Elementary Students Justifying Explanations and Reasoning With Evidence in Academic Tasks and Nonacademic Routines

• In Event: 72.043 - Supporting Students' Evidence-Based Reasoning Across Content Areas and Grade Levels

Abstract

Objectives
Previous studies of evidence in persuasive explanations have typically focused on older students, academic tasks, single time points, and/or required students to rate agreement with the reasoning of story characters (e.g., Sandoval & Çam, 2011). In contrast, this study examined younger students’ justifications for their own actions in explanations of both academic tasks and personal routines.

Perspectives
Explanation is a form of school-relevant language critical for academic success (Nippold & Scott, 2010). In developmental studies, explanation is important for revealing “underlying casual relations and properties” to children (Legare, 2012, p.183). In the era of new standards, even young students must be able to explain their understanding, and teachers are urged to employ student explanations to gauge new knowledge (e.g., NGACBP/CCSSO, 2010). However, Osborne and Patterson (2011) make the critical distinction between explanation and argument as discursive practices—“arguments are essential to the process of justifying the validity of any explanation as there are often multiple explanations for any given phenomenon” (p.629). Whether elementary students can combine these discursive practices to aptly display their reasoning with evidence needs to be determined.

Methods and Data Sources
We elicited oral explanations from 44 5th grade students (50% girls) in fall (T1) and spring (T2). Students were asked to justify their explanations of how best to complete mathematics tasks (e.g., counting) and personal routines (e.g., teeth cleaning) to hypothetical classmates. We determined whether students provided comprehensible justifications, and characterized arguments and inclusion of any evidence.

Results
Preliminary analyses suggest students almost always provided justification without additional prompting with the exception of T1 math explanations. The justifications for T1 math explanations also tended to make less sense in contrast with both personal routines and T2 math explanations. Overwhelmingly, students relied on normative arguments to justify personal routine explanations—appealing to “first principles” (Fitzgerald & Baird, 2011) such as imperatives for healthy teeth and dental aesthetics, often even when they also provided causal arguments. Math explanations tended to be evenly divided between causal and normative arguments. Rarely did students use evidence; surprisingly even in explanations of familiar personal routines that increased in detail at T2 but tended not to cite evidence. The beginnings of evidentiary links occurred most often in T2 math normative arguments that compared the efficiency of different math strategies based on prior personal experience but were largely absent overt cites to specific observations or data that would constitute adequate evidence. Conceivably, empirical evidence was not readily invoked in either elicitation context. Alternatively, students may think justifications based on theories about causal mechanisms or social norms/assertions are sufficient. Additional analyses will include how characteristics of justifications may be related to student language and math proficiency.

Scholarly Significance
The preliminary results are suggestive but caution that not all explanations may entail an articulation of evidence. Rather teachers need to be aware that even as students justify their explanations, the companion discourse practice—argument—may need additional instructional support if students are to include reasoning with evidence (Sandoval & Millwood, 2005).

Authors

• Alison L. Bailey, University of California - Los Angeles

• Sandy Chang, University of California - Los Angeles

• Anne Blackstock-Bernstein, University of California - Los Angeles

• Eve Ryan, University of California - Los Angeles

• Despina Pitsoulakis, University of California - Los Angeles