The role of the teacher in supporting students' epistemic thinking in dialogic argumentation. A case study

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative research paper was to explore the role of a teacher in supporting students' epistemic understanding and argumentation. The main subject of our research was expert teacher Daniela, who had been teaching Czech language arts for twelve years and undertook a developmental program on dialogic teaching three years prior to this study. Data were gathered through structured observations, six video recordings of teaching, and several interviews with the teacher and students. The findings showed that the teacher tried to depersonalise students' arguments and sought to make the argument jointly owned by everybody in the classroom so that it was possible to discuss the nature of the argument and not the student's personal opinion. The findings reveal that the depersonalisation is a unique procedure that could increase students' participation in dialogic argumentation while preserving their personal opinions.