Groupware for developing critical discussion skills

Increasingly, social and collaborative processes are seen as central to the development of thinking skills, including the skills of scientific thinking.With colleagues we have developed a software system (Belvedere) to support high-school science students in engaging in collaborative reasoning and argumentation.We discuss how Belvedere is designed to support students' collaborative processes, describe our formative evaluation studies, and provide examples of student sessions.Reflecting on students' inter-actions with Belvedere and each other, we then discuss the competencies and limitations of students in developing scientific argumentation and reasoning, as distinguished from and supported by their practice of everyday argumentation..