Gillies, Robyn M. Primary Students' Scientific Reasoning and Discourse During Cooperative Inquiry-Based Science Activities

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JIJER-905; No. of Pages 14
International Journal of Educational Research xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
International Journal of Educational Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedures
Primary students’ scientific reasoning and discourse during cooperative

inquiry-based science activities
Robyn M. Gillies *, Kim Nichols, Gilbert Burgh, Michele Haynes
The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Article history: Teaching children to ask and answer questions is critically important if they are to learn to
Received 27 October 2012 talk and reason effectively together, particularly during inquiry-based science where they
Received in revised form 23 December 2012 are required to investigate topics, consider alternative propositions and hypotheses, and
Accepted 3 January 2013 problem-solve together to propose answers, explanations, and prediction to problems at
Available online xxx hand. This study involved 108 students (53 boys and 55 girls) from seven, Year 7 teachers’
classrooms in five primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Teachers were randomly
Keywords: allocated by school to one of two conditions: the metacognitive questioning condition
Scientific reasoning and discourse
(Trained condition) or the prescriptive questioning condition (Untrained condition). Data
Cooperative learning
on students’ discourse and reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) were collected across
Inquiry-based science
Times 1 and 2. The results showed that while there were significant differences in the
discourse categories of the students in the two conditions at Time 1, the only significant
difference was in questioning behaviour at Time 2 with the students in the trained
condition continuing to ask more questions than their untrained peers. Given that these
students had been taught to specifically ask ‘thinking’ questions that probed and
interrogated information, these results are not surprising. A follow-up examination of
students’ discourse during their small group discussions illustrated how these students
interacted with each other to probe and interrogate information by providing explanations
and reasons to make their thinking explicit and by using analogies to verbally represent
concepts they were trying to express. Results on the follow-up reasoning and problem-
solving (RP-S) tasks indicated that students in the Trained and Untrained conditions
improved their scores from Time 1 to Time 2 although the change was not significantly
different between conditions.
ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction: importance of dialogic talk
Attention in recent years has focused on teacher–student dialogue, commonly referred to as ‘dialogic talk’ and the effect it
has on students’ capacities to use talk as a tool to promote reasoning, problem-solving and learning (Mercer, 2008a; Wegerif,
Littleton, Dawes, Mercer, & Rowe, 2004). The key role that social interaction plays in the development of children’s thinking
has been documented in studies that have, for example, examined how exploratory talk, an approach that teaches students
how to engage in critical but constructive dialogues with each other, can be used to promote thinking and reasoning (Rojas-
Drummond, Perez, Velez, Gomez, & Mendoza, 2003; Wegerif et al., 2004) while others such as Anderson et al. (2001b) have
shown how children develop argument stratagems from collaborative reasoning experiences when they dialogue together.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 733763419; fax: +61 733657199.

