Linking knowledge justification with peers to the learning of social perspective taking

The purpose of this study was to examine whether justifying one’s own social knowledge (moral, societal, psychological) toward complex social-moral issues through collaborative argumentation was associated with the improvement of social perspective taking for elementary students. A total of 129 5th graders (52% female, Mage = 10.98) from six classrooms in two public schools participated in six weekly collaborative small-group discussions to reason about complex social-moral issues such as social exclusion. Two aspects of knowledge justification were examined: the frequency of knowledge justification and the diversity in perspectives. A Poisson regression with Generalized estimation equation (GEE) revealed that frequency of knowledge justification and diversity in perspectives during collaborative argumentation were associated with pre-post changes in students’ social perspective taking, as reflected in individual essays. Findings underscore knowledge justification as a potential mechanism of collaborative argumentation to promote elementary students’ social perspective taking.