Young Children's Epistemic Operations and Emergent Argumentation in Inquiry-Based Discussions: The Role of Teacher Questioning and Collaborative Interactions

Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025; 0:1–20 https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.70010 1 of 20 Journal of Research in Science Teaching RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS Young Children's Epistemic Operations and Emergent Argumentation in InquiryBased Discussions: The Role of Teacher Questioning and Collaborative Interactions LidiaCaño | JosuSanz Department of Didactics of Mathematics, Experimental and Social Sciences, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU),Spain Correspondence: Lidia Caño ([email protected]) Received: 2 April 2022 | Revised: 30 April 2025 | Accepted: 2 May 2025 Funding: This work was supported by Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, GIU21/031, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, PID2022137010OBI00. Keywords: argumentation| epistemic operations| primary school science| teacher questioning| use of evidence ABSTRACT Promoting argumentation based on evidence allows students to give meaning to the phenomena observed, enabling the construction of knowledge. Children's argumentative discourse can be activated by appropriate instruction, but there is little information on argumentation at early ages and there is a need for the teacher to understand how to foster and guide the articulation of ideas at this stage. In this study we aim to assess how teachers' dialogical practices stimulate young children to engage in argumentation and knowledge construction through simultaneously analyzing the teacher's questions and children's answers, from the double scope of the epistemic and argumentative operations. We analyzed elementary classroom discussions of students involved in inquiry activities on plant growth led by two different trainee teachers. Our results show that 6–7yearolds were able to not only use experimental data and prior knowledge as evidence to generate explanations and draw conclusions but also evaluate and question the ideas of others. This gave rise to small argumentative nodes in which a process of coconstruction of knowledge on plant growth and core concepts of the living being took place. We have identified three fundamental characteristics of the dialogical strategies that can condition the quality of the students' practice: the type of teacher's questions, the order or questioning sequence, and certain talk moves to manage correct or incorrect responses and to stimulate peer collaboration. Our results indicate that teachers could involve students in highlevel epistemic operations but also implement appropriate dialogic techniques to raise the level of argumentation and scientific reasoning from an early age. 1 | Introduction Learning takes place through social interaction, so that knowledge emerges from complex and continuous exchanges between thought, language, and the environment (Mercer et al. 2004; Siry et al. 2012). Social interactions between students and teachers through the use of discourse allow ideas to be tested and facilitate the construction of scientific understanding of phenomena (Driver etal.2000). Children working together and with the teacher in smallgroup situations can use evidence and reasoning to generate scientific knowledge, to explain natural phenomena, and to argue and create a shared understanding, thus engaging in the practice of argumentation (JiménezAleixandre etal.2000; Jin and Kim2020; Lemke1990; Naylor etal.2007; Oliveira2010; Siry etal.2012). But for students to activate their argumentative science discourse, they must be engaged in several epistemic operations involved in the processes of generating or gathering data (e.g., observing or measuring), and in using evidence to extract knowledge (e.g., constructing or evaluating explanations) (Christodoulou This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Research in Science Teaching published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Association for Research in Science Teaching. 2 of 20 Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025 and Osborne2014; JiménezAleixandre etal.2000; Kelly2008; Lemke1990; NRC2012). When students generate and evaluate evidence through class discussions, productive dialogue takes place (Hogan etal.1999). However, the teacher facilitates the construction of knowledge through dialogue by guiding the students' discourse towards the learning of the core scientific ideas (Chen etal.2014; Windschitl etal.2008; Yip2004) through appropriate discursive practices, such as questioning and talk moves (Chin2007; Elstgeest1985; Soysal and YilmazTuzun2021). The main goal of this study is to improve our understanding of science talk in elementary classrooms and get insights to inform effective teacher's dialogical strategies. Understanding which dialogic practices are most effective in promoting students' coconstruction of knowledge requires a comprehensive examination of the class discourse and the teacherstudent dialogic interactions in a real classroom context. Research on classroom scientific dialogue has focused on the analysis of the students' statements and explanations (e.g., Erduran etal.2004; Jin and Kim2020; Maloney and Simon 2006), the teachers' questions and prompts (e.g., BenedictChambers et al. 2017; Christodoulou and Osborne2014; Kawalkar and Vijapurkar 2013; Soysal2019) or both (Chin 2006, 2007; Lee and Kinzie 2012; Lowell etal.2022; Manz and Renga2017). To capture the complexity of classroom scientific dialogue, we undertake a multidimensional analysis of both teacher–student and student–student interactions that integrates the simultaneous categorization of several constructs of classroom conversation that are intimately related to each other. Specifically, in this study, we analyze scientific discussions of a group of 6–7yearold children engaged in experimental inquiry with plants. Research on argumentative practices has mostly focused on secondary and upper elementary school classrooms (e.g., JiménezAleixandre et al. 2000; Kawalkar and Vijapurkar 2013; McNeill and Pimentel 2010), but from the age of 4–6 years, children are able to generate predictions, use observations as evidence, and evaluate and question each other (Frejd2019; Kim and Roth2018; Metz 2011; Manz and Allen2017; Ruffman etal.1993; Siry etal.2012). Since young children are often misrepresented in the scientific literature, our research aims to provide evidence on the ability of students in the preoperational stage to engage in argumentative and epistemic operations. We specifically seek to answer the following research questions RQ1. What epistemic and argumentative operations emerge in young children's talk during a teacherguided argumentbased inquiry activity? RQ2. What is the contribution of the teacher's dialogical strategies to the children's performance of epistemic operations and argumentation? RQ3. How does guided argumentation promote sensemaking of conceptual core ideas? 2 | Theoretical Background In this study, we assess four major constructs in classroom talk through discourse analysis: children's argumentation, children's epistemic operations, the teacher questions that guide the discussion, and the core scientific ideas addressed. In this section, we define and review these constructs and their implications in the context of science learning and the methodological approaches adopted to analyze their accomplishment in science classroom settings. 