E-mail address: r.gillies@uq.edu.au (R.M. Gillies).
0883-0355/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2013.01.001
Please cite this article in press as: R.M. Gillies, et al., Primary students’ scientific reasoning and discourse during
cooperative inquiry-based science activities, International Journal of Educational Research (2013), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ijer.2013.01.001
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2 R.M. Gillies et al. / International Journal of Educational Research xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
Topping and Trickey (2007) and Trickey and Topping (2006) used a ‘thinking skills’ intervention called Collaborative
Philosophical Enquiry based on Lipman’s (1988) Philosophy for Children (P4C). Here children are taught through teacher
scaffolding to engage in reciprocal dialogues designed to promote deeper understandings on issues under discussion and found
that the students demonstrated cognitive and social gains and these gains were not only maintained two years later but also
transferred across school contexts. Similarly, Gillies (2004) and Gillies and Haynes (2011) focused on teaching teachers specific
communication strategies designed to promote thinking and learning in their students and reported how, this training, in turn,
promoted more elaborative discussions among students and higher scores on follow-up reasoning and problem-solving tasks.
In short, Mercer et al., Wegerif et al., Anderson et al., Topping et al., and Gillies and Haynes (2011), highlight the importance of
teaching students how to dialogue together to promote thinking, problem-solving and reasoning.
1.1. The role of questioning
Teaching children to ask and answer questions is critically important if they are to learn to talk and reason effectively
together, particularly during inquiry-based science where children are required to investigate topics, consider alternative
propositions and hypotheses, and problem-solve together to arrive at an agreed solution (Gillies, 2011; Gillies, Nichols,
Burgh, & Haynes, 2012). While children’s curiosity is widely considered to be a natural resource for classroom inquiry, it is
well recognized that children do not spontaneously ask and pursue questions about their own learning (Meloth and Deering,
1999; Zuckerman, Chudinova, & Khavkin, 1998). They generally do not ask thought-provoking questions, and do not
spontaneously use and activate their prior knowledge unless specifically guided to do so; however, when they did, it
predicted the learning that occurred (King, 1999).
Sadly though, many teachers often do not model how to ask and answer thought-provoking questions, preferring to
engage in initiation–response–feedback (IRF) interactions where children are only expected to provide low-level thinking
responses to the teacher’s questions (Herbal-Eisenmann & Breyfogle, 2005). In a study of the interaction patterns of teachers
and students in elementary mathematics classrooms, Wimer, Ridenour, Thomas, and Place (2001) found that only
approximately 15% of teachers’ questions were higher-order questions or questions that required children to think critically
about the topic under discussion. Galton, Hargreves, Comber, Wall, and Pell (1999), in a study of teachers’ questioning
behaviour in primary schools, also noted that children are rarely asked cognitively challenging questions where they are
required to think critically about the issues and justify their responses. This creates a conundrum because Webb et al. (2008)
found that when question–answer sequences resemble IRF interactions, teachers model the role of the ‘‘teacher’’ as an active
problem-solver and the role of the student as a ‘‘passive’’ recipient of the teacher’s instruction. Unfortunately, when this type
of interaction pattern occurs, students mirror this interaction style in their small groups with students often providing help
that is low-level and giving answers rather than explanations while students who receive the help act as passive recipients of
this help. In most instances, students rarely share their thinking or problem-solving strategies or probe each other’s thinking.
Interestingly though, when teachers do ask high-level questions that challenge students’ thinking, students do provide more
detailed help and assistance to their peers and this has a positive effect on their learning (Gillies, 2004; Gillies & Khan, 2008;
Webb, 2009).
1.2. Questioning in inquiry science
There is no doubt that asking high-level questions challenges students to consider their current understandings in the
light of possible alternative explanations so they learn to engage with more than just facts but, rather, determine ‘‘how’’ and
‘‘why’’ they know something (Scott, Mortimer, & Aguiar, 2006). Van Zee, Iwasky, Kurose, Simpson, and Wild (2001) found
that when teachers set up discourse structures that explicitly elicit student questions (i.e., student-generated inquiry science
discussions), engage them in conversations about familiar contexts (i.e., tap prior knowledge and experiences), and create
comfortable discourse environments to help students understand one another’s thinking, students, in turn, are more likely to
demonstrate abilities to converse thoughtfully by explaining their ideas and asking questions of one another. In so doing,
they are more likely to reflect on their assumptions, claims, and warrants in constructing scientific arguments.
In an investigation of teacher questioning and interaction patterns in classrooms employing different levels of
constructivist teaching practices during inquiry science, Erdogan and Campbell (2008) found that teachers facilitating
classrooms with high levels of constructivist teaching practices, or classrooms where students are engaged in active
investigations with their peers, asked significantly more questions and they asked a significantly greater number of open-
ended questions or questions designed to facilitate knowledge construction than teachers facilitating classrooms with low
levels of constructivist teaching practices or classrooms where teacher instruction appeared to be the dominant form of
interaction.
However, despite the over-whelming evidence that asking higher-level, open-ended questions have the potential to
promote students’ higher-level reasoning and problem-solving, teachers still struggle to use these types of questions when
interacting with their students. Reinsvold and Cochran (2011), for example, in their study of the power dynamics and
questioning of one elementary teacher during inquiry science noted that the observed classroom discourse tended to be
controlled by the teacher with limited student subject matter discourse that seemed dependent on closed-questioning. The
authors concluded that the implementation of inquiry teaching to enhance student higher-level reasoning may be much less
common or straightforward than expected even though the teacher in this case was using inquiry materials and processes
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that stressed the importance of asking open-ended ‘‘thinking’’ questions. These findings led the authors to conclude that it
may be necessary to help teachers create specific types of open-ended questions for specific contexts if they are to be assisted
to meet students’ needs and to enhance science understanding for all learners.
Similar observations were made by Franke et al. (2009) who noted that while teachers were able to readily ask initial
questions to elicit students’ mathematical thinking they often struggled with how to follow up on students’ ideas, lending
support to the suggestion that follow-up professional development may help teachers to consider how their on-going
questioning does or does not help students further their mathematical understanding. Martin and Hand (2009) found that it
took 1.5 years into the professional development of one experienced elementary teacher with a strong background in science
to change her pedagogical practices so she began promoting dialogical interactions among students and between students
and herself as the teacher within her classroom. Martin and Hand argue that the role of the teacher is critical in creating an
environment where dialogical activities and student voice are practiced. Treagust (2007), in a best-evidence synthesis of the
research into science teaching and instruction, found that classroom discourse is directly affected by teacher questioning and
that higher-level questioning has been shown to improve the frequency and quality of talk that occurs in science classrooms.
1.3. Linguistic tools to promote higher-level questioning
Given the research indicates that teacher intervention in providing guidance in how to ask questions during small group
discussions appears to be critical to helping students engage in higher-level thinking, problem-solving, and learning (Gillies
& Haynes, 2011; Gillies & Khan, 2008) and that teachers need to be provided with tools to enable this to happen (Franke et al.,
2009), the teachers in this study were provided with information on one of three different linguistic tools for promoting
discussion during small group work. The first tool was a cognitive questioning approach developed by King (1997) which is
designed to teach children through reciprocal peer questioning, guided by the teacher, how to ask questions that are
thought-provoking questions; that is, questions that challenge students to link information or generate relationships among
ideas, make inferences, draw conclusions, develop elaborated rationales, generate hypotheses and seek evidence to support
or reject claims. These types of thought-provoking questions have the potential to stimulate sustained discussions where
students learn to integrate new information with prior knowledge, skills which are critically important for learning and
understanding in science (Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007; Lee, Fradd, & Sutman, 1995).
The second tool to encouraging group discussion was Philosophy for Children (P4C) (Lipman, 1988). With this approach,
teachers establish small communities of inquiry in their classrooms to encourage children to dialogue together, share and
build on each other’s ideas, consider the perspectives of others, and explore disagreements. In this context, students are
encouraged to use questions to prompt discussion and investigate ideas, seek clarification, probe assumptions, pursue
reasons and evidence, and review the implications and consequences of their thinking. Philosophy for Children encourages
students to ask thought-provoking questions that probe and interrogate topics on the human condition, social justice, and
life’s circumstances and, in so doing, they develop their capacity to think reflectively and in-depth about issues under
discussion (Burgh, 2003; Burgh, Field, & Freakley, 2006). In the community of inquiry, thinking is critical, creative,
collaborative, and caring as students engage in a variety of philosophical debates contained in either specific materials or a
wide range of other resources. It is through the dialogic exchanges that occur that children learn to engage in reasoned
argumentation that helps them to clarify their understandings and facilitate their thinking (Perkins, Jay, & Tishman, 2006).
Finally, teachers who did not receive either of the tools above were provided with information on collaborative strategic
reading (CSR) (Vaughn, Klingner, & Bryant, 2001). This is a tool which is designed to help enhance students’ understanding of
text by teaching them in a very prescriptive way how to: (a) make predictions about a passage prior to reading it; (b) monitor
their reading to enhance the development of vocabulary; (c) identify main ideas; and (d) summarize these ideas. CSR is a
strategy intended to help readers work collaboratively together to enhance their comprehension of text rather than promote
higher-level complex thinking and, as such, it was deemed to be very appropriate tool for encouraging low-achieving
children to participate in the inquiry-based science activities.
While there is evidence that all three linguistic tools described above promote dialogic discussion by encouraging
students to ask questions during small, cooperative group activities, the current study sought to determine if there are
differences in the discourse of students who have been taught to ask thought-provoking questions (i.e., metacognitive
questions) (King, 1997; Lipman, 1988) in comparison to peers who were taught to use a prescriptive questioning approach
designed to enhance students’ understanding of text (Vaughn et al., 2001). The study also sought to determine the effect, if
any, on the reasoning and problem-solving skills of students who were taught to ask thought-provoking questions in
comparison to their peers who have used a prescriptive questioning approach.
2. Methodology
2.1. Study design
This is a comparative study of the effectiveness of embedding specific metacognitive questioning strategies into two
inquiry-based science units across two school terms. The children in the study were randomly assigned via school to either
the Trained (i.e., trained in the metacognitive questioning strategies) or the Untrained condition (i.e., not trained in the
metacognitive questioning strategies). The study had two purposes: first, it aimed to determine if there were differences in
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the discourse of the students in the Trained and Untrained conditions. Second, it sought to determine if there are differences
in the types of discourse students engage in when they have been trained in metacognitive questioning strategies and how
do these strategies affect their reasoning and problem-solving skills.
2.2. Students
One hundred and eight students (53 boys, mean age = 12.5 years; 55 girls, mean age = 12.5 years) from seven, Year 7
teachers’ classrooms in five primary schools in Brisbane, Australia participated in this study. Students were randomly
assigned by their teachers to four-person, gender-balanced, mixed-ability groups because previous research has indicated
that this grouping arrangement is more likely to promote interaction and learning than other gender and ability
combinations (Lou et al., 1996). While all students participated in the inquiry-based science units which were taught as part
of their regular classroom curriculum, only 3–4 groups of students from each class were videotaped as they worked on the
specific inquiry-based activities, hence, complete data are only available on 21 groups.
2.3. Conditions
Teachers who participated in the study were randomly allocated by school to either the Trained (four teachers) or the
Untrained condition (three teachers). All teachers participated in three days of professional learning workshops which
provided them with the background information on the inquiry-based science units that they had agreed to teach and the
procedures they needed to follow to implement these units. Additionally, all teachers received information on how to embed
the key elements of cooperative learning into their inquiry science activities. These included ensuring that all students
contribute, exhibit the social skills required to facilitate cooperation, promote each other’s learning, and reflect on their own
and the group’s progress with the task at hand (Johnson & Johnson, 1990). The teachers in the Trained condition received
additional information and training on the specific metacognitive questioning strategies they had agreed to teach and model
(discussed below). Although the teachers in the Untrained condition did not receive training in the metacognitive
questioning strategies, they did receive information on how to implement CSR (discussed previously). They also spent a
similar amount of time discussing and exploring the resources they would need to implement these science units.
2.3.1. Inquiry-based science units

