Résultat de la recherche
Young children's argumentative contributions
Drawing on a rich tradition of dialogue-centered studies of children’s talk in conversation with peers and adults, the authors focus on young children’s contributions to argumentative discussions. The most promising research areas in this field are grouped around three keywords: the dialogue, the implicit content within argumentative inference, and the context of the discussion. For each of these areas, the authors discuss existing research, proposing empirical examples of children’s talk and examining how the analysis of these examples not only advances the understanding of children’s argumentation but also sheds new light on the models relative to adults’ argumentation. The findings of this chapter illustrate that children’s contributions should not be considered as isolated productions. They are better understood if placed within the dialogic setting in which they are produced, taking into account adults’ roles and expectations, children’s interpretations of such settings, and, more in general, the design of the dialogue space. Moreover, the analysis of inference shows that often children’s contributions do not differ from adults’ in terms of the argument schemes used, but in terms of material-contextual premises (endoxa). These findings invite further discourse and argumentation research on adults’ expectations and children’s interpretations of dialogic settings, including educational contexts.
Designing dialogue: argumentation as conflict management in social interaction
The escalation of disagreement into overt conflict in social interaction can be avoided, if disagreement is managed through argumentative dialogue. This paper explores the characteristics of argumentative dialogue and presents the role of third parties who design spaces for others' dialogue. After discussing the prototypical example of dispute mediators, this contribution considers other informal third parties who have a similar role. This opens up a new perspective on informal third parties who work as designers of dialogue and build spaces to manage disagreement in social interaction.
Etude de l'argumentation à visée cognitive dans des interactions entre adulte et enfants:: un regard psychosocial sur le modèle pragma-dialectique
La littérature sur l’argumentation met en évidence que cette dernière est étudiée selon différentes perspectives en psychologie. Certaines recherches examinent l’argumentation en tant que moyen de construction de connaissances, et cherchent à promouvoir des pratiques argumentatives en classe, d’autres examinent l’activité argumentative en la considérant comme une pratique sociale inscrite dans des contextes institutionnels et culturels mais aussi comme des pratiques constituées par ceux-ci. D’autres recherches, dans le champ des théories de l’argumentation, procèdent à des analyses détaillées des productions argumentatives dans des interactions entre adultes. Mais l'argumentation à visée cognitive chez les enfants (hormis quand on y recourt dans un but pédagogique) semble être rarement étudiée en tant que telle. Il semble que peu de recherches considèrent explicitement le lien entre le discours argumentatif des enfants et le contexte social dans lequel ce discours a lieu. Ainsi, la contribution de cette recherche consiste, premièrement, à observer et à comprendre la manière dont l’argumentation se déploie dans des interactions entre adulte et enfants autour d’activités cognitives. Pour cela, au sein de l’équipe de recherche, nous (1) avons choisi de revisiter les épreuves piagétiennes, c’est-à-dire plus précisément de revisiter l’épreuve de conservation des quantités de liquide que nous avons adaptée pour cette recherche, et de revisiter une épreuve développée par Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont (l’épreuve des « dés truqués »). L’argumentation y sera étudiée selon une perspective psychosociale et socioculturelle : cela signifie que le contexte dans lequel elle se développe, les relations interpersonnelles dans lesquelles elle s’inscrit ainsi que les dynamiques sociales, culturelles, cognitives, émotionnelles, etc., seront pris en compte et analysés. Une approche compréhensive sera ainsi privilégiée, ce qui permettra de décrire la manière dont l’argumentation se déploie dans ces interactions selon ces différentes dynamiques. Une deuxième contribution de la présente recherche apparaît dans le choix d’utiliser le modèle pragma-dialectique de van Eemeren et Grootendorst pour analyser l’argumentation dans des interactions entre adulte et enfants, dans des activités cognitives. Une troisième contribution de cette recherche apparaît dans l’analyse d’un cas que je ferai à l’issue des analyses selon une perspective psychosociale et socioculturelle et selon le modèle de la discussion critique de van Eemeren et Grootendorst. Cette étude de cas offrira un nouveau regard sur la manière dont se développe une interaction argumentative entre adulte et enfants. (1) Cette recherche est le fruit d’élaborations collectives et individuelles. En effet, certains choix méthodologiques ou certaines réflexions sont issus d’un travail collectif ou de discussions que j’ai eues avec ma directrice de thèse, mes collègues, etc. J’y ferai référence en utilisant, dans le texte, la forme du nous. Je suis néanmoins la seule garante du contenu de cette recherche. J’utiliserai la forme du je pour rendre compte de mes propos en tant que chercheuse et de ma propre contribution au sein du projet de recherche dans lequel s’inscrit le présent travail., Argumentation is studied from different perspectives in psychology. Some research examines argumentation as a mean of knowledge construction and seeks to promote argumentative practices in the classroom; other research examines argumentative activity as a psychosocial practice, embedded in institutional and cultural contexts, but also as a social practice constituted by them. Further research, in the field of argumentation theories, carefully analyse the argumentative productions in adult interactions. However, knowledge-oriented argumentation in children (except when used for pedagogical purposes) seems to be rarely studied as such and very few studies seem to explicitly consider the link between the argumentative discourse of children and the social context in which this discourse takes place. Thus, the primary contribution of this research consists in observing and understanding how argumentation is deployed in adult-children interactions within cognitive activities. For this purpose, we revisit the Piagetian interviews, and more precisely the liquid conservation task that we adapted for this research as well as a task developed by Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont (the task of the “tricked” dice). The argumentation is studied from a psychosocial and sociocultural perspective, meaning that the context, the interpersonal relationships, and the social, cultural, cognitive, emotional, etc., dynamics will be taken into account and analysed. A comprehensive approach is favoured, which allows us to describe the way in which the argumentation is deployed in these interactions according to these dynamics. The second contribution of this research appears in the use of the pragma-dialectical model of van Eemeren and Grootendorst to analyse the argumentation in adult-child interactions. A third contribution of this research consists in a case study. It provides a new perspective on how an argumentative interaction between adults and children develops.
