ABSTRACT
In this book, learning is studied in relation to the (institutional) context in which it is taking place, examining the tensions occurring when something new is introduced into a learning environment, as well as their potential for learning (Yamazumi, Engeström & Daniels, 2005). At the dialogic level, one can observe participants confronting each other, in a more or less rational manner, by means of argumentation. Elsewhere (Andriessen, Baker & Suthers, 2003) we stated that participants confront ‘each other’, rather than, for example, being confronted with ‘a societal question to be debated’, as a means of insisting on the primacy of interpersonal confrontation over so-called ‘cognitive confrontation’. Such a postulate turns, nevertheless, on a view of the microsocial and cognitive dimensions of interaction as two faces of the same coin of sociocognition. In this chapter we propose to explore confrontations at the socio-cognitive level by looking at the role of argumentation in collaborative interaction in learning settings. We choose to consider the specific case of argumentative interaction for two main and related reasons. First, it is perhaps the most salient place to study the interplay of socio-and cognitive dimensions of collective activity, since confrontation of ideas can lead to making views explicit, and this can be associated with confrontation of persons and identities. Everyone knows that a difference of ideas and opinions can ‘degrade’ into an emotionally charged dispute where mutual respect, self-and other-images are at stake; and also, that if arguers can deal successfully with the interpersonal aspect, they may in fact develop their ideas. Second, some progress has been made over the last ten years on understanding how argumentative interaction leads to cognitive change during cooperative learning (see several contributions in Andriessen, Baker & Suthers, 2003). One particular form of such learning is termed ‘broadening and deepening a space of debate’, whereby the result is a richer representation of ideas (Baker, Quignard, Lund & Séjourné, 2003; van Amelsvoort, 2006). This last description of learning is what we have in mind when we study the learning effects of argumentation (Andriessen, 2005).
