Argumentative interactions and the social construction of knowledge

This chapter deals with two questions: firstly, what might students learn by engaging in argumentative interactions? And secondly, by what cognitive-interactive processes might they do so? An approach to understanding argumentative interactions, produced in problem-solving situations, is outlined, that sees them essentially as attempts to solve an interlocutionary problem, i.e. that of deciding which putative problem solutions to accept or not, by drawing on additional knowledge sources (termed (counter-) arguments) that potentially change the degrees of acceptability of solutions. This process goes hand in hand with the exploration of a dialogical space and with the negotiation of the meaning of key notions, underlying the debate. The analysis of an example of argumentative interaction (involving two adolescent students in a physics classroom) reveals this exploratory process, together with the essentially unstable nature of students' viewpoints, given that they are engaging in argumentation with respect to ideas that are still under co-construction.