Argumentation and use of evidence: making inferences about a sequence of footprints

Abstract

This article analyzes the reasoning process of students through argumentation, using the Toulmin’s argument pattern (1958). The task includes a set of footprints, whose purpose is to clarify what happened. The objectives that guide this work are: to promote the scientific reasoning and to analyse the students’ argumentative discourse. The results show that this task allowed to the students, on the one hand, to establish numerous inferences in spite of the lack of information about the sequence of footprints and, on the other hand, to achieve high level of complexity in their arguments because of they were able to formulate not only counterarguments but also rebuttals (Kuhn, 1991).