Developing and assessing argumentative competences in mathematics: an educational path for primary school

Abstract

Argumentative competences are nowadays assuming an increasingly crucial role in education within a society in continuous change, which requires the individual to develop increasingly critical and communicative skills. How is it possible to make evolve and to evaluate such structured competences in primary school? This paper presents an educational path developed with a fifth-grade class which was almost completely unrelated to the practice of arguing in writing in mathematics. A central aspect of the implemented methodology lies in the fact that the valid criteria for producing and evaluating an argument are constructed with the students, through a series of lessons focused on feedback, peer evaluation and self-assessment. In particular, we have tested the potentialities of a formative use of INVALSI items, born for an external assessment, reinterpreted here as an opportunity to discuss and argue in the classroom, describing a possible way for the development of argumentative competences in mathematics.