2.1 | Engaging in Argumentation and Epistemic Operations for SenseMaking and Knowledge Construction In argumentation practice, empirical or theoretical evidence is used to construct and evaluate knowledge claims individually and collaboratively (Erduran and JiménezAleixandre 2007). Classroom communities should allow students to engage in arguments and discussions about the reasons and criteria they use for choosing one explanation over another by establishing explicit relationships between evidence and conclusion (Duschl2008; Kim and Roth2018; McNeill and Pimentel2010). The most widely used methodological tool to analyze argumentation in classroom talk is Toulmin's argument pattern (TAP) (Toulmin2003), which consists of a claim, evidence, warrants, backings, rebuttals, and qualifiers (e.g., Cavagnetto etal.2010; McNeill2011; Maloney and Simon2006; Monteira and JiménezAleixandre 2016; Soysal 2023). However, some studies have highlighted methodological limitations associated with the coding process of argumentation and to the fact that it provides little specific information about the quality of the argument (Erduran etal.2004; JiménezAleixandre etal.2000; Kelly etal.1998). In order to allow the global nature of the argumentation to be investigated, Erduran etal.(2004) extended the unit of analysis to broader sequences rather than individual components. Studies adopting this approach (different frameworks reviewed in Clark etal.2007) categorize different argumentative operations, such as reinforcing a claim with additional data and/or warrants, or providing counterarguments that challenge the validity of the claim. Moreover, the analysis of conversational sequences provides insight into the different patterns of interaction and the quantity and quality of exchanges (student–student or teacher– student) that occur during the discussion (Soysal2023). In our study, we have adopted the aforementioned frameworks for the analysis of both the argument construction and argumentative process. In addition, in order to account also for the quality of the argument, we believe it is necessary to examine the epistemic nature of reasoning, that is, what students appeal to in their explanations, since there is an internal link between epistemic and argumentative operations (Pontecorvo and Girardet1993). The practice of argumentation involves indeed the sum of a series of epistemic operations that contribute to the construction of knowledge through scientific dialogue (Christodoulou and Osborne2014; Kelly2008). In this regard, some studies have developed a framework relating argumentative operations and epistemic operations through a double categorization of students' discourse elements. Mason(1996) 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 3 of 20 and JiménezAleixandre et al. (2000) developed Pontecorvo and Girardet's(1993) framework for the social sciences to investigate how students construct and evaluate arguments in the experimental sciences domain. The epistemic operations identified in these and subsequent studies (e.g., Christodoulou and Osborne2014) included identifying variables, describing, classifying, or appealing to analogies or attributes. This approach allows for a more detailed analysis of the epistemic criteria (how the claim is justified) used to establish the quality and soundness of the argument (Erduran and JiménezAleixandre 2007; JiménezAleixandre et al. 2000; Sampson and Clark2008). Therefore, in this study we identified both the argumentative and epistemic operations in children's dialogue in an inquiry setting. Inquiry situations provide students with a framework for establishing explicit relationships between evidence and conclusion (Duschl 2008; Kim and Roth 2018; McNeill and Pimentel2010), as learners go through several epistemic operations (observe, describe, explain, question…) to generate data that turn into evidence for knowledge construction (Christodoulou and Osborne2014; JiménezAleixandre etal.2000; Kelly2008; Lemke1990; NRC2012). However, along with epistemic practices, students must also be involved with scientific content (Chen et al.2014; Windschitl etal. 2008; Yip 2004). Erduran and JiménezAleixandre(2007) argue that if we want to know whether argumentation skills influence the acquisition of scientific knowledge, we should simultaneously measure argumentation skills and conceptual knowledge in classroom scientific dialogue (e.g., Frejd2019; Yip2004). 2.2 | The Role of the Teacher in Promoting Students' Argumentation and Knowledge Construction Teachers' discursive practices are determinant in fostering the teacherstudent relationship and the collective sensemaking. This is particularly true for young children, who need appropriate instructional strategies to move beyond observation and description to engage in explanatory and evaluative reasoning (Maloney and Simon2006; Manz and Allen2017; Metz2011; Varelas and Pappas2013). Students can feel encouraged to participate in the coconstruction of science meaning when the teacher's discourse overcomes the “triadic dialogue” (initiationresponseevaluation, IRE pattern, Lemke1990; Chin2006). This role encompasses teachers formulating questions in a neutral nonevaluative way (i.e., a reflective questioning) by capturing the meaning of the student's statements and returning the responsibility for reflection back to the students (van Zee and Minstrell1997). However, adopting this responsive teaching strategy increases the unpredictability of student responses and requires teachers to make continuous decisions to support or reframe ideas in a productive way (Krist and Shim2024; Watkins and Manz2022). In this regard, a major challenge for research is to identify and provide tools for inservice but also preservice science teachers to engage students in productive dialogue, especially in the early educational stages. Several studies have integrated research and practice to develop pedagogical strategies for teaching science teachers to support argumentation in the classroom (Simon etal.2006; ZembalSaul2009). In this work, we intend to characterize the discursive strategies used by preservice teachers with young children in order to gain insights that we can, in turn, use in teacher training programs. Previous studies have defined specific categories of questions and talk moves used by teachers for eliciting, challenging, and extending students' ideas. Elstgeest (1985) described different types of productive questions (e.g., attention, focusing or reasoning questions), and, from empirical research, Chin (2006) categorized teacher questions according to their purpose or cognitive function (eliciting, probing, extending, clarifying or challenging). Within the framework of teacher feedback on student contribution, van Zee and Minstrell(1997) described a number of reflective tosses to return the responsibility of knowledge construction back to the learner. Likewise, Chin(2006) identified followup moves such as “Extension by responsive questioning” for correct answers and “Constructive challenge” for incorrect answers. She also included “revoicing” statements, previously described by O'Connor and Michaels(1993), in