Abstracts - Earli

Thinking aboput history in small groups pf 4th grade Italian childrenCamilla Monaco, Universita La Sapienza, ItalyClotilde Pontecorvo, Universita La Sapienza, ItalyAccording to some authors, the ability of thinking "in historical terms" is mainly based on theprocess of explanation and explaining is a social activity, since people explain something tosomeone in order to obtain an effect. Primary school can be an important context for thedevelopment of this kind of ability: it offers a range of educational situations, such as discussionbetween peers, particularly useful for facilitating children’s explanatory abilities. This researchaims at understanding how discourse about historical topics moves and develops into a specificinteractional context: the small-group activity. Ten small autonomous groups (ranging from threeto five participants) of 4th grade children, that belonged to two different Italian primaryclassrooms, were invited to discuss about an iconographical document, starting from somequestions concerning the document itself, in order to reach a shared answer of the group’sparticipants. Qualitative analysis of interactions within the groups shows that peer talk is animportant tool for the development of explanatory reasoning: working together with a commonaim enables children to discuss, cooperate and, sometimes, conflict with equally competentpartners. In these situations, children are able to "think together", to reason effectively, to makehypotheses and negotiate old and new conceptual meanings, even though they do not feel fullyconfident about their own ideas.E 1829 August 2007 14:30 - 16:30Room: 0.100BSymposiumThe potential of argumentation and enquiry based technologicalenvironments in learning sciencesChair: Baruch Schwarz, the Hebrew University, IsraelOrganiser: Baruch Schwarz, the Hebrew University, IsraelOrganiser: Nathalie Muller Mirza, University of Neuchatel, SwitzerlandDiscussant: Andree Tiberghien, University of Lyon 2, FranceBoth argumentation and enquiry strategies have recognized to be potentially helpful for learningscientific concepts. In argumentative activities, students are discussing scientific issuescollectively and in this way find out they can formulate arguments on scientific issues, buildexplanations and learn to distinguish between essential and non essential observations. They alsobecome aware of different opinions and perspectives, they use different ways to plan an analysis oran experiment and they learn the use of fundamental terms in science, such as hypothesis,hypothesis-testing or scientifically grounded arguments. Enquiry Based strategies reflect aconstructionist approach: learning is apprehended as a construction and an "instrumentalization".However, argumentation and enquiry based strategies often do not lead to learning gains, partlybecause argumentation and enquiry pertain to different phases of scientific activity and because itis difficult to elaborate suitable environments that integrate these phases in school. The presentsymposium gathers scientists that used a technology based environment that integratesargumentation and enquiry. For argumentation, students used a graphical tool with which– 297 –