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Abstract It is important to understand how students reason in K-12 integrated STEM settings to better prepare teachers to engage their students in integrated STEM tasks. To understand the reasoning that occurs in these settings, we used the lens of collective argumentation, specifically attending to the types of warrants elementary students and their teachers provided and accepted in integrated STEM contexts and how teachers supported students in providing these warrants. We watched 103 h of classroom instruction from 10 elementary school teachers and analyzed warrants that occurred in arguments in mathematics, coding, and integrated contexts to develop a typology of warrants contributed in mathematics and coding arguments. We found that these students made their warrants explicit the majority of the time, regardless of the teacher’s presence or absence. When teachers were present, they supported argumentation in various ways; however, they offered less support in integrated contexts. Additionally, we found students relied more on visual observations in coding contexts than in mathematics or integrated contexts, where they often provided warrants based on procedures required to accomplish a task. These findings have implications for improving integrated STEM instruction through engaging students in argumentation.
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Categorizing Classroom-based Argumentation in Elementary STEM Lessons: Applying Walton’s Types of Argument Dialogue
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 postulate that students having opportunities to engage in arguments with a diverse range of goals (e.g., to prove a hypothesis, to persuade, or to exchange information) is important for their development in learning how to argue in STEM.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1741910
- PAR ID:
- 10472055
- Editor(s):
- Aydeniz, Mehmet
- Publisher / Repository:
- Journal of Research in STEM Education
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Research in STEM Education
- Volume:
- 8
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2149-8504
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 79 to 110
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.51355/jstem.2022.125
