Evidence-Based Dialogue Maps as a Research Tool to Investigate the Quality of School Pupils’ Scientific Argumentation

This pilot study focuses on the potential of Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping as a participatory action research tool to investigate young teenagers’ scientific argumentation. Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping is a technique for representing graphically an argumentative dialogue through Questions, Ideas, Pros, Cons and Data. Our research objective is to better understand the usage of Compendium, a Dialogue Mapping software tool, as both (1) a learning strategy to scaffold school pupils’ argumentation and (2) as a method to investigate the quality of their argumentative essays. The participants were a science teacher-researcher, a knowledge mapping researcher and 20 pupils, 12-13 years old, in a summer science course for “gifted and talented” children in the UK. This study draws on multiple data sources: discussion forum, science teacher-researcher’s and pupils’ Dialogue Maps, pupil essays, and reflective comments about the uses of mapping for writing. Through qualitative analysis of two case studies, we examine the role of Evidence-based Dialogue Maps as a mediating tool in scientific reasoning: as conceptual bridges for linking and making knowledge intelligible; as support for the linearisation task of generating a coherent document outline; as a reflective aid to rethinking reasoning in response to teacher feedback; and as a visual language for making arguments tangible via cartographic conventions. 1. Why is it so hard to argue scientifically? There is increasing concern about the weakness of pupils’ scientific thinking skills, particularly about the quality of argumentation within the school science education research community. Teaching “scientific argumentation”, which is defined by Suppe (1998) as the coordination of evidence and theory in order to support or refute an explanatory conclusion, model or prediction, is not an easy task. Teachers need to support students in understanding how scientific knowledge is constructed and validated. They need to equip young teenagers with the ability to assess claims and argue with evidence. Scientific argumentation skills do not come naturally. Teachers need to assist pupils in making their thinking explicit, helping them to clarify and shape their reasoning around the norms and