Reflections on How Adults Respond to Children’s Contributions in Children–Adult Argumentative Interactions
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper aims to analyze adults’ responses to children’s argumentative contributions within children–adult dialogic interactions. More precisely, we focus on the phenomenon of children opening subdiscussions within argumentative interactions with peers and adults. This phenomenon occurs when a child problematizes and calls into question some proposition in the ongoing discussion, hence the opening of a subdiscussion is an initiative that comes as unexpected from the perspective of the adult. In this contribution, we examine what happens after a child opens a subdiscussion and how the adult’s reaction to such initiatives can shape the development of dialogue. This means that we observe adult behaviour in dialogic interactions with children, given the complexity of the adult’s role in such interactions. Drawing on the dialogical approach to argumentation, we present and discuss some excerpts of children–adult subdiscussions at a kindergarten. The data analysis uses concepts and tools from a linguistics-based approach to argumentation, i.e., the pragma-dialectical theory, and it highlights conversational dynamics of children–adult argumentative discourse. The study’s contribution is twofold: (1) it presents the important and delicate role of the adult in dialogic children–adult interactions; (2) it shows how the development of children’s arguments is intrinsically linked to the flexibility of the discussion space organized by the adult.
Source: Education Sciences
Authors: Elisa Angiolini, Céline Miserez-Caperos
Institution: University of Neuchâtel
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,172
OpenAlex ID: W4413355294