Co-construction of argumentative interactions in the family and school context

This study seeks to examine how participants contribute interactionally to the dialogic process of managing their divergent opinions in the family and school context. Within a data corpus comprising 30 video-recorded meals of 10 Swiss and Italian families (sub-corpus A) and 16 video-recorded lessons of two courses – one at the undergraduate level and one at the graduate level – in Developmental Psychology (sub-corpus B), argumentative discussions were selected for qualitative analysis by adopting the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion. Despite the differences in roles, age, and competencies between parents and children and between teachers and students, the findings of the pragma-dialectical analysis indicate that in the family and the school context, managing the divergent opinions is a co-constructed dialogic process wherein all participants play a fundamental role. By engaging in argumentative discussions, parents and teachers accept the commitment of clarifying to children and students the reasons on which their standpoints are based. Children and students, in turn, encourage parents and teachers to advance arguments to justify their standpoints by asking questions. Argumentative discussions in the family and school context should thus be viewed as a bidirectional dialogical process that opens a shared space for all participants to think together.