which the teacher restated or reformulate students' oral contributions to affirm their responses and make their ideas available to all. More recently, Vrikki and Evagorou (2023) developed a coding scheme that grouped previously considered and new questions types into contentrelated categories and formatrelated categories. In the context of inquirybased teaching, empirical works (BenedictChambers etal.2017; Kawalkar and Vijapurkar2013; Studhalter etal.2021) have described a progression of questioning categories to scaffold inquiry and argumentation processes through the inquiry phases: explore, make predictions, record observations, explain, prove or challenge ideas, refine, and extend ideas. Other studies have also categorized the cognitive demand of teachers' questions as lower (those used to evaluate the knowledge level of students, such as recognition or recall questions) or higher (reasoning or evaluation questions) (e.g., Lee and Kinzie2012; Oliveira2010; Soysal2019, 2023; Vrikki and Evagorou2023). Several authors have jointly evaluated teacher and student utterances by identifying the function or cognitive level of the question, and the cognitive process or quality of the argumentation or reasoning generated in the learner's response (Chin 2007; Manz and Renga2017; Pimentel and McNeill2013; Soysal and YilmazTuzun2021; Vrikki and Evagorou2023). More recent studies emphasize the importance of responsive teaching strategies to students' reasoning at critical moments of sensemaking, even characterizing the various pedagogical decisions made by the teacher during entire episodes (Krist and Shim 2024; Soysal2023; Watkins and Manz2022). 2.3 | Our Framework We work on the assumption that the teacher's questions stimulate the performance of epistemic operations by the students, which in turn leads to the construction of arguments and engagement in the argumentation process, the content of which is focused on the core scientific ideas. Therefore, although most 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 4 of 20 Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025 studies on classroom talk focus in one aspect of the student's and/or the teacher's discourse (the abovedescribed frameworks), we propose a multidimensional analysis to address the four constructs reviewed above by simultaneously coding the teacher's questions, the epistemic operations they encourage, their linguistic expression—the argumentation practice—and the conceptual knowledge that arises. Through this detailed analysis, we intend to capture and characterize the most relevant aspects of classroom discursive and reasoning practices, and to identify teachers' most effective dialogical strategies during guided inquiry with young children. 3 | Methods 3.1 | Study Design and Participants We quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed two case studies consisting of elementary classroom discussions around the results of inquiry activities and the ways in which preservice teachers supported student talk during those activities. The exploratory case study was found to be the most convenient research design to capture the complexity of teacher–student and student–student discursive interactions. The case study facilitates the research concerning contexts in real time when the objective of the investigation is more the learning process than the result itself and when the researcher has limited control (Yin2009). The first case study consisted of a group of 1stgrade students who carried out an experimental inquiry activity on plants and a discussion on the results led by Teacher Aitor (pseudonym), who was a school parent and had experience as an adult teacher. The second case study consisted of the same group of students during the 2nd grade who carried out an experimental inquiry activity related to the previous one and a discussion on the results led by Teacher Nora (pseudonym), who had no teaching experience at the time of the study. The two preservice teachers were seniors from the university, former pupils of the first author, and they were also alumni of the study school. At the time of the study, both preservice teachers had received general instruction on science education during their undergraduate courses but not specific training in teacher questioning. Addressing these two cases allowed us to obtain more information about the degree of consistency of the results and detect possible differences between the teacher's discursive patterns. The selection of participants was based on convenience sampling. A teacher in charge of a group of primary school students agreed to participate in the investigation by taking and mentoring two trainee teachers who collaborated in the research project for 12 weeks per year for two consecutive years. At the time of the study, the main teacher had 14 years of teaching experience in the school, during which time she had mentored 14 preservice teachers. The participants consisted of 21 students, 10 girls and 11 boys, and all students were born in the small town of the study school. The native tongue of all the participants is Basque, and teaching was conducted entirely in the Basque language. The school was located in a small coastal town of about 6000 inhabitants in the Basque Country (Spain). The main pedagogical strategy of the school is projectbased learning (PBL) where students follow their own interests, responding to challenges and situations centered on real issues. 3.2 | Context of the Study and Data Collection This study was not an intervention study since the specific learning activity was jointly designed by the head teacher and corresponding preservice teacher. The settings of both learning activities were established beforehand and agreed upon with the researchers, namely (1) engaging students in an investigation to gather and use evidence, (2) addressing the main core ideas of the living being through plants, and (3) for the 2nd year, following up the concepts addressed during the 1st year. The guidelines for leading classroom discussions were designed and conducted by Teacher Aitor and Teacher Nora, who had agreed with the researchers to adopt the following teaching sequence: (1) detecting previous ideas about living beings; (2) engaging students in science practices for knowledge construction: designing an experiment (in 2nd grade), obtaining and using evidence, and evaluating the ideas of others; (3) structuring and generalizing emerging scientific ideas. Several initial drawings of 1st graders showed that some inanimate elements were considered as living beings while plants were not. For this reason, Teacher Aitor proposed working on the characteristics of living beings by obtaining evidence related to plants through an experimental investigation of plant germination and growth processes. The inquiry question raised by Teacher Aitor was “Is the plant a living being? Why?” The experimental design consisted of growing lettuce plants and sowing bean and lettuce seeds with and without water. The children conducted a visual followup of the experiment and a discussion of the results. Teacher Nora confirmed through drawings that 2nd grade children considered plants to be living beings but some misconceptions arose regarding the process of germination and growth. Therefore, she guided the children in designing an experiment consisting of