Analyzing Students’ Learning in Classroom Discussions About Socioscientific Issues

• In Event: Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Environmental Learning, Knowing, and Action-Competence in Children and Youth

Abstract

The purpose is to suggest an analytical method called Transactional Argumentation Analysis, which makes it possible to analyse both the process and the content progression of students’ learning in classroom discussions about socio-scientific issues. The methodological approach is a combination of an argument analysis based on Toulmin’s argument pattern and a Practical Epistemology Analyses based on John Dewey’s transactional perspective on meaning-making. The empirical material consists of a video-recorded lesson in Swedish upper secondary school. The approach is illustrated through an analysis of three students’ learning during a classroom-discussion about value-related issues concerning environmental problems. By comparing the result of the analysis of each of the three students’ different utterances we clarify the students’ learning concerning ability to create arguments.

Authors

• Karin Rudsberg, Uppsala University

• Johan Ohman, Orebro University

• Leif Olov Ostman, Uppsala university