Pedagogical Design
The study began with two meetings with the teacher, during which we explained the objectives of the project, together with the types of activities that we wanted to carry out and the software to be used. The teacher pro- posed sustainable development as a suitable subject matter for debates, given that she would be teaching this topic within the timing of our study.
We assisted as observers in two ‘regular’ lessons (i.e. with the teacher standing at the front of the class using the blackboard and the students sitting in rows), each of 1 h duration. After presenting the EU project to the class, we asked for (and received) the students’ partici- pation then placed ourselves (two researchers) at the back of the classroom to observe, without further inter- vention on our part. During the first lesson, the teacher asked the students to read the textbook on the topic of dealing with water shortages in the world then to write, in pairs, a summary text. During the second lesson, the teacher returned their texts and commented on them to the class. During both lessons, we observed many ‘control interventions’ from the teacher, of the type ‘be quiet please!’, ‘listen to me!’, ‘put your mobile phone back into your bag and switch it off’. The students gen- erally disputed the teacher’s interventions. As well as generally chatting among themselves, several of the stu- dents were overtly using their mobile phones or else lis- tening to mp3 recording devices with headphones (which is forbidden by the school rules).
In a subsequent meeting with the teacher, she stated that she thought that because this particular class was very difficult for her to control in a regular teaching, perhaps working in groups with computers would be motivating for the students, and that it would be easier to control the class by supervision of group work.
It was decided to try to reuse and adapt a canonical teaching sequence involving the use of drew, which had already proved successful in French classrooms at the same level, as follows:
• Training. Familiarization with the software and with what it means to argue.
• Preparation for debate. Studying teaching materials (texts, videos, and websites) on specific debates to identify the main social actors and (counter-) arguments.
• Debate. In small groups, the students debate the ques- tion using the chat (2.1) and organize arguments using the argumentation-diagram tools (2.2).3
• Consolidation. Students co-write a synthesis of the debate.
The pedagogical aims of this teaching sequence are that the students acquire and activate potential arguments, that they confront and refine them during interaction, and that they summarize and personally internalize what they have learned from the debate, with respect to their own prior ideas.