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.