Abstract

The inclusion of argumentative practices in classrooms as an epistemic tool to foster learning and reasoning has become widespread. However, studies on argumentation show that not all kinds of argumentation are equally effective in fostering this potential, and that argumentative goals are determining factors in the argumentative discourse - in particular, persuasive and deliberative goals, the latter posited as being the ones with the greatest epistemic potential. Eighty students in the Master in Secondary Teacher Training took up positions on an energy dilemma and wrote two argumentative texts, before and after a dialogue with a classmate who defended the opposite thesis. Of the total of 40 dyads, 21 conversed with a persuasive goal and 19 with a deliberative goal. The results show that the dialogue had a positive effect on the argumentative quality under both conditions. However, in the consensus group, the bias of the post-text diminished while meta-statements and counterarguments increased. A case study of one dyad under each condition illustrates these differences.