Abstract

When people have to reach agreement on a given problem, they can rely on various practices and resources. The present study focuses on collaborative processes of group decision-making and investigates the use of argumentative and alternative strategies. This allows to reconstruct the development across different age groups. The analyses are based on video-recorded group discussions among primary school children. The results show how the pupils increasingly manage to combine various strategies and cooperatively elaborate the breadth and depth of their argumentation. We also find that younger pupils mainly use argumentation to handle disagreement, while older pupils also start engaging in argumentative elaborations in contexts in which everyone agrees.