sowing pea seeds in and outside the classroom and studying the effect of two variables, water and light, on germination and early growth. The inquiry question for the second case study was: “What does a plant need to be born? And to grow?” Children individually monitored the results of the experiment using a simple data collection template and engaged in the discussion of the results. Each teacher subdivided the group into two subgroups of about 10 students to facilitate student participation, hereafter groups A and B for Teacher Aitor's students and groups C and D for Teacher Nora's. Each teacher led a 15–20min discussion with each subgroup based on observations made during the experiment, so that children had the opportunity to construct evidencebased explanations. Researchers and teachers resolved to use questions to get the children to talk about what they observed, to use evidence to answer the initial question, 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 5 of 20 and to bring out their ideas and allow interaction. Both teachers elaborated a script of specific questions according to these criteria and their own, without relying on any bibliographic material. In the first case study, the questions posed as a guide by Teacher Aitor were the following: “What has happened these days with the plants?”, “Do you think plants are living beings? Why?”, “When do you know that something you see is a living being?”, “How do you distinguish if it is a living or nonliving thing?”. In the second case study, the questions posed as a guide by Teacher Nora were: “What have you learned from this experiment? Why?”, “Why do you think that happened?”, “What do plants need to be born? And to grow? Why?”. In both cases, debates arose following these guiding questions, leading to both teachers having to raise more spontaneous questions and statements as feedback, always with a view to helping students question and reformulate their initial ideas and discover patterns based on what had been observed. In both case studies, teachers performed formalization activities to structure the concepts learned during the inquiry using additional explanations and Supporting Information. All the necessary permission consents were obtained, and the process to ensure anonymity and to guarantee the ethical management of the data was carefully observed. 3.3 | Data Analysis Recordings of the discussion sessions were transcribed and pseudonyms were assigned to the children. The unit of analysis was the speaking turn, defined as each of the statements of the participants in the discussion. Statements in which the children deviated completely from the topic being addressed were excluded from the analysis. We categorize epistemic and argumentative operations that emerge in young children's talk (RQ1) based on bibliography. Since we aimed to engage students in operations of identification and use of evidence, we applied a double categorization of students' statements to relate argumentative operations and epistemic operations, as in Mason(1996), JiménezAleixandre etal.(2000) and Pontecorvo and Girardet(1993). In this study, we adopted the TAP framework (Toulmin2003) to identify in children's utterances evidence, claim, reasoning, or warrants that justify the connection between the evidence and the claim, modal qualifiers that refer to the reliability to be placed on the claim, and backing statements, that is, theoretical or empirical knowledge on which reasoning relies. When the claim and the corresponding reasoning were included in the same statement, we considered the statement as a complete argument, sensu McNeill(2011). We also analyzed the argumentation process, i.e., the statements in response to the constructed arguments adapted from Erduran etal.(2004). On the one hand, we identified counterarguments and proarguments and evaluated whether these consisted of simple claims or if they used evidence. On the other hand, we identified and examined episodes of student collaboration in which argumentation took place through student–student interactions. We analyzed the epistemic operations performed by children and the epistemic criteria used in their reasoning, that is, what students appeal to in their explanations, according to the literature (Christodoulou and Osborne 2014; JiménezAleixandre etal.2000; Lemke1990; Mason1996). In our particular context, we have identified six key epistemic operations in relation to the collecting and using of evidence: observe, describe, compare, interpret, explain, and evaluate. Observation is linked to direct experience in the classroom while describing can be based on both direct observation and prior knowledge. Comparing (e.g., between experimental conditions) is the action of identifying patterns and beginning to interpret data. Interpretation refers to the inductive statements that children make on raw data prior to constructing a more sound explanation. Explaining involves expressing reasoning on a phenomenon based on data or evidence, and evaluating involves making judgments about reasoning previously explained by other students. In the case of explanations and evaluations, we further identified what students appealed to in support of their reasoning. Two epistemic levels were defined in relation to the use of evidence (Duschl2008): operations leading to the identification of evidence (level 1), such as observing, describing, and comparing, and operations that involve the use of evidence through evaluative judgments, such as interpreting, explaining, and evaluating reasoning (level 2) (Table1). To assess the contribution of teacher's dialogical strategies to the children's performance of epistemic operations and argumentation (RQ2) we first categorized the teachers' questions and talk moves according to the literature and then evaluated the patterns of student–teacher and student–student interactions. We focused on questions that potentially stimulated the use of evidence and the epistemic operations required for it. For that reason, we combined Elstgeest's(1985) approach of productive questions and Chin's(2006) consideration of types of teacher feedback through different questions or talk moves (O'Connor and Michaels 1993; Oliveira 2010; Pimentel and McNeill2013; Soysal2019). The categorization of productive questions or talk moves used in this study, its description, and corresponding examples and bibliographical references are shown in Table1. We evaluated the patterns of interactions by assessing whether each student operation occurred in direct response to the teacher's question or statement (studentteacher interactions), in response to another student's statement (student–student interaction), or spontaneously. For each discussion group, the proportion of operations of each epistemic level performed through each pattern of interaction was calculated. Likewise, we calculated the proportion of productive questions and epistemic operations of each level and the response rate to the questions for each level. To visualize the knowledge construction through the argumentation process (RQ3) we elaborated an argumentation– conceptualization map of the core ideas that arose in the discussion guided by Teacher Aitor. We did so by integrating these emerging ideas in a Toulmin's layout for argumentation that summarizes the evidences, reasoning, and counterand