Abstract:

It is essential to improve and promote students’ argumentation ability to reflect, criticize, and explain the scientific process and reasoning in scientific learning contexts. Nowadays, computers technology can be used to support scientific argumentation, including the use of claim, evidence, warrant, and rebuttal; however, few studies have provided a systematic understanding and detailed review of Computer-Supported Argumentation (CSA). This study aims to carry out a critical, systematic review of the available literature in terms of CSA. The bibliometric method will be conducted with CiteSpace, a visual knowledge analysis tool, which was adopted for revealing the hotspots and research trends regarding CSA. A total of 393 journals and proceeding papers about CSA, published from 2000 to 2018, were obtained from Web of Science. According to the investigation of the co-occurrence keywords, thematic research clusters, and landmark articles for references, the analyzed results showed that research issues mainly focus on argumentation skill, computer-based scaffolds, learning environment, critical thinking, and student discourse in the scientific process, which highlights directions for further research on CSA and offers a related discussion to provide meaningful references for further study.

Keywords:

Computer-supported argumentation, Bibliometric analysis, CiteSpace.