Abstract
This paper reports on a teacher professional development (PD) programme addressing dialogic argumentation in mathematics and science classrooms. While argumentation skills are becoming more and more important in an increasingly polarised society, the social aspect of argumentation is often neglected in secondary education. Moreover, it is agreed that genuine argumentation requires time and space in classroom dialogue. There have been calls for research delving into how teachers could be familiarised with dialogic argumentation so that they could foster such dialogue in students. The described PD programme features versatile and continuous cooperation between scholars and participating teachers. The scholars are offering educational science’s latest knowledge to schools while the teachers are ensuring that it is implemented in a successful and sensible manner. Monthly recorded lessons related to the programme take place in three phases: pre-active (planning), interactive (teaching), and post-active (evaluating and reflecting). Six teachers, teaching both mathematics and physics at lower-secondary schools, are involved in the two-year programme. In addition to discussing our PD programme, we present preliminary results on the initial status of all six teachers and the development of two case teachers. Analysis of lesson videos and teacher reflections has revealed varying starting points for teachers' PD and dialogic argumentation, especially when it comes to teacher awareness. The implications for pre- and in-service teacher education are also discussed.
Highlights
This paper presents a professional development (PD) programme addressing dialogic argumentation
The findings of this study show what dialogic features teachers may raise in video reflection discussions in this kind of PD programme
We presented two different initial statuses as examples of dialogic interactions and teacher reflections on these through the teacher cases of Mark and David
Summary
This paper presents a professional development (PD) programme addressing dialogic argumentation. Studies conducted in the field of scientific argumentation have reported several challenges when it comes to teachers adopting scientific argumentation in their beliefs and practices (McNeill, Pimentel, & Strauss, 2013; Simon, Erduran, & Osborne, 2006). In response to these challenges, the purpose of the PD programme introduced in this study is to integrate science content and argumentation structure into the dialogic elements of interactions. To make room for dialogic argumentation in the classroom’s discussion culture, teachers should first become aware of dialogicity in teaching mathematics and science (Mercer, 2009). Dialogicity enables different and even diverging ideas to be welcomed into classroom discussions (Bakhtin, 1986)
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