Taking on a task: Children handling the premises of group discussions about democratic concepts

• Within a sociocultural and dialogic perspective on learning, argumentation is one of the key cultural practices to be appropriated in order to effectively participate in democratic societies as active citizens. This study aims to analyze and characterize German primary school children’s argumentation in collaborative group discussions about democratic concepts and practices. 13 group discussions of 4-5 children each (total participant n=54) were video recorded by the participating teachers in the school setting, transcribed and analyzed using interaction analysis and sociocultural discourse analysis. The results demonstrate the children handling the premises of the given tasks in three different ways: (1) arguing within the stated premises, (2) arguing outside the stated premises by changing them (e.g., adding premises) or (3) questioning the premises openly. The findings reveal a more dynamic way of understanding tasks than has generally been found in educational research. Tasks, even when clarified and re-stated in teacher-student interaction, remain open to interpretation and have to be negotiated in a process of sense making both between the students as part of the group and between the group and the teacher.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Lärande (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Learning (hsv//eng)

Keyword

argumentation

group discussion

task premises

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)