The teachers who participated in the study agreed to teach one inquiry-based science unit a term for two consecutive
terms. The first unit focused on investigating how forces and energy create motion and, in particular, how the motion of
objects change as the result of opposing or supporting forces, how renewable and non-renewable energy sources can be
identified and used, and how energy can be transferred and transformed. These intended investigations were accomplished
by having the students design different bicycles for different purposes and offer scientific explanations of the forces, motion,
and energy that operate. The unit consisted of 15 lessons that were taught across one school term (approximately 10 weeks).
The students were videotaped in their groups in Lesson 12 as they discussed how they would design a bike, based on the
scenario they were given (e.g., riding over mountain terrain). In their discussions they were expected to identify and discuss
the components of their bike, the forces acting on it during a ride, and finally, be ready to present their design to the class.
The second science-based unit focused on helping students to investigate the difference between animal and plant cells,
the structure of cells, the functions of the different parts, and how these different cells and their structures could be
represented. The students examined different cells under the microscope and prepared specimens for the microscope to
enable them to examine the different cell structures and represent them through the construction of a model. The unit
consisted of 12 lessons that were taught across eight weeks and the students were videotaped in their groups as they
discussed how they would represent the structure and the function of the various parts of a cell in Lesson 10.
2.3.2. Cooperative learning

As inquiry-based science requires children to work together to investigate problems, ask questions, challenge each
other’s perspective, and negotiate shared understandings (Duschl et al., 2007), all participating teachers were introduced to
the key elements required to promote successful cooperation and shown how to embed these elements into the inquiry
units. This required ensuring that tasks were structured so that students understood that they were to work together, using
each other as a resource, accept responsibility for contributing to the group’s task, demonstrate appropriate social
behaviours, and reflect on the group’s progress as they completed each task (Gillies, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1990). As a
way of promoting discussion among group members, the teachers were asked to ensure that the children understood that
the group members needed to share information, work to achieve agreement as a group, encourage contributions from
everyone, and provide reasons for their decisions (Mercer, Wegerif, & Dawes, 1999).
2.3.3. Metacognitive questioning strategies

Students in the Trained condition were trained in one of two approaches to help them ask questions that promote higher-
level thinking and problem-solving (Gillies & Khan, 2008; Topping & Trickey, 2007). The first, the Ask-To-Think-Tel-Why
approach involves students learning to ask a series of questions that scaffold each other’s thinking to progressively higher
levels (King, 1997). Students begins by asking questions that generally only require the listener to recall facts or review
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information until eventually they learn to ask higher-level thinking and problem-solving questions that help the listener to
link ideas or connect current information to previous understandings and draw inferences to construct new knowledge,
solve new problems, and create new ideas.
Students practice these questions through structured, dyadic interactions with a peer and in so doing learn that each
question posed is often dependent on the previous responses that have been given and that these, in turn, help shape
subsequent questions. As students interact together, they continually use each other’s ideas, reasons, explanations, and
arguments to shape their own thinking and restructure their knowledge. King (1997, 2002) maintains that the dyadic
interaction involved in asking and answering questions creates a transactive process where the partners learn that they are
mutually interdependent and need to cooperate to provide assistance and learning. In so doing, this question-asking and
answering structure functions to help students monitor and extend their learning and construct new knowledge. Moreover,
as this dyadic interaction involves activities such as explaining concepts, asking questions, elaborating on ideas, and
argumentation, King (2008) maintains that learning is enhanced even more for individuals who are generating the
explanation, creating the questions, formulating the elaboration, and constructing the argument because these cognitive
activities require individuals to reconceptualise the material and, in so doing, they often develop a better understanding of it
than they had previously.
The second questioning approach involved teaching children how to interrogate information, explore disagreements,
draw inferences, and make considered and rational judgements. This approach to questioning, advocated by Lipman (1988)
in Philosophy for Children (P4C), adopts a constructivist pedagogy known as the Community of Inquiry where children work
cooperatively together to be able to answer each other’s questions and explore and analyse issues in-depth. Children are
taught to ask a range of questions designed to probe alternative perspectives, explore causal connections and relationships,
and pose hypothetical problems through to those that encourage them to be more self-reflective and self-monitoring
(Perkins et al., 2006). Such dialogic exchanges help them to clarify their thinking and understandings, critically important in
developing the skills of reasoned argumentation (Reznitskaya, Anderson, & Kuo, 2007; Reznitskaya et al., 2009).
In a meta-analysis of 18 studies that used P4C to develop reasoning and problem-solving skills, Garcia-Moriyon, Rebollo,
and Colom (2004) found that the children who were trained to use this questioning approach obtained higher reasoning
skills than their untrained peers and that the implementation of P4C led to an improvement of students’ reasoning skills of
more than half a standard deviation. Topping and Trickey (2007) reviewed the cognitive gains of primary students who had
participated in P4C for 1 h a week for 16 months as part of their school curriculum and also found that the cognitive gains
evident at post-testing were maintained at a two-year follow-up, even though the students had transferred to secondary
school and had not had any further experience with P4C.
2.4. Measures
2.4.1. Student discourse

