Investigating students’ argumentation skills and reasoning patterns in a knowledge generation environment

The purpose of this study is to describe how students in a knowledge generation environment (KGE) engage in dialogic interactions and to explore how they construct core argument components and utilize reasoning as resources to develop scientific knowledge. This study also examines teachers’ talk actions as pedagogical resources to support students’ engagement of knowledge generation to gain insights into argumentative discourses which occur in whole-classroom discussions. This dissertation consists of two phases. Phase 1 data includes an experienced, high skilled teacher’s fifth-grade classroom. Discourse analysis strategies were utilized. Phase 2 of this study focusses on examining the utility of the outcomes of phase 1. Phase 2 of this study investigates whether there is a relationship between teachers’ orientation and implementation levels and students’ constructed argument components and corresponded reasoning types. Three main findings from this study are: (1) Pre-laboratory sessions are just as important as post-laboratory sessions in promoting students’ argumentative discourse; (2) In whole classroom discussions teachers need to be engaged in different talk actions to guide students’ discourse and facilitate discussions, to help students explain their thoughts about a particular idea, and to probe student thinking and elaborate student ideas; (3) Regardless of the level of teachers’ epistemic orientation and the level of the SWH approach implementation, students are provided with an environment to construct different components of argument and different types of reasoning in their talk. The findings of this study provide several implications for the practice of classroom-based scientific argumentation.