Collaborative Argumentation During a Making and Tinkering Afterschool Program With Squishy Circuits

This study investigates how young children engage in collaborative argumentation during Making and Tinkering (M&T) afterschool program using Squishy Circuits. Two perspectives guide the work: constructionism to explore M&T practices and everyday argumentation to explore the ways peers support each other in collaborative argumentation. The video-based study was conducted during an hour-long afterschool learning sessions over three weeks. Episodes of learners’ collaborative argumentation practices were analyzed by examining talk, body formation, gestures, and tool handling. The findings expand current research on argumentation by describing and characterizing the collaborative argumentation practices that occurred during M&T. Findings also contribute an understanding of collaborative argumentation as a theoretical framework to expand constructionism. Emerging research suggest that at a young age, children can engage in argumentation (Monteira & JiménezAleixandre, 2016; Siry, Ziegler, & Max, 2012). Young children’s argumentation includes purposeful observation (Monteira & Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2016), evidence construction, and theory formulation (Manz, 2016). Most science education argumentation findings are from classroom contexts where teacher support is available; less is known about argumentation practices in informal spaces with peer support. As such, our study focuses on collaborative argumentation practices during a Making and Tinkering (M&T) afterschool program by investigating the question: what are the ways that peers support each other in collaborative argumentation? Theoretical framework: Constructionism and everyday argumentation We use constructionism (Papert & Harel, 1991) as a lens to explore children's M&T activities. Constructionism builds on constructivism in which knowledge is not transmitted, but rather is constructed from personal experiences. Physical artifacts that are created and accessible during construction become “objects-to-thinkwith” to support learners to make connections as they build new knowledge (Kafai, 2006, p. 39). We seek to expand the theory of constructionism with the addition of a second lens, collaborative argumentation. Collaborative argumentation is dialogical (Baker, 2002). Prior studies have highlighted the importance of collaborative sense-making (Zimmerman, Reeve, & Bell, 2010) as well as different social modes of coconstruction and communicative approach that support or hinder the argumentation practices in science classrooms (Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2007; Weinberger & Fischer, 2006). Yet the field of education needs to know more about the manner in which learners engage in collaborative argumentation in out-of-school time settings. Bricker and Bell (2008) argue that research has failed to consider what everyday argumentation practices and competencies learners bring with them to new learning experiences. They have shown that youth’s everyday argumentation shares great similarity to scientific argumentation practices. Building from an everyday perspective on argumentation, we seek to understand how children’s collaborations in M&T are dialogically constructed through appropriation of their everyday practices and competencies.