Dialogical argumentation in elementary science classrooms

From the age of 4-6 years, children are able to generate predictions, use observations as evidence, and evaluate and question each other.

“from the age of 4-6 years, children are able to generate predictions, use observations as evidence, and evaluate and question each other (Frejd 2019;Kim and Roth 2018;Metz 2011;Manz and Allen 2017;Ruffman et al. 1993;Siry et al. 2012).”

We observed, along with other authors, that at these early stages children constructed evidence and arguments through multiple turns, so most single statements corresponded either to claims or evidence statements.

“We observed, along with other authors (Kim and Roth 2018;Monteira and Jiménez-Aleixandre 2016), that at these early stages children constructed evidence and arguments through multiple turns, so most single statements corresponded either to claims or evidence statements (that sometimes might be intended as reasoning for what had previously been said).”

Our study shows, in line with previous ones, that children as young as 6 years old are able to engage in scientific dialogue that is not purely descriptive, performing evidence-based reasoning of a certain complexity and carrying out operations of high cognitive demand.

“Our study shows, in line with previous ones (Kim and Roth 2018;Metz 2011;Siry et al. 2012;Varelas and Pappas 2013), that children as young as 6 years old are able to engage in scientific dialogue that is not purely descriptive, performing evidence-based reasoning of a certain complexity and carrying out operations of high cognitive demand.”