Using an integrated discourse analysis approach to analyze a group's collaborative argumentation

Collaborative argumentation is widely used in K-12 and higher education to foster students' argumentation skills, facilitate deep learning, and construct collective knowledge. Collaborative argumentation requires students to coordinate their social, cognitive, and metacognitive practices with peers through interactive discourses. Discourse analysis is a traditional analytic method that has been used to understand collaborative discourses. But most previous research has either integrated computational or statistical techniques to analyze frequencies of discourses or analyzed discourse from a qualitative perspective to demonstrate the microlevel, fine-grained attributes. There has been a lack of integrated discourse analysis method to holistically investigate and understand collaborative argumentation. To fill this gap, this case study used the scripted role strategy to support a group's collaborative argumentation and proposed an integrated discourse analysis approach to illustrate the temporal changes of the group's discourse moves, structures, and turn taking processes. The results showed that four participants had different discourse attributes. Based on the results, pedagogical and analytical implications are proposed to facilitate research and practice of collaborative argumentation.