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This study clarifies whether secondary school students develop their argumentation skills through reading and collaboration. The students first constructed an individual argument diagram on genetically modified organisms, read three articles, and improved their diagrams. Next, they engaged in a chat debate, reflected on their debate by constructing a collaborative argument diagram on it, and finally finished their individual diagrams. The analyses compared the diagrams students finished after the debate and reflection with the diagrams they constructed before the debate. Collaboration not only encouraged students to elaborate their previous arguments but also helped them to recall and create ideas and arguments. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)

Collaborative learners are often meant to be guided by collaboration scripts to identify, discuss, and resolve differences of opinion and knowledge. How learners engage in and resolve conflict, however, may be highly dependent on learners' cultural background. In this article, we examine the extent to which a peer-critique collaboration script induces socio-cognitive conflicts within Finnish and German groups of online learners. In a 2?×?2-design (Finnish/German × without script/with script), we analyzed online discussions in a problem-based learning environment of 16 German and 28 Finnish groups of three (132 participants in total) with or without script support. Trained coders rated the extent to which learners engaged in socio-cognitive conflicts, by indicating either agreement or disagreement. The results show that the peer-critique script could develop socio-cognitive conflicts. The German groups were affected more strongly by the script, even though the interaction patterns of unscripted German groups were already more conflict-oriented than those of unscripted Finnish groups. Agreement in Finnish groups mostly indicated that learners integrate arguments of learning partners into their own line of reasoning. Agreement in German groups, however, served coordination and continuation of discourse, e.g., by indicating comprehension of others' ideas. The results showed that learning environments and collaboration scripts need to be designed with respect to culture. Furthermore, the findings emphasized that findings on computer-supported collaboration scripts cannot simply be generalized across different cultures.

This study examines how students in Finland (16-18 years of age) constructed meaning and knowledge in a collaborative online reading situation. Student pairs (n = 19) were asked to write a joint essay on a controversial issue. First, the pairs discussed the topic freely to activate their prior knowledge. Next, they gathered source material on the Internet. Finally, they composed a joint essay. The data were collected using an interaction approach to verbal protocol data, along with video screen captures. In the analysis, three units were employed: episodes (n = 562) for describing online reading practices; utterances (n = 944) for identifying collaborative reading strategies; and collaborative reading patterns (n = 435) for clarifying how the student pairs constructed meaning and knowledge. Collaborative reading patterns were categorized according to a four-part model. A hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted to identify students' collaborative reading profiles. Five collaborative reading profiles emerged: co-constructers (two pairs), collaborators (two pairs), blenders (six pairs), individually oriented readers (four pairs), and silent readers (five pairs). Overall, it appeared that some students were capable of working in pairs, whereas others had a stronger preference for working alone. Collaborative profiles might offer teachers both an evaluative and an instructional tool to support collaborative interaction in their classrooms. (Contains 2 figures and 7 tables.)

Joint construction of new knowledge demands that persons can express their statements in a convincing way and explore other people's arguments constructively. For this reason, more knowledge on different means to support collaborative argumentation is needed. This study clarifies whether structured interaction supports students' critical and elaborative argumentation. The study compares the quality of secondary school students' argumentation during structured and unstructured chat interaction. The data consist of 16 dyadic chat discussions: 8 discussions concerned vivisection and 8 gender equality. Half of the discussions were carried out through structured chat, and the other half through unstructured chat. The results suggest that a structured chat environment evokes counterargumentation, also in topics that do not spontaneously provoke conflicting viewpoints. Further, structured chat seems to equalize communication between females and males. Overall, the results indicate that the further investigation and design of pedagogical means to structure collaborative argumentation is a worthwhile enterprise. (Contains 11 tables.)

The Internet is a significant information resource for students due to the ease of access it allows to a vast amount of information. As the quality of the information on the Internet varies, it is important that students are able to evaluate such information critically. The aim of the study was to investigate how students evaluate Internet sources in an authentic learning task. Upper secondary school students (n = 25) were asked to look for source material on the Internet in order to write an essay. They were asked to verbalize their thoughts during the material gathering process. Their verbalizations and actions on the Internet were recorded and analyzed. The five evaluation profiles emerged: 1) versatile evaluators; 2) relevance-orientated evaluators; 3) limited evaluators; 4) disorientated readers; and 5) uncritical readers. (Contains 7 tables.)

Argumentation skills of secondary school students were evaluated in Finland (n = 290), France (n = 54), and England (n = 41). The data were collected from 4 tasks comprising 7 variables. The results indicated that most of the students had correctly justified arguments and conclusions, and composed clear claims and relevant arguments. However, many students had difficulties in recognising the main claim and arguments for it in an expository text, and in commenting analytically on an argumentative text. Thus the students possessed the prerequisites for argumentative reasoning and writing but need further practice in analytical and critical reading.

In a teaching experiment, 16 face-to-face and 11 e-mail Finnish university students studied academic debating in an argumentation course. Results indicated the e-mail students learned to identify and choose relevant grounds, while face-to-face students improved in putting forward counter-argumentation. The study suggests that argumentation skills can be promoted by short-term e-mail and face-to-face teaching, and that practicing argumentation in different learning environments develops different kinds of argumentation skills. (AEF)

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2009.04.005 Byline: Miika J. Marttunen, Leena I. Laurinen Keywords: Collaboration; Arguments; Debates; Interpersonal interaction; Computer-mediated communication; Secondary education Abstract: Communicative competence needed in today's constructive learning environments both in virtual and physical classrooms requires most of all critical and argumentative thinking skills as well as abilities to use reciprocal and collaborative language. This study clarifies the quality of secondary school students' collaboration in dyadic face-to-face and computer chat debates during argumentative discussions. The speech acts produced in 24 debates were first classified into either on-task or off-task categories. The on-task speech acts were then further classified into six collaborative and two non-collaborative categories. The students commonly presented questions and made requests for clarification or reactions as well as responded to issues put forward by their interlocutor. However, they seldom engaged in collaborative completion or recapitulated their arguments. The study suggests that while students appear to have the basic cognitive and social prerequisites for collaborative learning situations, in future they should be encouraged to collaboratively complete each others' thoughts and recapitulate their own arguments. Author Affiliation: Department of Educational Sciences, University of Jyvaskyla, 40014 Jyvaskyla, Finland Article Note: (footnote) [star] The research reported here was carried out within the SCALE project funded by the European Community.

When students are composing a collaborative text together and share responsibility for the writing task, cognitive and metacognitive processes become external and visible and thus amenable to research. The aim of this study was to clarify how students interact and how the different student roles and activities are divided up when students engage in collaborative writing face-to-face. In this study 19 university students performed a collaborative writing task ii n 6 groups consisting of 2-4 students each. The purpose of the task was to assist students in learning the theories of development presented in their course book. The most frequent activities observed during the collaborative writing task were discussing concepts (31%), writing and revising (25%), planning the text (16%) and steering the group's performance (9%). The students engaged rather seldom in evaluative activities and the proportion of off-task talk was also small. Clust er analyses revealed four participant profiles: Cognitively versatile thinkers, Cognitively focused thinkers, Performance steering writers, and Textbook consulters. The participant profiles were the same for all the group members in four groups out of six. We conclude that participant profiles are not individual roles but are dependent on the discursive interaction through which collaborative groups approach the writing task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]