Supporting elementary school children to engage in collaborative argumentation: developing a kaleidoscope framework of inquiry dialogue

While the early years of children’s education have long been acknowledged as crucial in supporting learning and development, there has been less focus on argumentation literacy as a way to promote active learning. This conceptual paper explores a new cross-disciplinary teaching framework, called the kaleidoscope framework of inquiry dialogue, which explicates the role of elementary school children’s collaborative argumentation processes during inquiry dialogue. The two key theories (reflective devices) in the framework include reflexivity and epistemic cognition. Using a kaleidoscope metaphor, we conceive of dynamic theoretical interactions which depend on aspects of children’s collaborative argumentation skills and learning/teaching contexts (the pieces of coloured glass contained within the kaleidoscope) that are in focus at any particular point in time. This paper first discusses inquiry dialogue and collaborative argumentation, followed by an overview of the underlying theories of reflexivity and epistemic cognition used in the kaleidoscope framework. Implications for supporting elementary school children’s collaborative argumentation processes during inquiry are discussed throughout.