The observation of the students’ discourse was based on a schedule that was developed by Webb (1985, 1992) and
modified by Gillies (2004) and Gillies and Khan (2008), Gillies et al., 2012. The four categories of verbal behaviour that were
coded as the students worked in their small groups were: Interactive behaviours (i.e., gives directions to the group, affirms
another student’s response, affirms other students’ group efforts, extends another student’s group efforts such as working
hard, extends another student’s response, engages in a sustained exchange about the topic, and interrupts another student to
express an opinion or idea); Helping behaviours (i.e., gives unprompted short response, gives short response on request,
makes a statement on the topic to assist understanding); Questioning behaviours (i.e., asks questions to stimulate, clarify, or
recall discussion, elicit factual information, or promote thinking); and Problem-solving behaviours (i.e., suggestion on how
to solve the problem, suggests an idea, plan or experiment to explore a concept, or provide an analogy to amplify a concept).
Students’ verbal behaviours were coded according to frequency across each of two recorded group sessions and represent
100% of students’ group discussion during these sessions. Two coders, one blind to the purposes of the study, coded a
common 3 h of videotape and inter-rater reliability ranged from 89% to 100% for the four categories coded. A total of 42 h of
students’ verbal behaviours (i.e., 21 groups for 1 h each) across two time periods were collected. In addition to the coding of
the verbal behaviours of the groups in each of the conditions, all the videotaped sessions of the student groups were fully
transcribed to provide insights into the turn-taking behaviours and the types of discourse the children used as they
interacted together (four vignettes, chosen at random from the available transcripts, are presented and discussed below).
2.4.2. Reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) tasks

Each inquiry-based science unit was followed by asking the students to individually respond to a reasoning and problem-
solving task that was designed to assess the extent to which they were building understandings and making connections
between information presented during each inquiry unit. The criteria used to assess each follow-up activity were informed
by Anderson et al. (2001a) revised taxonomy of educational objectives that illustrates the relationship between complex
kinds of knowledge and cognitive processes and King’s (1997) approach to helping students learn to ask ‘thinking questions’
to scaffold higher level complex thinking in their peers.
The first inquiry-based science unit on forces and energy creating motion was followed by a reasoning and problem-
solving task that required the children to: Identify the key design features of a hybrid bike, a mountain bike and a road bike
and indicate why each bike has this design (review knowledge); draw and label the forces acting on the picture of a
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skateboarder (comprehension); make links between various statements such as Newton’s first law of motion and whether it
is applicable to both moving and non-moving objects (connecting information); applying knowledge and extending it by
designing two different types of bikes and label their important features (application and extension of knowledge); and
finally, identifying and justifying the scientific reasons for the designs submitted (metacognitive thinking).
The second inquiry-based science unit on cells was followed by a reasoning and problem-solving task that required
them to: Identify the main differences between plant and animal cells and explain why those difference are necessary
(review knowledge); explain why microscopes are important for studying cells, ensuring that the explanations provided
discuss the ideas of size and scale (comprehension); describe what a cell is and why it is important (connecting
information); identify the parts inside a cell cyptoplasm and what each organelle represents (application and extension of
knowledge); and, finally, given the material the students used to represent the different parts of the cell cyptoplasm,
provide an explanation of why they chose the material they did to represent the structure and function of the different
organelles.
The two reasoning and problem-solving tasks were developed by the researchers and checked for authenticity by two of
the participating class teachers. Both confirmed that they were valid representations of the types of tasks the children had
been working on in their groups where they had been required to solve complex, real-life problems that tested their
capacities to think (Herrington & Oliver, 2000). As outlined in Gillies et al. (2012), students responses to these reasoning and
problem-solving tasks were evaluated on the basis of the highest level knowledge response they were able to generate and
the processes demonstrated (Krathwohl, 2002). For example, on the What is the Problem Questionnaire (WPQ) as it was used
in the forces and energy unit, students received a score of one if they were able to give examples of different types of bikes,
their design features, and state why this design was important for each bike. Essentially, this task required the children to
recall what they knew about the topic of forces and energy. In contrast, students received a score of five if they were able to
design two designs for two different types of bike, draw and label the designs, and provide scientific reasons for the designs
they chose. This response required students to think about their thinking, coalesce their knowledge and understandings, and
think metacognitively about the topic, hence the higher score. Similarly, with the unit on cells, students received a score of
one if they could recall and explain the main differences between plant and animal cells while a score of five required them to
integrate their knowledge and understandings on how they would represent a cell and its organelles and explain why they
chose the material that they did to represent it.
The advantage of using this type of assessment tool is that it is authentic, based on the work the children had been
studying, and it enables teachers to readily assess how the children are responding to the intellectual challenge the activity
poses (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000; Woolfolk, 1998). Furthermore, this type of assessment tool enables teachers to
assess students’ performances without the requirements for formal testing, an advantage when teachers are looking for
ready feedback on students’ progress (Herrington & Oliver, 2000).
2.5. Procedure
Prior to the commencement of the study all teachers participated in initial two-day professional learning workshops
which provided them with information on how to embed cooperative learning pedagogy into their first inquiry-based
science unit (forces and energy creating motion). Teachers in the Trained condition received training in how to ask higher-
level thinking and problem-solving questions by using either the Ask-To-Think-Tel-Why approach (King, 1997) or the
Philosophy for Children approach (Lipman, 1988) (discussed previously). Teachers in the Untrained condition received
information how to implement collaborative strategic reading (Vaughn et al., 2001), a prescriptive questioning approach
designed to help students engage with text. All teachers received information on the preliminary testing, the inquiry-
science-unit, and the data collection process. A follow-up one day workshop was held to provide prior to the introduction of
the second inquiry-based science unit (cells) to ensure that teachers had the information and resources needed to teach this
unit.
Three to four groups of students (4 students per group) from each class were videotaped for an hour once during each
inquiry-based science unit. Both videotaping sessions occurred in the last two weeks of each science unit to ensure that all
students were discussing the same topic.
3. Results
3.1. Student discourse
In order to determine if there were differences in discourse categories between the conditions at Time 1, four Mann–
Whitney U tests were conducted on the frequency of recorded discourse categories for the children in the Trained and
Untrained conditions. The purpose of this type of analysis is to see if the students in the two conditions used different
discourse strategies more frequently than students in the other condition. Given that previous research has shown that
students’ discourse can be enhanced when they are taught to dialogue together and ask questions, we thought it was
reasonable to see if there were differences in the different categories of discourse, that is, Interactions, Helping, Questioning,
and Problem-solving verbal behaviours that the students used. The results showed that there were significant differences
between the Trained and Untrained conditions at Time 1 in Interactions, U = 24, z = 2.14, p = .03, r = .46, Helping, U = 9.5,
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Table 1
Median values of the categories of discourse for the trained and untrained conditions at Times 1 and 2.
Trained condition (n = 12) Untrained condition (n = 9)
Time
Categories 1 2 1 2
Interactions 12.5 22.0 8.0 16.0
Helping 54.0 76.0 27.0 60.0
Questioning 23.0 27.5 11.0 21.0
Problem-solving 2.0 14.0 0.0 11.0
z = 3.16, p = .001, r = .68, Questioning, U = 21, z = 2.35, p = .01, r = .51, and Problem-solving, U = 25.5, z = 2.19, p = .04,
r = .47. The effect sizes for all categories of discourse at Time 1 were medium to large (Cohen, 1988).
In order to determine if there were differences in the frequency of discourse categories between the Trained and
Untrained conditions at Time 2, four Mann–Whitney U tests were conducted, and the results showed that there that there
was a significant difference between the Trained and Untrained conditions at Time 2 in Questioning, U = 26, z = 1.99, p = .04,
r = .43, but not in Interactions, U = 42.5, z = 1.07, p = .29, Helping, U = 41.5, z = 1.13, p = .26, and Problem-solving, U = 35,
z = 1.57, p = .12.
An examination of Table 1 for the median values for the different categories of discourse for the Trained and Untrained
conditions at Times 1 and 2 shows that the students in the Trained condition at Time 1 engaged in more interactive
behaviour, provided more help, asked more questions, and demonstrated more problem-solving behaviours than their peers
in the Untrained condition. However, by Time 2, there were no differences in discourse categories except that the students in
the Trained condition asked more questions than their peers in the Untrained condition. Given that the students in the
Trained condition had been specifically taught to ask ‘thinking’ questions that probed and interrogated information, these
results are not surprising. See Table 1 for the median values of the categories of discourse for the Trained and Untrained
conditions at Times 1 and 2.
3.1.1. Examples of students’ discourse during small group discussions

