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Pre-setting Stances for Students During Collaborative Argumentation: Parallel Thinking Versus Adversarial Thinking

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Abstract

Though we have advocated explicit argumentation instruction in science classes for decades, daily instructions are still found insufficient in improving students’ argumentation competence. It is therefore important to explore effective instructional strategies through classroom research. This paper compares instructional strategies for classroom argumentation. We report on a quasi-experiment conducted with tenth-grade students (n = 92) that compares adversarial and parallel argumentation designs for the topic genetic inheritance, an inquiry-based socio-scientific issue (SSI) unit. The instruction was conducted through the online platform, Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE). In the parallel design, student dyads were assigned to the same initial stances and were asked to change to multiple perspectives together, while in the adversarial design, students were assigned to opposite stances, and a debate was launched between the two sides. Students’ overall argumentation performance improved significantly in both cases, yet the progress was greater in terms of counterarguments for students in the parallel design. Such findings highlight the value of parallel thinking in developing students’ argumentation competence, especially in producing counterarguments. Suggestions on instructional design for scientific argumentation activities are proposed accordingly.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Marcia C. Linn for providing WISE materials and her valuable comments on the manuscript, and all the students who participated in the study.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Project Number: BCA210092).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Educational Technology, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, China

    Xuanyang Yang, Guoqing Zhao, Qing Chao, Xiaoyu Zhao & Tong Lu

  2. The Department of Education, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Xiaomei Yan

  3. Beijing Shunyi No. 1. High School, Beijing, 101300, China

    Yinan Dong

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  1. Xuanyang Yang
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Table 6 Argumentation Scoring Rubric
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Yang, X., Zhao, G., Yan, X. et al. Pre-setting Stances for Students During Collaborative Argumentation: Parallel Thinking Versus Adversarial Thinking. Res Sci Educ 52, 1829–1850 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-021-10035-5

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