Talking Science: Argument-Based Inquiry, Teachers’ Talk Moves, and Students’ Critical Thinking in the Classroom

The paper reports an empirical study that examined relationships between the implementation quality of an argument-based inquiry (ABI) approach, teachers’ talk moves, and students’ critical thinking. Students were taught using an ABI approach in which they had opportunities to engage in critical thinking. However, this instructional approach was handled by a variety of teachers with differing capacities to implementing it. Systematic observation (talk move analysis) was therefore required to describe how quality of implementation affected students’ critical thinking. Four middle school science teachers and 92 seventh-grade students participated. Videos of in-class implementations were examined through classroom discourse analysis. It was observed that the ABI approach seemed to stimulate student-led critical thinking when implemented with higher quality. Teacher-led talk moves were correlated with implementation quality and had the ability to evoke or hinder students’ critical thinking. Instances of teachers evaluating students’ responses based on scientific knowledge and transmission of knowledge tended to inhibit students’ execution of higher-order critical thinking. Frequent use of less cognitively demanding talk moves, such as observe–compare–predict, did not seem to help students attain higher-order critical thinking. Four talk moves in particular (legitimating, challenging, monitoring, evidencing) appeared to be associated with higher implementation quality, in turn promoting students’ critical thinking. Communicating moves appeared to facilitate the initiation and maintenance of elaborate verbal exchanges. These encouraged students to perform higher-order critical thinking, though only in the presence of other talk moves (e.g., challenging, legitimating, monitoring, and evidencing).