In order to elucidate how the students interacted with each other to probe and interrogate information during their small
group discussions, two vignettes are provided of the discourse of two different groups, chosen at random, from the Trained
condition at Time 1. An additional two vignettes are provided at Time 2 to illustrate how the students’ discourse developed as
a consequence of their experiences.
3.1.1.1. Vignette 1. In the vignette below, the students have been commissioned to develop a new bicycle design that is
suitable for one of four scenarios: a mountain bike that is suitable for rugged sport and mountain bike riding that will
accommodate the forces of hitting rocks and climbing over logs; an ice bike for people living in cold climates that will help
them to grip the icy surface; a road-racing bike that can be ridden over long distances; and a free-style bike that is versatile
and able to perform in any life-style bike event. The activity represents the culmination of a number of lessons that involved
the students investigating how forces and energy create motion, how renewable and non-renewable energy sources can be
identified and used, and how energy can be transferred and transformed. In this vignette, the students are discussing how
they would design a mountain bike, the key components that are important and the forces that can be harnessed to enable it
to work well, given the terrain it will be used to travel over. The activity culminates with the group members presenting a
poster of their new mountain bike design to their teacher and class communicating the science behind their bike using
appropriate scientific language. The following vignette captures a few minutes of the students’ interactions after they have
read the requirements for the task (NB: students = S1; S2; S3; S4):
1. S3. So, you all agree on tough tyres?

