcidiacono, 2021; Miserez-Caperos, 2017) has provided insights into the development of young children argumentative thinking. Although some studies promote argumentative classroom practices (Baker & Schwarz, 2019; Buty & Plantin 2008), we observe that the deployment of cognitive argumentation, overseen by a teacher trained in this and capable of designing targeted activities, is less explored. For this reason, the present study aims at investigating how a collaborative design established between researchers and teachers can enable children (6-7 years old) to develop cognitive argumentation. During two school years, we worked together with three primary school teachers in French-speaking Switzerland, with the goal of starting from their classroom practices in order to design argumentative activities to be carried out with their students.

Our research questions are the following: what are the teachers’ practices intended to favor children’s argumentation? What are the characteristics of the arguments developed by children under the guidance of the teacher?

Our ongoing collaborative research (2020-2023) includes a cycle of repeated interventions with each participant teacher (classroom observation; self-confrontation interviews and co-analysis with the teachers; implementation of new teaching sequences). In the present contribution, we focus on the qualitative analysis of video-recorded classroom lessons aimed at developing children’s cognitive argumentation through problem solving activities. The pragma-dialectical approach and a multimodal discursive analysis have been combined to identify the components of argumentation, including the non-verbal aspects connected to the manipulation of tools and objects that can contribute to build the children’s reasoning.

The results show that the design built with the teachers is effective in leading students, individually or collectively, to develop forms of argumentation. Children are able to mobilize different argumentative skills, also via non-verbal modalities. In particular, they can develop complex arguments, depending on the positioning of the teacher in the discussion and the ability to manipulate various objects to support their reasoning.

The link between verbal and non-verbal forms of activity observed during classroom interactions seems central to strengthen the children’s participation in cognitive argumentative activities. Our study constitutes a possible way to sustain these different forms of reasoning and to accompany teachers in building fruitful argumentative settings in classroom. The implications related to the relevance of proposing various learning experiences to the children - also based on experimentation and manipulation of objects - are proposed and discussed.

Keywords:

Cognitive argumentation, verbal communication, non-verbal interaction, primary school, teachers.