Forms of argument used by pre-school children

Abstract

This paper investigates five and six-year old children’s ability to employ logical reasoning in their in-class argumentation. Thirteen pre-school children participated in the study. The children were involved in organized dialogues in order to investigate their ability to construct logical arguments. A simplified version of Toulmin’s argumentation scheme (including only data, claim and warrant) was adopted in order to analyse the students’ reasoning and to identify the different types of argumentation. Our findings suggested that the structure of the children’s arguments accords with the reasoning found in formal logic, including inductive reasoning, as well as reasoning based on the law of excluded middle.