When children argue: the discursive construction of evidence use in inquiry science lessons

• Main Authors: Luiz Gustavo Franco Silveira, Danusa Munford
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul 2017-12-01
• Series: Investigações em Ensino de Ciências
• Subjects: Argumentação; Uso de Evidências; Anos Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental; Etnografia em Educação
• Online Access: https://www.if.ufrgs.br/cref/ojs/index.php/ienci/article/view/731

The aim of this study is to analyze the discursive construction of practices of evidence use during argumentation in science lessons in a 3rd grade classroom. We selected an event considered a telling case to analyze face-to-face interactions. We adopted elements of the ethnographic perspective in education and of the Pragma-dialectical Theory of Argumentation. Our results indicate that participants’ argumentation was organized around two foci: one generated by disagreements about directive questions, demanded presentation of points of view and arguments with evidence; the second one, generated by disagreements about metacognitive questions, led to discussions around evidence use. In addition, we indicate the complexity of the process of relating evidence to a particular claim through an interaction in which opposite points of view were supported by the same observations. We examine our results in the light of research on argumentation at elementary school, and we suggest implications for teaching practice and research in science education.