The impact of collaboration on the outcomes of scientific argumentation

Abstract

This study examines three questions about the impact of collaboration during scientific argumentation. First, do groups craft better arguments than individuals? Second, to what degree do individuals adopt and internalize the arguments crafted by their group? Third, do individuals who work in groups learn more from their experiences than individuals who work on their own? To examine these questions, 168 high school chemistry students were randomly assigned, using a matched pair design to collaborative or individual argumentation conditions. Students in both treatment conditions first completed a task that required them to produce an argument articulating and justifying an explanation for a discrepant event. The students then completed mastery and transfer problems on their own. The results of this study indicate that (a) groups of students did not produce better arguments than students who worked alone, (b) a substantial proportion of the students adopted at least some elements of their group's argument, and (c) students from the collaborative condition demonstrated superior performance on the mastery and transfer problems. These observations indicate that collaboration was beneficial for individual learning but not for initial performance on the task. The study concludes with a discussion of these observations and recommendations for future research.

In Pursuit of Consensus: Disagreement and legitimization during small-group argumentation

“…Kuhn's work has been widely recognized and accepted as an explanation for students' struggles with responding to counter-arguments and evidence in productive and reliable ways (Osborne, 2004;Sampson & Clark, 2009;Southerland et al, 2005). However, alternative perspectives on this phenomenon demonstrate that an individual's argumentative discourse will vary in response to their interpretation of the argumentative task.…”

“…This approach allows students to engage in authentic, but appropriately scaled, practices of scientific communication and reasoning. Moreover, consensus-building through argumentation has the potential to support knowledge construction for individual students as they learn to draw upon and synthesize evidence in order to build stronger arguments (e.g., Asterhan & Schwarz, 2007; 2009; Kuhn, 2010;Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton, 1997;Limón & Carretero, 1997;Sampson & Clark, 2009;Schwarz, Neuman, & Biezuner, 2000). In fact, as seen in Table 1, nearly all groups that began with dissention moved towards consensus around the correct claim, while discussing the key concept for the activity: competition between species.…”

“…In fact, studies of whether and how argumentation affects an individual's understanding consistently show that becoming aware of challenges and counterarguments is beneficial to students. By confronting counter-arguments, students improve the structure and completeness of their own arguments (e.g., Kuhn, 2010;Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton, 1997;Limón & Carretero, 1997) and improve their understanding of the content under study (Asterhan & Schwarz, 2007;Sampson & Clark, 2009;Schwarz, Neuman, & Biezuner, 2000). For example, in a study of 10 th graders studying genetics, Venville and Dawson (2010) found that students that engaged in a brief argumentative intervention developed stronger arguments and deeper understandings of the science content than did those students without the intervention.…”

Teaching Methods in Science Subjects Promoting Sustainability

“…These teaching methods are important in students learning processes and can enhance learning when they are used together and connected to information and communications technology. Collaboration supports students to make their own thinking visible [109,110] and helps them to learn from argumentation [111]. Argumentation has been shown to support higher-order and critical thinking, and engagement in science learning [112].…”

“…To achieve ecological literacy a greater understanding of ecological topics is needed. The ecologically literate person is, moreover, significantly more likely to engage in a set of pro-environment activities than someone who is not educated in ecology [111].…”