Climbing on Piaget’s soulders to look beyond with a cultural-historical perspective : Argumentation as a situated activity in young children. Insight form the empirical study of their inferences
Shifting from a monological to a dialogical perspective on children’s argumentation. Lessons learned
When two- to six-year-old children contribute to argumentative discussion, how do they reason? Can Argumentation theory, a discipline that up to now has largely focused on adult expert productions, contribute to a psychological understanding of the child? And, in turn, can a close examination of children's argumentative moves contribute to the study of inference in argumentation? Our interdisciplinary research program ArgImp, at the crossroads of psychology, education and argumentation theory, tries to enrich these two lines of enquiry by conducting empirical studies with young children involved in argumentative activities and by analyzing them with models and methods borrowed from Argumentation theory (in particular, Plantin, 1996; van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004; Rigotti and Greco, 2010).
Analyses of the efforts to introduce argumentation in learning activities at school reveal the theoretical and practical complexity of such ambition (Rapanta & Macagno, 2016; Schwarz & Baker, 2017). However, little is known about the psychological difficulties met by children in developing such skills, and the existing evidence seems contradictory. This has led us to a theoretical shift from argumentation seen as a "skill" to argumentation seen as a "contribution to a critical discussion". Our results show that a consideration of the dialogical (and not just individual) nature of argumentation and attention to argumentation as a process can help understand young children's reasoning activity and how it is embedded in their larger psychological activity. Adults tend to be centered on specific linguistic or cognitive behaviors expected from kids taking part in argumentative discourse, while our analyses reveal complex symbolic and relational work that children also accomplish in order to produce argumentation. They are active contributors to critical discussions using multiple argumentations and introducing issues. Often the inferences that children make are not the ones that adults expect and the latter then tend to interrupt them.
Children help us to shed a developmental light on argumentation: issues and standpoints are not always fixed but are likely to evolve in time; discussion issues are likely to be transformed as they are talked about; and standpoints are not always present before being co-constructed in the on-going dialogue.
Do adult-children dialogical interactions leave space for a full development of argumentation? A case study
This paper sets out to analyse a case study of adult-children interaction in an educational context from a perspective of argumentation. We select a case in which 3 argumentative discussions are opened and we analyse them with the aim of understanding whether they are fully developed from a point of view of argumentation; or whether they are cut short and why. Our focus is not on the children’s individual productions but on the process of interaction. We assume the pragma-dialectical model of argumentation and the AMT as a theoretical framework. Our findings show that none of the discussions opened gets to a concluding stage, either because the teacher shifts the discussion on a different issue, or because the opening stage is not clear, or because the argumentation stage is not adequately developed. These findings contribute to conceptual clarification about how to interpret the role of a teacher.
The significance of the adversative connectives aber, mais, ma (‘but’) as indicators in young children’s argumentation
Adversative connectives have been analyzed as articulating explicit and implicit facets of argumentative moves and have been thus recognized as potential argumentative indicators. Here we examine adversative connectives Ger. aber, Fr. mais, It. ma (‘but’) in young children’s speech in the context of the ArgImp project, a research endeavor seeking to understand in which situations children aged between two and six years engage in argumentation and how their contributions are structured. Two multilingual corpora have been collected for the project: (1) everyday family conversations, (2) semi-structured play activities and problem solving in a kindergarten setting. Through the detailed analysis of a small collection of examples, we consider the indicative potential of adversative connectives for identifying argumentative episodes in interactions involving young children and for the reconstruction of the inferential configurations of children’s contributions to these argumentative discussions. The results show that fully fledged argumentative interpretations of adversatives occur as a possibility in children’s speech, and that adversative connectives can be used profitably to identify less apparent argumentative confrontations and implicit standpoints in children’s speech.
The Analysis of Implicit Premises within Children’s Argumentative Inferences
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the study of children’s argumentation. We reconstruct children’s inferences in adult-child and child-child dialogical interaction in conversation in different settings. We focus in particular on implicit premises using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. Our findings reveal that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.
Analysing Implicit Premises Within Children’s Argumentative Inferences
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project “Analysing children’s implicit argumentation”. We propose to reconstruct implicit premises of children’s arguments within adult-children discussions in different settings, using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. We show that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.