2. S1. Tough tyres, yes.
3. S3. We’re also going to need suspension because Newton’s first law . . . no, Newton’s second law. For Newton’s second law
we’re going to need suspension. That’s forks at the front–special forks. We’re also going to need a heavy bike. No, actually
we’re going to need a hybrid bike. So, it’s going to need to be a bit heavier to withstand . . . to ride through mud and stuff.
(Elaboration)
4. S1. I totally agree.
5. S4. I reckon we’re going to need gears on it so that when you are going uphill it doesn’t make it too hard to ride.
(Elaboration)
6. S3. Yeah. So you can just ride up in first gear, or second gear. But we’re also going to need a lot of gears. (Elaboration)
7. S1. But what’s the bike going to be made out of? ‘Cause with light bikes, they’re made out of carbon fibre. So what will this
bike be made of.
8. S3. Probably aluminium or something. Aluminium (Elaboration, awareness of need to have strong and light frame for
strength and manoeuvrability).
9. S1. Stainless steel?
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10. S3. Stainless steel! So, we’re gonna need like not just normal six gears, we’re gonna need heaps, probably seven or eight.
(Elaboration)
11. S4. My bike has seven gears.
12. S1. With the mountain bike, it says there’s going to be mountainous countryside, and on the video we watched it said that
they changed gears a lot of times, so you’d need more gears to adapt with the environment. (Elaboration)
13. S3. That’s what I just said. So, so far, we’ve got tough tyres, suspension forks, eight gears and a heavy frame.
14. S4. What else can we have?
15. S3. Well, you need tight brakes if you are going down slopes and stuff. (Elaboration)
16. S4. I reckon you add disc brakes onto it so that it brakes easier. (Elaboration)
17. S3. So, you like really tight brakes?
18. S4. Sort of tight. But not too tight. (Elaboration)
19. S3. So, what do you mean by disc brakes?
20. S4. It’s like a disc. (Elaboration)
21. S1. What are we going to do about the chain? – with the sprocket? Are we going to have a small sprocket or a larger
sprocket?
22. S3. You need a smaller sprocket to power up the hills. Plus it would be easier to ride. (Elaboration)
In the vignette above, it is interesting to note that 7 of the 22 responses involved asking questions which, in turn, triggered
elaborations on the phenomena under discussion and contributed to 50% of the total responses provided being explanations.
This observation is consistent with the trend across the groups in the Trained condition where 25% of the total interactions
involved asking questions which, in turn, led to over 50% of the responses involving elaborations or explanations. It is also
interesting to note, that the responses given indicated that the students were aware of the ‘science’ that they had been
learning, in this case, Newton’s Laws of Motion. For example, Turns 3, 5, and 6 strongly suggest an understanding of Newton’s
Second Law of Motion that acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass while Turns 12, 15, and 22 suggests there is
an understanding of his Third Law of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (See Appendix 1 for
definitions of Newton’s Laws of Motion).
3.1.1.2. Vignette 2. In this vignette, the students are also discussing the design of a mountain bike, the parts that they need to
include, and the forces they will have to contend with when riding over rough terrain. As with the first vignette, the students
are preparing a group report that they will present to their class that outlines the science behind their design. The following
captures a few minutes of the students’ interactions after they have been discussing this task for about 10 min.
1. S2. So, shall we have gas suspension? Do you know what that means? (Question) You have like a piston. You have like the
bar coming down from the front of the bike. It just goes in and it’s full of air. That’s called suspension. So you just draw like
a canister thing.
2. S3. Wired gearing possibly. (Elaboration)
3. S2. You have lots of gears instead of having one gear. Do you know what a gear is? Do you know what changing the
numbers actually does? (Question)
4. S3. It means it’s easier or harder to ride a bike so when you’re riding uphill it makes it easier. (Elaboration)
5. S2. Yeah, that will do . . . (pause)
6. S2. So we’ll have to have a seat. Put the suspension on the back. Ok, draw the front wheel.
7. S1. I already have drawn the back wheel.
Break
8. S1. How about we do the one with lots of gears? (Question)
9. S2. State, there are four gears therefore in a mountain bike and it’s obvious it’s a mountain bike you’d want four gears
which is four hubs. (Elaboration)
10. S3. What do you call it when you don’t pedal backwards? (Question)
11. S2. Now we go on and draw the whole bike. What did you guys have? (Question)
12. S4. For the feature we just have the tyre, the handlebars and the water bottle and the seat is just the same as an ordinary
bike. And there was the wide gear range. And which brakes do you want to have because we have the one where if you
press it down it stops. But you know sometimes you pedal back to stop. (Elaboration)
13. S2. But they’re not very good. I like the ones where you just pull a lever.
14. S1. I have one of those bikes and it squeaks every time you push the lever.
15. S3. We had big tyres . . . So what do you have? (Question)
16. S2. (Unclear) having a wider gear range. So I said, ‘‘Why not have four hubs?’’ (Question) Because if you have three hubs
the wheels would turn the opposite way and you would start to go . . . back wheels be rather awkward. (Elaboration)
In the vignette above, seven of the 16 responses involved asking questions (i.e., 43% of the total responses) which
stimulated further elaboration on the topic and contributed to 31% of the responses being explanations, similar to the first
vignette. Again, the students demonstrated that they had a clear understanding of the ‘science’ involved in the mountain bike
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they were designing. This was apparent from the student’s response at Turn 4 which suggests an understanding of Newton’s
Second Law of Motion while the responses at Turns 12 and 16 likewise suggest an understanding of his third law.
The students followed their unit of work on how forces and energy create motion with a unit on ‘‘Cells’’ in the following
school term. In this unit, the children were required to develop a model of an animal cell, a plant cell, or an organelle based on
their investigations of the structures of cells and how they differ. They had opportunities to prepare and observe cell
structures under a microscope, identify how plant and animals cells differ and the functions of organelles, and correctly
represent the different cell parts in drawings or in 3D constructions.
In the two vignettes that follow, the children are discussing how to design and create a cell in preparation to presenting
their representation to the larger class. These vignettes were chosen at random from the groups’ discussions during the
second unit of inquiry-based science on cells.
3.1.1.3. Vignette 3.
1. S3. Who thinks we should do a theme park (to represent the cell)? (Question)
2. S4. Yes.
3. S2. Because I already have an idea. You do a rollercoaster but it’s the DNA because you have that image (rolling hands like
a wave). (Analogy)
4. S1. Yes, when you see DNA in movies it’s like a twisty track. (Analogy)
5. S4. It’s twisty. You know that fly trap. It’s like that. (Analogy)
6. S1. Yes, it’s twisty so that could be like a corkscrew rollercoaster. (Analogy)
7. S2. And the rollercoaster’s an attraction at the theme park and it’s what makes a theme park a theme park.
8. S1. Yeah.
9. S2. You don’t have a theme park without a rollercoaster.
10. S4. Or a theme.
11. S2. (Laughs) so then you’d have DNA, like genetics. (Analogy)
12. S4. I think the vacuole could be the (unclear) Look at the shape.
13. S3. Or it could be like a big wave pool? (Question) (Analogy)
14. S2. The vacuole, because it stores water could be like the canteen. (Analogy)
15. S1. On a plant cell, the cell wall and the membrane could be gates. (Analogy)And the information centre could be the.
16. S4. The nucleus?
17. S1. What’s the thing that translates the messages? (Question) The nucleus is it? (Question)
18. S4. No, it’s the ribosomes.
19. S2. (Reading) The ribosomes translate the messages into proteins.
20. S1. Ok. So, proteins, messages.
21. S2. When I hear ‘‘proteins’’ I think of meat. (Analogy)
It is worth noting, in the vignette above, how the responses to the questions generate a series of analogies that are used to
represent the phenomena being discussed. For example, in Turn 1, Student 3 asks, ‘‘Who thinks we should do a theme park?’’
to represent the group’s cell. This question generates a series of analogies in Turns 3–6 that liken DNA to a roller coaster, a
twisty track, a fly trap, and a corkscrew. It is interesting to note how each analogy extends the previous one, providing a novel
visual representation of the phenomena. In fact, nine of the 21 responses are analogies representing 43% of the total
responses in this vignette. It appears that as the children have had opportunities to discuss issues together, they have
developed stratagems for talking and thinking with each other and these stratagems are having a snowballing effect on their
use. Anderson et al. (2001b) noted that such stratagems during small group discussions contribute to the development of
students’ language and thought while Lin et al. (2012) found that the use of analogy snowballed or spread among children as
one child introduced an analogy, enabling others to observe and appropriate this rhetorical tool as the discussion continued.
Certainly, the children in the above vignette were engaged in generating novel analogies that drew on previous ones yet
involved presenting representations that were new to the dialogic discussion (see Turns 11, 13, 14). In so doing they were
demonstrating a capacity to appropriate analogizing and use this stratagem in a context that is different from the one in
which it was originally used while consistently retaining the scientific integrity of the discussion. Lin et al. argues that this
capacity demonstrates a deepening understanding of analogies as the capacity to generate new analogies requires the ability
to consider issues from different perspectives and revise current understandings in the light of new information, a
demonstration of the development of abstract thinking (Damon, 1984; Niebert, Marsch, & Treagust, 2012). Additionally, the
opportunity to engage in collaborative discussions appears to provide opportunities to enhance children’s analogical
reasoning (Anderson et al., 2001a, 2001b) which happened in the vignette reported above.
3.1.1.4. Vignette 4. In this vignette, the children are also discussing how to represent the structure of a cell or an organelle in
preparation for a class presentation.
1. S4. So, what were we writing? (Question)