proarguments issued during the entire discussion that led to 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 6 of 20 Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025 the claim that plants are living things (in response to the inquiry question). The coding of the statements based on the categories agreed upon by both researchers was carried out by each of them independently. In the case of the teacher's questions and students' argumentative operations, a single category was attributed to each statement. Epistemic operations were not mutually exclusive, so more than one operation could be attributed to each statement. For instance, an explanation statement could include a process of observation and description. In the first round of independent coding, we checked interrater reliability using kappa coefficients. The Kappa value was 0.98 for productive questions and talk moves, 0.85 for argumentation components, 0.78 for epistemic operations, and 0.73 for core ideas. According to Fleiss(1981), kappa coefficients above 0.75 are regarded as excellent agreement indicators. After an initial independent analysis the two researchers met to reach agreement on each discrepant coding by familiarizing ourselves with the data to seek common interpretations. Criteria for disambiguation were agreed on between researchers to deal with issues that arose during the categorization process. One of the main concerns was related to the fact that children often voiced incomplete utterances. For the categorization process both researchers agreed to consider as explanation or reasoning those descriptive statements that clearly answered a reasoning question despite not including connectors such as “because” (e.g., “Why (do you say they don't always need soil)?”, “One had no soil and it was born very quickly”). Another issue arose when it came to identifying evaluative operations through collaborative student–student interactions. The statement of one child that followed another child's statement did not necessarily correspond to an evaluative judgment in response to that child but a delayed response to the teacher. The distinction between student–student and teacher–student interactions was resolved by listening directly to the recordings. Finally, when a statement that provided an explanation or reasoning was not based on evidence, was not related to the question to be answered or the conclusion or was TABLE 1 | Types of productive questions or talk move made by the teacher, corresponding epistemic operation carried out by students, and epistemic level attributed. Question/talk move type Definition Example Associated operation Level 0. Context question It allows recalling the context of the discussion What have we done? — — 1. Focusing questiona–c It prompts students to focus on the data What have you seen? What happened? Observe, describe 1 2. Comparison questionb It prompts to identify patterns through comparisons Were the ones in the back like these ones? Compare 3. Reasoning questiona,c It prompts students to build ideas and explanations upon their experiences or observations Why do you think that has happened? How do you know that plants are living beings? Interpret, explain, evaluate 2 3.1. Constructive challenged,e It raises a cognitive conflict and prompts to amend discrepancies or contradictions. But do beans have eyes? and you just said that they are living beings… 3.2. Toss backfIt prompts to evaluate other's statements Jon says that…what do you think? 4. Clarification requestb,f It prompts to elaborate, qualify or clarify previous answers. …they are like stones, what do you mean by “like stones”? Observe, describe 1 Why do you say that some needs water while others don't? Explain 2 5. RevoicinggIt repeats, rewords or synthesizes the reasoning provided by the students So we are living beings because we die — — 6. Positive feedbackdIt validates the statement made by the student Fine Alright — — aElstgeest(1985). bOliveira(2010). cBenedictChambers etal.(2017). dChin(2006). eSoysal(2019). fPimentel and McNeill(2013). gO'Connor and Michaels(1993). 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 7 of 20 based on “fantastic” criteria, they were considered as “other reasoning” (e.g., “…the seeds are smart”). Conflicting cases were discussed according to the aforementioned criteria until a consensus was reached. Following these negotiations, we reviewed and, if necessary, modified the definitions of the categories (see Table1). 4 | Results In this section, we first identify the epistemic operations and components of argumentation that emerged in the children's statements (RQ1). We then identify the productive questions posed by both teachers and quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the relationship between the teacher's dialogical strategies and the operations performed by the children (RQ2). In the last part of the section, we summarize the core ideas about the living beings that emerged through the argumentative process and its components (RQ3). 4.1 | Epistemic Operations and Components of Argumentation (RQ1) To answer RQ1, we describe quantitative patterns in the operations and arguments that emerge in the children's discourse that arise from Figure1 and Table2 (quantitative data on specific features of the students' utterances) and then illustrate them qualitatively with excerpts provided in Tables3 and 4. FIGURE 1 | Frequency of (a) each type of epistemic operation and (b) argument component performed by students and (c) each type of teacher's productive question in Teacher Aitor's (gray) and Teacher Nora's (white) class. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Observe (1)Describe (1)Compare (1)Interpret (2)Explain (2)Evaluate (2) % with respecto to total operaons Epistemic operaon (level) A (N=76) B (N=85) C (N=91) D (N=69) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Evidence ClaimReasoning Claim+reas.Counter-pro.Backing Qualifier % with respect total argumentave uerances Argumentave component A (N=46) B (N=78) C (N=59) D (N=56) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Focus (1)Comparison (1)Clarificaon (1/2)Reasoning (2)Challenge(2) % with respecto total producve quesons Type of poducve queson (Epistemic level) A (N=30) B (N=49) C (N=43) D (N=29) 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 8 of 20 Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025 Most students' statements involved some kind of epistemic operation (Table2). As seen in Figure1a, students from all of the groups were able to observe, describe, explain, and evaluate. Operations involving the use of evidence (level 2: interpret, explain, evaluate) were more frequent than those in which only evidence was identified (level 1: observe, describe, compare) in Groups B and D (Table2). The performance of different operations engaged students in the practice of argumentation, as a high percentage of total children's statements (68% to 87% according to groups) was considered a component of argumentation (Table 2). As seen in Figure1b, the most frequent components of argumentation corresponded to evidence statements (25.3% averaged across groups ±4.1 S.E.), claims (24.4% ± 4.9 S.E.) and reasoning (20.1% ± 4.2 S.E), although students also countered or supported the ideas of others, backed their statements with prior knowledge, and used modal