Designing a Collaborative Reasoning Activity to Promote the Development of Students' Argumentation Skills in ELA

• In Event: The Design of Collaborative Activities Across Disciplines to Promote Student Learning and Agency

Abstract

Embedding argumentation in a dialogic context increases students’ audience awareness, encourages consideration for alternative perspectives, and supports the development of argumentative writing skills (e.g., Kuhn & Crowell, 2011; Moore & MacArthur, 2012). In this project, we designed online collaborative reasoning activities called a critical discussion, to encourage students’ perspective taking and their use evidence-based reasoning to resolve differences of opinion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004). These activities were designed to enable students to consider the strengths and weaknesses of different viewpoints and apply standards for evaluating arguments (Nussbaum & Edwards, 2011; Song & Ferretti, 2013; Walton, Reed, & Macagno, 2008; Wissinger & De La Paz, 2016). Using a computer-supported, collaborative learning environment named EPCAL (Hao, et al., 2017), it was possible to collect a complete record of the discourse (written and oral) along with students’ responses to performance tasks. This presentation will focus on the design of the critical discussion activity in the ELA domain and show how it can promote collaborative reasoning among middle school students.
The cognitive lab study included 34 students (11 sixth graders, 10 seventh graders, 13 eighth graders; 19 females and 15 males) in the Northeastern U.S. Students were assigned to nine groups, with four people per group. The students logged on the platform and participated in a critical discussion about this issue: Should schools be allowed to sell junk food to students? Students performed the following tasks: (1) read the background article and answer comprehension questions; (2) after random assignment to either the PRO or CON positions, students read an article that supported their assigned position; (3) developed 2-3 reasons and evidence for the assigned position; (4) asked questions about the other sides’ reasons and evidence; (5) answered questions raised by the other side; (6) switched sides and repeat steps 2-5; (7) rejoined the larger group and evaluated arguments for both PRO and CON sides; and (8) attempted to reach an agreement about how to resolve the different positions. Finally, students completed an online survey followed by a brief interview.
The survey showed an overall positive experience: all the students agreed that they understood both sides of the issue, listened to each other, and took turns in the critical discussion. In the interview, 62% of the students said that their favorite part was working with others, and 47% liked that they were given the opportunity to question the other side and respond to counterarguments. These activities elicited a range of participation in the critical discussion activity by group and by individual students. More students preferred using text-based communications to audio discussions, but the students who used the audio function collaborated with each other more frequently. Two groups devoted about half of their dialogues to collaborative reasoning, whereas another two groups had very few argument-focused discussions; the remaining five groups engaged in collaborative reasoning to some extent (25%−37%). This study demonstrates that some students may need support to focus their discussions on the argument. Design implications will be discussed.

Authors

• Yi Song, Educational Testing Service

• Ralph P. Ferretti, University of Delaware

• John P. Sabatini, The University of Memphis