2. S3. The cell membrane controls the entry and exit of the food. It also . . . (Elaboration)
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3. S4. What else? Oh! It contains something. Isn’t it like a jelly-like substance? (Question) (Analogy)
4. S3. No, that’s cytoplasm. Oh, we’ll just keep going. Cell membrane, nucleus.
5. S4. What does the nucleus do? (Question)
6. S2. Here, I’ve got it. It’s the brain of the cell and the control centre. (Elaboration)
7. S3. It protects the DNA. (Elaboration)
8. S2. Yeah!
9. S3. And sends messages to the ribosomes. (Elaboration)
10. S2. No. It sends messages to the rough ER so then it sends it to the proteins actually. (Elaboration)
11. S4. What does the cytoplasm do? (Question)
12. S3. All the contents of the cell floats on it. (Elaboration)
13. S1. What’s that sugar stuff? (Question)
14. S3. Glucose. (Elaboration)
15. S2. Yeah, glucose.
16. S3. What do we do next? (Question)
17. S4. Rough ER (endoplasmic reticulum).
18. S3. I know how to draw it. It looks like a tree. (Analogy)
19. S2. It looks like a starfish. (Analogy)
Again, the children posed a series of questions to elicit information or stimulate discussion and in each instance the
question asked has triggered an elaborated response or analogy to help explain or illustrate the structure of cells. For
example, in Turn 2, Student 3 builds on the question asked in Turn 1 by elaborating on what a cell membrane does while in
Turn 3, Student 4 likens its contents to a jelly-like substance, a visual analogy to represent the contents inside the cell
membrane. Similarly, analogies are drawn at Turns 18 and 19 that liken ER (endoplasmic reticulum) to a tree and a starfish,
images that conjure up branches, folds, or extensions. It is interesting to note that 11 of the 19 responses in the above
vignette are elaborations or analogies, representing 58% of the total interaction, again highlighting the importance of social
interaction in the development of children’s talk (Mercer, 2008b; Webb, 2009).
3.2. Reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S)
A multilevel regression model was adopted to test if there were differences between the students’ reasoning and
problem-solving (RP-S) scores in the Trained and Untrained conditions at Times 1 and 2. The final analytic sample
comprised 108 students across four schools who participated in the Trained condition (condition 1) and 23 students
from one school who were in the Untrained condition (condition 2) and for whom scores were recorded at both time
points. As the design of the data was nested, with students selected within schools and the intervention allocated at
school level, the first model included variance components (VC) for both between-school and within-school variation. In
addition, RP-S scores were recorded, where possible, at two time points for students in the study and so the model also
includes VCs for between-individual and within-individual variation. An interaction effect was included to assess
whether a change in RP-S score over time differed for students who were in the trained condition. The results from this
model showed that there was no significant variation among schools (VC = 0.794, SE = 0.689). The VC for schools were
subsequently removed from the model. Table 2 shows the results from the model with VCs for between-individual and
within-individual variation only. The unexplained variation in RP-S scores between students was significant (VC = 1.136,
SE = 0.218) but there was no significant difference between the Trained and Untrained conditions. Although the RP-S
scores increased over time (b = 0.327, P = 0.050), the change was not significantly different for students who participated
in the Trained or Untrained conditions.
Table 2
Fixed estimates and variance components from multilevel regression of students’ reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) by condition and over time.
Covariates b SE 95% CI
***
Intercept 2.119 0.298 1.536, 3.120
Condition 1 (reference) – –
Condition 2 0.406 0.530 0.633, 1.445
Time 0.327** 0.167 0.001, 0.655
Condition 2 time 0.295 0.301 0.885, 0.296
Variance components
Between individuals 1.136*** 0.218
Within individuals 0.474 0.113
b = regression coefficient; SE = standard error; CI = confidence interval.

