The Discourse of Argumentation

This study seeks to characterize the discourse of classrooms that utilize
the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH), an approach to Argument Based
Inquiry (ABI). Linguistic behaviors that lend themselves to inclusion
in a discourse that supports argumentation are examined, such as
frequency of dialog interchange and instances of student-student
speech. Students and teachers in SWH classrooms utilize linguistic
behaviors that support argumentation significantly more frequently than
their counterparts in classrooms that utilize more traditional
pedagogies. The linguistic behaviors characterized in this study allow
us to more clearly describe the discourse that develops under the SWH
approach. This discourse is specifically illuminated as a discourse of
argumentation, in which the importance of student voice is a key
underlying value.