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GORDON ELDRIDGE: LESSONS IN LEARNING

What Counts as Evidence?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
13-Oct-16


Researchers such as Wiley and Voss (1999) have found that having students write arguments can be a very effective learning strategy. Sampson and Clark (2009), however, found that over and above the benefits accruing to students who write arguments, students who also engage in collaborative argumentation display further learning benefits.
In their study, students who engaged in collaborative argumentation before writing demonstrated higher levels of mastery of the scientific concepts they were learning about than students who wrote arguments but did not participate in collaborative argumentation.
Chinn and Clark define collaborative argumentation as being a dialogue with two or more participants where the participants in the dialogue make claims and support them with evidence or reasons. But what benefits does collaborative argumentation bring and why might it be potentially even more beneficial as a learning strategy than simply writing individual arguments? The benefits of collaborative argumentation are summarized by Chinn and Clark (2013) in their chapter outlining research into this area.
What are the benefits?
The learning benefits of collaborative argumentation include, but are not limited to, increased motivation, increased content learning, and improved argumentation skills.
1. Motivation — Studies have found that collaborative argumentation activities can increase student participation in small-group reading lessons and can lead to students investing increased amounts of their own time in learning about the topics being studied.
2. Content Learning — A number of studies, including the Sampson and Clark study quoted above, have found that students who engage in collaborative argumentation show greater mastery of content than students who collaborate in other ways. These benefits have also been demonstrated for students with identified learning disabilities.
3. Argumentation Skills — A great deal of research supports the claim that engaging in collaborative argumentation can help students learn both how to construct arguments and how to evaluate arguments. Zohar and Nemet (2002) found that this ability transferred to written arguments on both similar and dissimilar topics. Some studies have found that engaging in collaborative argumentation can improve students’ ability to write arguments even when no specific writing instruction is undertaken.
Why might students improve in these areas?
Chinn and Clark provide some possible explanations for the improvement in outcomes obtained in each of these areas as a result of engaging in collaborative argumentation activities.
1. Motivation — One possible explanation for the increased levels of motivation seen in some studies is that students have more autonomy over their contributions to collaborative argument activities that they might in more traditional teacher-led discussions. Greater autonomy is likely to lead to increased motivation. A second plausible explanation is that, in the course of collaborative argumentation, students discover opinions held by their peers of which they were unaware. Chinn and Clark suggest that this may motivate them to want to find out which opinions are more defensible than others.
2. Content Learning — The act of explanation can be an effective strategy for supporting students in developing deep understanding. This is the case even with very young children (Legare & Tombozo 2014). Well-structured collaborative argumentation requires students not only to explain their ideas, but to articulate these explanations in greater detail than they might have if they did not have to defend them to the peers. Further, the diversity of claims that are likely to emerge during these activities and the need to resolve potentially conflicting claims should also require students to more carefully consider the connections between evidence and explanations than they may otherwise have done.
3. Argumentation Skills — Chinn and Clark advance a primarily Vygotskian argument to explain the general improvement in argumentation skills noted. They claim it is possible that the thinking skills used in the social plane of the collaborative argument are later internalized by students individually. Importantly in this case, collaborative argumentation allows each student’s individual thinking to be challenged by counterarguments, which may not be the case if they are only producing an individual written argument. Over time, students may come to anticipate likely counterarguments and develop rebuttals for these. Further, students may develop mental models of an effective argument that includes slots for things like counterarguments and rebuttals, etc., and may begin to include these moves in arguments they write in the absence of collaborative situations. Students may also begin to develop a sense of the types of evidence that are more effective at justifying claims in particular circumstances.
Scaffolding collaborative argumentation our classrooms?
Not all collaborative argumentation activities are equal. Chinn and Clark report that the positive effects outlined above are more or less likely to result depending on how the activity is structured. Some scaffolds that potentially maximize these positive outcomes are:
1. Build in disagreement, but don’t make the focus “defending one’s position.” It seems that learning is greater if disagreements emerge that need to be resolved. This obliges the participants to search for evidence to support the various positions. Some ways to ensure that disagreement is built in are: (a) to create groups that include students with different initial positions or, (b) to seed the discussion with some possible conflicting claims. However, if the focus of the argument becomes each student or group merely attempting to defend its position, deep learning is less likely. It is most productive to structure the activity so that students need to attempt to come to some kind of integration or synthesis of the various claims and perspectives they argue. Chinn and Clark contrast these two potential goals as “persuasion dialogues,” where participants attempt to persuade each other of their respective positions, and “inquiry dialogues,” where participants attempt to construct new knowledge using the collaborative argument as a structure for inquiry.
2. Use diagrams to help students map out the key components of an argument. Students can construct diagrams to identify the key arguments they will make and map out counterarguments and rebuttals. These can be created as preparation for an argument or as an evaluation of a collaborative argument. For more advanced students, the diagrams can also include decisions relating to how effectively the evidence supports the claims and how appropriate particular pieces of evidence are to particular types of claims.
3. Script some useful language: Students sometimes do not make use of effective vocabulary to pose claims, disagree with the claims of others or call on evidence in support of claims. Providing and practicing sentence starters and questions such as: “I think... because...”, “The evidence from... suggests that...” “What makes you say that?” etc. can support students to develop this language.
Despite the potential positive outcomes outlined above, Chinn and Clark note that the proportion of student dialogue in collaborative argumentation activities used to give reasons and evidence is often quite small and that the quality of the evidence used is often low. Carefully considering the structure of the activity and the support given to students is therefore essential in achieving truly productive collaborative argumentation.
References:
Legare, C. & Tombozo, T. (2014) Selective effects of explanation on learning during early childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 126, 198–212.
Sampson, V., & Clark, D. (2009) The impact or collaboration on the outcomes of argumentation. Science Education, 93, 448–484.
Wiley, J., & Voss, J. (1999) Constructing arguments from multiple sources. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 301–311.




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