qualifiers. Next, we consider sequences of statements to illustrate the epistemic and argumentation operations performed by the children. We first cover those elements related to evidence identification (Level 1, Table3) and second, those involving the use of evidence for the construction and evaluation of ideas (Level 2, Table4). As seen in the examples in Table3 (“describe” and “compare” operation), all groups of students elaborated descriptions and comparisons (in the presence vs. absence of water or light) on germination or plant growth. The children's descriptions were mostly based on observations made in the experiment (“observe” on Table3), but they also described facts derived from their prior knowledge or personal experiences (source of data in Table2), as in these examples: A.40Ane: I heard on TV that there's a video on YouTube (…) the trees and so (…) if they break a bit or something like that, they start to die. A.51My grandpa has a garden…first the tomatoes are green, then orangeyellow and then they are red. Through these Level 1 epistemic operations children elicit evidences. For instance, both groups of 2nd graders established that plants born earlier, grow taller but are less healthy (“twisted and yellow color”) in the absence of light, as in C1 episode (Table3). In Table4, we provide examples of excerpts illustrating the use of Level 2 epistemic operations (interpret, explain, evaluate) and TABLE 2 | Quantitative data of relevant indicators of the students' talk. Teacher Aitor Teacher Nora Group A Group B Group C Group D Turns involving epistemic operation 71.4% 70.6% 82.8% 84.5% Level 1 68.4% 31.8% 53.8% 43.5% Level 2 28.9% 63.5% 42.9% 56.5% Source of data Classroom observation 13 814 8 Previous knowledge 2 3 4 1 Explanations appeal to: Features 54.5% 58.8% 023.8% Analogy (to human) 13.6% 15.7% 0 0 Causality 27.3% 17.6% 61.5% 52.4% Intern consistency 05.9% 23.1% 9.5% New factor (hypothesis) 0 0 7.7% 9.5% Alternative conceptions 4.5% 2% 04.8% Turns involving argumentation components 67.9% 87.1% 84.4% 84.5% Counterarguments 0 8 1 2 Proarguments 1 4 1 0 Type of evaluation Uses a claim 1 3 2 1 Uses an evidence to evaluate an evidence 8 0 5 1 Uses a warrant (can include evidence) 2 11 6 3 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 9 of 20 argumentation. We first address the process of argument construction by identifying what types of reasoning (the epistemic criteria) students used to support their claims, that is, what students appeal to in their explanations (observations, alternative conceptions, analogies…). We then exemplify how students evaluated each other's explanations and their use of counterand proarguments. TABLE 3 | Examples of excerpts illustrating the interaction among the types of questions, epistemic operations, and argumentation components during the evidence identification process (Level 1). Collaborative interactions are in bold. Turn Productive question Epistemic operation Argumentation A1 episode A.6T. Aitor: We sowed the beans and…what else? Context question A.7Xabi: grow the lettuces. A.8T. Aitor: That's right; we sowed the beans and grew the lettuce Revoicing A.9Ane: two lettuces with (too much) water are getting sick … Observ./Descr./Interp. Evidence A.10Iker: That lettuce is poorly … Observe/Describe Evidence A.11Unai: And the ones on the other side (not watered) are dead … Obs./Compare/Descr. Evidence A.28T. Aitor: The ones at the back were different, weren't they? What were they like? Were they like these? Comparison question A.29Ane: Some of them have grown, the ones with water, and others have not grown Obs./ Compare/Descr. Evidence B1 episode B.11T. Aitor: … And what did you see there? What things have happened? Focus question B.12Iker: it's got bigger Observe/Describe Evidence B.13Asier: one of the lettuces has grown Observe/Describe Evidence B.14Uxue: one of them is dead Observe/Describe Evidence B.15Ione: and the ones without water have died Obs./Compare/Descr. Evidence … B.21Julen: one of the beans has fallen Describe Evidence B.22T. Aitor: So where did it fall? Clarification request B.23Julen:…down to the bottom Describe Evidence B.24T. Aitor: And where was it before then? Clarification request B.25Julen: On the plant Describe Evidence B.26T. Aitor: and from the plant, what has fallen? Clarification request B.27Julen: the bean seed Describe Evidence C1 episode C.1T. Nora: Does anyone want to start telling us what we have learned from this experiment? Focusing question C.2Maite: that some of them have been born before some other ones. Obs./Descr./Compare Evidence C.3Ander: the ones that were in the dark have been born before Eval./Obs./Desc./Comp. Evidence … C.8Jokin: the one that was in the dark is twisted. Observe/Describe Evidence C.9Ander: and it's got yellow leaves. Evaluate/Observe/ Describe Evidence 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 16 of 20 Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025 appealing to data and acquired knowledge, children constructed pieces of evidence and reasoning to support their claims, that is, to answer the inquiry questions. Interestingly, in our study some students were also able to refine their conclusion (“plants need water”) by using modal qualifiers that allowed them to be cautious in their conclusions (“only the plants used in the experiment”) before extending the case studied to others not considered in the experiment (e.g., cacti). We observed, along with other authors (Kim and Roth 2018; Monteira and JiménezAleixandre 2016), that at these early stages children constructed evidence and arguments through multiple turns, so most single statements corresponded either to claims or evidence statements (that sometimes might be intended as reasoning for what had previously been said). However, it is particularly interesting that 1st graders were able to formulate up to six complete arguments (sensu McNeill2011), that is, to link the conclusion and the reasoning in the same statement. According to Bernard et al. (2012), children do indeed have an epistemic knowledge of the connector “because” as early as 4 years of age, and thus possess certain early skills for argumentation. The short utterances registered in this study may not be a consequence of limited evidencebased reasoning skills but rather the result of a lack of oral communication development to generate wellstructured arguments in a standard way at these early ages, as also indicated by Convertini and Arcidiacono(2021). In addition to elaborating reasoning and constructing arguments, children in our study were also able to evaluate the arguments of others, establishing small student–student argumentative nodes, that is, they were able to construct proand counterarguments based on evidence. Frejd(2019) and Varelas and Pappas(2013) also reported that children as young as 6 years old challenged and questioned each other by providing additional information as a responsive act, to express either agreement or disagreement. In this sense, one of the most relevant findings of our research is that children resorted to evidence in most of their evaluations of their peers' statements. As also seen in other studies (Maloney and Simon2006; Manz and Allen 2017; Ruffman et al. 1993; Sandoval et al. 2014; Sodian et al. 1991), the fact that young children can verbally counterargue a false causal claim by providing evidence clearly indicates an initial understanding that evidence is a means of assessing the veracity of claims. Since the use of counterarguments or rebuttals in argumentation is, according to Erduran etal.