*
p < 0.05.
** p < 0.01.
*** p < 0.001.
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4. Discussion
The current study had two aims. First, the study sought to determine if there are differences in the discourse of students
who have been taught to ask thought-provoking questions (i.e., metacognitive questions) in comparison to peers who were
taught to use a prescriptive questioning approach. Second, the study also sought to determine if there are differences in the
types of discourse students engage in when they have been trained in metacognitive questioning strategies and how these
strategies affect their reasoning and problem-solving skills. The study was conducted across two school terms and involved
students working cooperatively together on assigned inquiry-based science tasks for 8–10 weeks each term. Two groups of
students participated in this study: (a) students who were trained in metacognitive questioning strategies (Trained
condition) and (b) students who were not trained in metacognitive questioning strategies (Untrained condition). The
children in the Trained condition were taught to use either a cognitive questioning approach (King, 1997) or a Philosophy for
Children approach (Lipman, 1988) to help them ask thought-provoking questions while the children in the Untrained
condition were taught to use collaborative strategic reading (CSR) (Vaughn et al., 2001), a prescriptive questioning approach
designed to help enhance students’ comprehension of text.
The results show that while there were significant differences in the verbal behaviours (i.e., interactions, helping,
questioning, and problem-solving) between the children in the Trained and Untrained conditions at Time 1, these differences
were not evident at Time 2 except for questioning with the children in the Trained condition continuing to ask more questions
than their peers in the Untrained condition. These results are not surprising given that the teachers in both conditions were
taught how to embed cooperative learning into the inquiry-science units so all students were encouraged to be responsive to
their peers requests for help and to provide explanations and reasons for their own responses during group discussions
(Gillies, 2003; Mercer et al., 1999). Furthermore, the inquiry-based science units had a list of questions embedded in the
units which the children were encouraged to use as they sought information on the topics they were investigating. For
example, the unit on forces and energy creating motion used a number of graphic organizers to stimulate children’s thinking:
What’s the difference between different types of bicycles? KWL charts (Know, What, Learn), POE charts (Predict, Observe,
Explain), and cartoon scenarios where children had to think about a problem and provide reasons for their explanations.
Similarly, the unit on Cells also used KWL charts, Venn diagrams, and charts with different representations to promote
thinking and reasoning.
It is also not surprising that the children in the Trained condition continued to ask more questions than their peers in the
Untrained condition, given that they had been specifically trained to ask questions to stimulate and clarify information, elicit
reasons, and promote thinking. Nor is it surprising that these types of questions allowed increased student voice (Michaels,
O’Connor, & Resnick, 2008), leading to more divergent questioning and the generation of responses that were novel and
authentic. Martin and Hand (2009) found that when children’s voice increases, they are more likely to investigate ideas,
make statements or claims, and support these claims with strong evidence. Similarly, Mercer and Littleton (2007) noted that
when teachers engage in dialogic teaching where students are given opportunities to ask questions, state ideas, and engage
in discussions with others, this, in turn, extends their understandings and involvement with new ideas and knowledge that
they are encountering. While teachers initially model these questions and ways of dialoging, Gillies and Khan (2008, 2009)
found that students appropriate many of the higher-level thinking responses that their teachers model and use them in their
own interactions. This was evident in the change over the two time periods in the types of discourse the children
demonstrated where they moved from predominately asking questions and responding with explanations to explicating
their thinking through to analogizing, a stratagem they had developed to verbally represent concepts they were trying to
express.
In the first two vignettes at Time 1, 25–40% of the children’s responses in the Trained condition involved asking questions
to clarify and interrogate information leading to 30–50% of the responses generated being elaborations or explanations about
the science involved in the mountain bikes they had been designing. In this instance the children were linking information to
generate relationships between what they knew about mountain bikes and the science involved in their construction. The
discussions that occurred were sustained with each response building on a previous one to develop more elaborative
responses to the problem at hand, in this case, understanding the Newtonian Laws of Motion. The potential to do this is
critically important if students are to learn to critique different scientific propositions and develop deeper conceptual
understandings of key scientific concepts (Duschl et al., 2007; Smart & Marshall, 2012).
While it was clear that the children’s discourse in the first two vignettes involved asking open and probing questions to
elicit elaborative responses to help them better understand the problem issues, the responses generated by asking questions
in the two vignettes at Time 2 stimulated a series of analogies which snowballed across the discussions with children either
elaborating on analogies presented by previous speakers or using novel ones to represent their ideas or thinking. Using
analogies that build on previous interactions is important as it indicates that the children have learnt to ‘‘de-center’’ to
consider issues from different perspectives, synchronize their thinking, and work towards achieving a commonly
understood purpose; in this instance, how to represent the structure of a cell.
Similar snowballing effects of analogizing were reported by Lin et al. (2012) who found that the use of analogies spread
and escalated during children’s discussion, primarily because of the increasing use of novel analogies and the possible
intellectual stimulation they provided during their collaborative, small group discussions. Analogizing requires children to
make connections between pre-existing knowledge and a target (Niebert et al., 2012), in this instance, to verbally represent a
concept they are trying to express. Yanowitz (2001) found that children’s inferential reasoning abilities about scientific
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concepts improved when they engaged in analogical reasoning. Doise (1990) observed that children often demonstrate new
cognitive understandings that they are not capable of individually when they are in situations where they need to coordinate
their own actions with those of others, such as occurred during the problem-solving task where they needed to reach
agreement on how to represent the structure of a cell. Cognitive operations accomplished in such specific social situation
often become generalizable to others as students build on their new knowledge and understandings to demonstrate
cognitive progress.
The ability to construct analogies where children map relations between two domains is critically important in
promoting cognitive progress and conceptual development in science. Goswami and Brown (1989), in a study that
tested young children’s understanding of causal relationships by asking them to complete a picture pattern, found that
children as young as three years were able to provide the correct answer, and in so doing, demonstrate that they
understood the causal relations on which the analogies were based. Haglund, Jeppsson, and Andersson (2012) found
that students in grade one science classes were able to engage in analogical reasoning and create their own analogies
during full-class and small-group settings without any formal training once they understood the source domains and
the requirements of the task were fully understood. In so doing, they were able to demonstrate stratagems for
promoting thinking and learning. Similarly, May, Hammer, and Roy (2006) reported that children in third grade are able
to use analogies in a systematic way, moving from the original understanding generated to the target (new
understanding) and back again, refining and clarifying each in an attempt to gain a consistent understanding of both. In
fact, it is apparent that children from quite a young age can use forms of analogizing as a way of demonstrating their
capacity to imagine and understand alternative ways of conceptualizing understandings in science (Duschl et al., 2007).
In essence, metaphors and analogies are seen as the tools that help build bridges between students’ everyday
knowledge and scientific concepts (Niebert et al., 2012).
The reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) task that the children completed at the end of each inquiry science unit was
designed to assess the extent to which they were building understandings, making connections, and demonstrating higher-
level thinking during their small group discussions. Although the results demonstrated that there were no significant
differences between the children’s scores in the Trained and Untrained conditions at both time points, it is interesting to note
that the scores of the children in both conditions increased over time. This may have occurred, in part, because the second
unit of work on cells may have been more interesting than the one on forces and energy creating motion or it could have
been, in part, because all students had worked in cooperative groups where they were encouraged to be responsive to their
peers’ requests for help and provide explanations and reasons for their responses, behaviours that have been demonstrated
to promote learning (Gillies and Khan, 2008; Topping, 2011; Webb, 2009). It may also have occurred because both inquiry
science units placed emphasis on encouraging students to ask questions ‘‘to promote critical thinking and to foster reflection,
deep thinking, and the construction of conceptual knowledge’’ (Chin & Osborne, 2010, p. 231). In addition, all students had
participated in training designed to help them pose questions, albeit metacognitive or prescriptive ones. In short, the
students in both conditions were sensitized to the importance of thinking about the tasks they were discussing and this, in
turn, may have helped to improve their responses on the RP-S tasks.
4.1. Limitations
There are four limitations to this study. First, the teachers volunteered to participate and hence, may not be representative
of teachers generally and their willingness to implement the different questioning strategies required in the two conditions.
Second, there were only two data collection points for the students’ data, limiting changes that may have been more obvious
with more data collection points. Third, the differences between the two conditions in the students’ questioning behaviour at
Time 2 may, in part, be accounted for by the differences in the content of the curriculum unit where learning about cells and
their structure in the second inquiry-based science unit may have been more interesting than the first inquiry science unit
that focused on forces and energy creating motion. Finally, because of the constraints that operated around teachers’ class
time and curriculum implementation, there were no pre-intervention measures collected on the students’ discourse or
reasoning and problem-solving skills during their small group discussions in science, limiting the interpretation that can be
placed on the results.
5. Conclusion
The study shows that when students are explicitly taught how to ask thought-provoking questions designed to help them
investigate anomalies and explore relationships, generate hypotheses and inferences, and draw conclusions about the
phenomena under investigation during cooperative, inquiry science activities, they engage in sustained discussions to
explain their thinking and develop analogizing stratagems to verbally represent concepts they are trying to express. These
are skills that are critically important for learning and understanding in science.
Acknowledgment
This research was funded by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council.
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Appendix A. Appendix 1: Newton’s Laws of Motion (1–3).
1. Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in
motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. This
law is often called ‘‘the law of inertia’’.
2. Newton’s Second Law of Motion: Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object
being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object).
3. Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action.
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JIJER-905; No. of Pages 14

International Journal of Educational Research xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

International Journal of Educational Research

Primary students’ scientiﬁc reasoning and discourse during cooperative

1. Introduction: importance of dialogic talk

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 733763419; fax: +61 733657199.

1.1. The role of questioning

1.2. Questioning in inquiry science

1.3. Linguistic tools to promote higher-level questioning

2.1. Study design

2.3.1. Inquiry-based science units

2.3.2. Cooperative learning

2.3.3. Metacognitive questioning strategies

2.4.1. Student discourse

2.4.2. Reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) tasks

3.1. Student discourse

Trained condition (n = 12) Untrained condition (n = 9)

3.1.1. Examples of students’ discourse during small group discussions

1. S3. So, you all agree on tough tyres?

1. S4. So, what were we writing? (Question)

3.2. Reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S)

b = regression coefﬁcient; SE = standard error; CI = conﬁdence interval.

Appendix A. Appendix 1: Newton’s Laws of Motion (1–3).

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