Abstract

This article intends to identify which changes are generated in the levels of causal reasoning and causal argumentation in children of 8 to 10 years of age when they write texts about the physics of bounce. Specifically the study aims to analyze the influence of two contexts of writing (collaborative and individual) on levels of causal reasoning of children 8 to 10 years and contrast argumentative components when they justify the occurrence of this phenomenon in two contexts. The hypothesis was that the interaction in writing would significantly improve the quality of texts. Forty-eight students from two public schools in Cali (Colombia) participated in this study (19 boys and 29 girls) 8-10 years of age (M = 9.4; SD = 0.74). The experimental design had two contexts for writing: collaborative and individual. In the first context, they formed triads for writing texts; in the second context singular texts were written. The experimental subjects were selected and were randomly distributed in the two situations. The results give evidence to confirm the hypothesis of the study. A greater number of casual statements in the collaborative context were obtained with a greater level of interaction between them, as found in under the individual context. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) account for significant differences in the number of variables and number of interactions analyzed. In the argumentative discourse significant differences for causal claims were found but not for the other argumentative components. The results are an indication that more complex levels of reasoning are reached in collaboratively writing texts about physical phenomena than those achieved individually. However, the causal argumentation are not structurally more complex, beyond increasing the number of statements.

Keywords: primary education; writing; causal reasoning; causal argumentation