Design of a learning methodology for deliberation and knowledge construction

Abstract

Developing collaboration skills is key in university education. We want students to dialogue, discuss and reach agreements from the knowledge of the discipline, especially in controversial situations. Developing collaboration skills and disciplinary knowledge simultaneously is not easy. One possible way
to do this is by promoting deliberative argumentation (Felton et al., 2009) in students (contrasting and evaluating different and alternative points of view to reach the best possible solution). The problem is that this literature has been poorly developed in higher education, instead we find active teaching methodologies. We maintain that both perspectives are not contradictory and can feed each other. But how to do it? Particularly, what characteristics should a material have, within the framework of an active teaching methodology, to promote both knowledge construction and deliberation? We describe an (instructive) that ad-
dresses both objectives. We explicitly point out the relevant sections and their theoretical-empirical foundation. Specifically, we support the importance of scaffolding the students' dialogue to promote knowledge construction processes, also anticipating those that do not contribute to that purpose. We think that this presentation can help to visualize and imagine the role of language in teaching learning activities.