(2004), indicative of a higher level of argumentation, our results suggest that young children potentially have the capacity to reach such a level. Studies conducted with children of ages above seven have found that rebuttals are infrequent in discourses of students engaged in inquiry when the teacher does not guide them (Cavagnetto etal.2010), or when he or she does so in a very directive way, while rebuttals increase when the teacher adopts a more openended dialogic strategy (Manz and Allen 2017; Soysal 2023). Taken together, these considerations suggest that the teacher's intervention determines the performance of children's argumentative practice. In fact, our study has documented, along with previous ones (Frejd2019; Kim and Roth2018; Manz and Allen2017; Mercer etal.2004; Siry etal.2012; Studhalter etal.2021; Varelas and Pappas2013), that young children are able to perform evidencebased reasoning of some complexity as long as they are participating in empirical activities, such as guided inquiry and purposeful observation. Hence, our results support the idea that young children's epistemic reasoning is to some extent sensitive to instructional inputs over developmental constraints (Metz2011; Monteira and JiménezAleixandre2016). 5.2 | Teacher's Dialogical Strategies to Foster Children's Performance of Epistemic Operations and Argumentation In our study, most of the epistemic operations performed by students were stimulated by the teacher's questions, which in turn led to an argumentative and collaborative classroom discourse prompting the collective construction and evaluation of scientific ideas. However, in some cases, the levels of cognitive demand of the question and the answer did not match. Several patterns identified in this study might shed some light on what other factors could contribute to eliciting students' epistemic talk. On the one hand, in line with previous research, openended questions allowed for a more linguistically and cognitively challenging discourse than closedended questions (Lee and Kinzie2012; McNeill and Pimentel2010). On the other hand, we found that the wording and the sequence of teachers' questions matter. For instance, teacher Nora's “why” questions (“Does it need water and darkness to grow?…Why?”) could have led the children to understand that they were being asked for a mechanistic answer regarding the function of water and light in the plant, rather than an evidencebased justification. This use of the reasoning question may cause some cognitive overload that requires some followup assistance from the teacher. An inappropriate use of scaffolding utterances to stimulate advanced reasoning may not obtain the expected result and may even have negative effects, especially with young children (Manz and Allen2017; Studhalter etal.2021). By having two discussion situations led by different teachers, we were able to detect that the order in which questions were asked may induce different sensemaking sequences. Teacher Aitor followed a more linear scaffolding pattern than Teacher Nora, increasing the cognitive demand through lowerlevel questions from observable phenomena (what happens), before moving through the reasoning questions (why it happens). The progression of questioning in inquiry teaching has been also described by other studies (BenedictChambers etal.2017; Kawalkar and Vijapurkar 2013), and sequencing questions helps students to move up a “cognitive ladder” through levels of increasingly complex reasoning Chin(2006, 2007). Unlike Teacher Aitor, Teacher Nora induced children to state their claims from the beginning by phrasing the focusing question as “What have we learned?”. She encouraged small cycles of focusing + reasoning or reasoning + focusing questions to identify each variable and to work on them separately in order 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 17 of 20 to correctly structure their scaffolding. In early elementary scientific discussion, teachers may apply different patterns or sequencing strategies, as long as they are aware of the accompanying cognitive demands of the questions posed. Although teachers may depart from a previously orchestrated questioning sequence, in the course of the discussion they are often challenged to introduce a number of talk moves to capitalize on the learning opportunities that arise. Recent studies show that, in order to foster students' sensemaking, teachers have to decide which ideas or paths of reasoning to emphasize and fix, and which ones to open for students to figure out by pointing out plausible ways forward (Krist and Shim2024; Watkins and Manz2022). In this study, we identified a series of questions or talk moves in the form of verbal scaffolds in response to students' preceding answers that served three functions: to stimulate children to question or revise their own or others' claims or arguments, to manage incorrect and correct answers, and to enhance peer collaboration. Both teachers used verbal scaffolds in the form of a constructive challenge to respond to incorrect or tentative answers by challenging them to review inconsistent ideas, as also reported in other studies (Chin 2006; Kawalkar and Vijapurkar 2013; Soysal2019; Studhalter etal.2021; Yip2004). For instance, instead of explicitly correcting misconceptions (e.g., if it does not move it is not alive), Teacher Aitor, challenged the students to reconsider their answers by confronting them with possible contradictions (e.g., “…but the trees are also still…”), and Teacher Nora prompted children to reconsider statements that were inconsistent with the evidence (e.g., “(Are you sure the seeds need)… light?”). This strategy resembles a neutral evaluation that avoids a triadic dialogue (teacher's judgment on whether it is correct or not) and favors a collaborative construction of knowledge (Chin2007; Lemke1990; Soysal2023). We have also documented some appropriate techniques for reinforcing or extending children's “correct” responses. Young children often needed teacher mediation to complete structure and verbalize their ideas by means of certain techniques, such as clarification request and the revoicing technique (O'Connor and Michaels1993). After recapitulating students' ideas and giving positive feedback to correct statements both teachers often tossed back to the group or to particular students (even mentioning their name) a related question that built on the previous ones to extend the line of conceptual thought. By doing this, the teachers not only validate the students' ideas and establish them as a baseline on which to build, but they shift the responsibility for knowledge construction back to the student and promote student–student collaboration (Chin2007; Pimentel and McNeill2013; van Zee and Minstrell1997; Varelas and Pappas2013). Therefore, these kinds of “responsive questioning” techniques both help students progressively make sense of the conceptual ideas (Chin2006) and also require them to engage in more higherorder thinking (Chin2007). To achieve a productive dialogue, the teacher must also be able to open up the discussion and actively engage students in collaborative classroom discussion. We found that the most cognitively demanding epistemic operations (i.e., explaining and evaluating) were carried out through collaboration among the students, rather than in direct response to the teacher. In our study, it was precisely when small argumentative nodes without the teacher's participation took place, that ideas were collectively constructed and refined. Likewise, Soysal(2023) recently found that teacher's excessive followup evaluations limit students' attempts to construct alternative explanations and reduce the dialogical space for students. Adopting a nondirective role stimulates the use of evidence to explain the scientific phenomena and to question or request evidence and warrants from each other, thereby scaffolding students through increasing cognitive levels in a collaborative way (Berland and Hammer 2012; Hogan et al. 1999; Jin and Kim2020; McNeill and Pimentel2010; Soysal2023). 