When Rhetorical Logic Meets Programming: Collective Argumentative Reasoning in Problem-Solving in Programming

Argumentation, as the generation and evaluation of arguments, is critical in our ability to reason. Computing education research has long highlighted the relation between reasoning ability and programming skills but, to our knowledge, the relation between argumentative reasoning, and particularly collective argumentative reasoning, and programming have not yet been investigated. The aim of this paper, therefore, is twofold: first, to study empirically the nature of collective argumentative reasoning in programming during problem-solving and secondly, to identify the aspects of argumentation that facilitate or obstruct collective problem-solving. To achieve these aims, through an exploratory research design, our study identifies the argumentative moves and argumentative reasoning schemes employed by expert programmers, MSc students, and first-year undergraduate students (novices) during collective problem-solving by using a protocol analysis of concurrent verbalisations. The study illustrates how collective argumentative reasoning is reflected in the discourses of these groups during problem-solving, and most importantly how argumentative moves and argumentative reasoning schemes interact and impact problem-solving. The three groups exhibited substantial differences: novices engaged in collective monologue, the MSc students engaged in collective but egotistic argumentative dialogue and the experts in collective and altruistic argumentative dialogue. The paper concludes by proposing a turn in educational practices that place argumentative reasoning in the center of both classroom and peer to peer discourse in programming.