Investigating elementary school students’ text-based argumentation with multiple online information resources

Abstract

In this study, we explored how elementary school students used multiple information resources in responding to a text-based argumentation task asking them to research a set of online texts in order to state and justify their stance on a controversial health-related issue. Results showed that most students took a stance that was consistent with the majority of the information resources that they read, that they mainly drew on more reliable resources in their written task products, and that they justified their stance by providing one or more supporting reasons. Students relied much more on copying and paraphrasing content from the online resources than on integrating information within and across the resources, however, and they very rarely referred to the sources in their written products. In general, girls were found to outperform boys on measures of content, argumentation, and integration in the written task products, and these aspects of the written products were also positively related to students' basic reading and reasoning skills. The discussion highlights the challenges many elementary school students experience in this complex literacy task context, suggests some avenues for future research, and discusses instructional implications of the study.

Online Research and Comprehension Performance Profiles Among Sixth‐Grade Students, Including Those with Reading Difficulties and/or Attention and Executive Function Difficulties

“…Furthermore, younger readers very rarely use their credibility evaluations when synthesizing information (Hämäläinen et al, 2020), although comparing and contrasting different viewpoints is essential for successful synthesis from multiple online texts (e.g., Cho and Afflerbach, 2015; Rouet, 2006). Although learners are expected to gather main ideas from multiple online texts (for reviews, see Barzilai et al, 2018; Primor and Katzir, 2018), both elementary‐school students (Kiili et al, 2020) and secondary‐school students (van Strien et al, 2014) may still base their knowledge construction on only one information resource or fail to fully integrate the contents from different online resources. However, specific instructions and prompts may help students in information integration (Barzilai et al, 2018).…”

Rethinking the Role of Knowledge in the Literacy Classroom

“…Despite the importance of reading and comprehending across multiple texts, there is evidence that both younger and older students do not automatically utilize and integrate information across multiple sources (e.g., Firetto & Van Meter, 2018; Hattan & List, 2020; Kiili, Bråten, Kullberg, & Leppänen, 2020). However, when provided with sufficient support, such as collaborative conversations or explicit modeling and instruction, students are better able to comprehend and integrate information across multiple texts (e.g., Barzilai, Zohar, & Mor‐Hagani, 2018).…”

Distance Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Strengthening of Character, Productivity, and Stem Competency

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