5.3 | Argumentation and SenseMaking of Conceptual Core Ideas In the counterand proargumentation episodes in our study, children constructed authentic knowledge by validating and evaluating conceptual ideas issued in the context of plants applied to other settings (human beings or nonliving things in Teacher Aitor's class, or other plant kinds, i.e., cacti, in Teacher Nora's class). By doing so, core ideas on living beings' life functions and structures were addressed and established as scientific criteria to answer the inquiry question concerning the requirements for being a living being and the needs of plants for germination and growth. Although previous studies have shown that collaboration among students enables the coconstruction of knowledge in elementary school children (Frejd2019; Manz and Allen2017; Naylor etal.2007), our research also indicates that cognitively highorder acts of doing science, such as inductive reasoning and evaluation through these collaborative peer interactions, converge with higherlevel argumentation to enable sensemaking of core scientific ideas. In this regard, we have developed an argumentationconceptualization map to help visualize how fragments of ideas are constructed through the different argumentative operations, by representing simultaneously the structure and content of the discourse. Since ideas are typically reviewed iteratively during the discussion, a diagram such as the one we use in this study may help summarize all the components of argumentation (evidence, reasoning and counterand proarguments) and conceptual knowledge built in response to the inquiry question throughout the entire discussion. In this way, the process of constructing ideas through argumentation and its complexity can to some extent be reflected visually. This type of diagram, by integrating the scientific concepts addressed in a Toulmin's layout for argumentation, allows the teacher to anticipate the core ideas that he or she wants to scaffold and to foresee the corresponding evidences and claims that could be worked on in class. Creating researchbased didactic tools and frameworks for teaching science through argumentation can help teachers focus their attention on fostering the construction of evidencebased explanations in their classes (ZembalSaul2009). 10982736, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.70010 by Universidad Del País Vasco, Wiley Online Library on [26/09/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 18 of 20 Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2025 6 | Implications and Limitations One of the contributions of this work consists of the methodology itself of simultaneous categorization of both the teacher's questions and the children's answers through the analysis of four dimensions of classroom scientific discussion. Conducting such a multidimensional analysis has proven useful in capturing the complexity of classroom scientific dialogue, and thereby, in extracting relevant knowledge about (i) young children's potential to engage in cognitively demanding and collaborative scientific practices and (ii) the teacher's dialogic strategies that enable them to develop that potential. However, our study does have some methodological limitations, especially regarding the coding of short, delayed, or nonlinear responses and utterances of children at this early age. Moreover, our analysis does not allow us to elucidate completely why a significant number of questions, especially those of high cognitive demand, did not elicit responses at the corresponding level. We are also aware that classroom discussion is influenced by other factors not addressed in this study that deserve to be considered in further studies, such as the individual characteristics of the participants. Another limitation is that we cannot generalize our findings, as this study is based on case studies. However, the insights gained from this work can inform a number of dialogic teaching practices for early ages, a group underrepresented in the scientific literature on classroom talk. As evidenced in our study, the design by teachers of appropriate questioning strategies can raise children's level of reasoning based upon children's cognitive demand. In this sense, our results have provided several keys that could contribute to the improvement of teaching practice in the early years of primary science education. First, we have defined a series of productive questions and talk moves to prompt young children's' evidencebased scientific reasoning, stressing that their phrasing and sequence can determine their success. Second, we have shown that performing a nondirective teaching practice promotes the emergence of nodes of argumentation among the children, and thus, the highest level of argumentation. Finally, building the lesson from a previously articulated argumentation–conceptualization map, as the one proposed in this study, can help to structure the teacher's dialogic intervention, to refocus the activity and the discussion, and to collect unforeseen ideas that arise in the conversation. Based on representative case studies featuring scientific discussions on the ideas of living beings in primary school classes, in this paper we have tried to offer a series of guidelines that can be useful for teachers to help children build scientific knowledge from the Vygotskyan sociocultural perspective of adult–child collaboration. Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE, Grant PID2022137010OBI00) and by the University of the Basque Country (grant GIU21/031) to the KOMATZI research group. We thank A. Peña, I. Zaldua, and A. Arriola for their collaboration in the development of the activities and data collection, and anonymous reviewers for their feedback on early versions of this manuscript. References BenedictChambers, A., S. M. Kademian, E. A. Davis, and A. S. Palincsar. 2017. “Guiding Students Towards Sensemaking: Teacher Questions Focused on Integrating Scientific Practices With Science Content.” International Journal of Science Education 39, no. 15: 1977– 2001. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 09500 693. 2017. 1366674. Berland, L. K., and D. Hammer. 2012. “Framing for Scientific Argumentation.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 49, no. 1: 68– 94. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1002/ tea. 20446 . Bernard, S., H. 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