Scaffolding Reasoning in Science Classrooms: Combining a Micro-Blogging Tool With a Dialogic Pedagogy

• In Event: 34.028 - Dialogic Interactions in Digital Contexts: Multimodal, Multilevel, and Temporal Analyses

Abstract

Objectives or purposes:
1. To explore a micro-blogging tool designed to promote the aims of a dialogic pedagogy.
2. To analyse how reasoning is scaffolded through dialogic use of the tool in the context of a socio-scientific issue.


Perspective(s) or theoretical framework:
Informed by recent work on ‘new materialism’ (Barad, 2007; Fox & Alldred, 2016), we consider classroom intra-actions. We seek to include the tool’s ‘voice’ in ‘material-dialogic space’ (Hetherington & Wegerif, 2018 p.13) as we explore how a key characteristics of scaffolding - contingency (Van de Pol, Volman & Beishuizen, 2010) - manifests in this space. We argue for a parallel narrative to evidence-based reasoning associated with scientific argumentation (Englemann, Neuhaus & Fischer, 2016; Kuhn, 1993). Particularly when focusing on more divergent, exploratory forms of knowledge co-construction associated with socio-scientific issues, we emphasize the use of the language of possibility in reasoning (Maine, 2015). This ‘allows openness for diverse opinions and speculation’, underpinned by students’ personal and sociocultural values (Boyd and Kong, 2017, p.79).


Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry:
Our analysis is structured by a three-process model, informed by work on the Ethnography of Communication (Hymes, 1972; Saville-Troike, 2003) and reflecting the multi-layered nature of knowledge construction in classrooms (Ludvigsen, 2009). Moving between the macro, meso and micro-levels of analysis, we highlight one lesson in considering the dynamic interactions between the layers. We focus mainly on analysis at the micro-level, capturing the dynamics of intra-action afforded by the technology.


Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials:
Data is drawn from transcripts and videos of six science lessons and meta-data from the micro-blogging tool.


Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view:
The role of micro-blogging in the intra-actions can be characterized as either ‘product’ or ‘process’ and we highlight the interconnections between these that are fundamental to the scaffolding process. Dialogic use of the tool supports scaffolding through the creation of a ‘contingent environment’, with the visibility of students’ contributions enabling the teacher to make contingent assessments that are not limited to spoken interactions.

We analyse the language of possibility and justification as students work creatively with each other’s ideas. We demonstrate how students intra-act with the tool, differentiating between the subjectivity of speculation and the objectivity of scientific ‘facts’. In so doing, we argue that students engage with an inherently dialogic form of evidence that we term ‘evidence of speculation’.


Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work:
‘Evidence of speculation’, generated through scaffolding the language of possibility, can be used to identify the differences between personal beliefs and emotions, and the objectivity of scientific facts. Using a micro-blogging tool is one way in which the contingent relationship between such ideas can be sustained as part of students’ on-going dialogue. This is particularly significant as we strive to equip students with the skills to evaluate the different types of evidence inherent in a ‘post-truth’ era.

Authors

• Paul T. Warwick, University of Cambridge

• Victoria Cook, University of Cambridge

• Louis Major, University of Cambridge

• Maria Vrikki, University of Cyprus