Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study has the descriptive aim of showing if and how epistemic procedures typical to mathematical reasoning can be practiced by children when they are in a social situation that supports their individual linguistic and cognitive activity. The present paper consists of a fine-grained analysis confronting argumentative skills and epistemic actions of a group of four students functioning in a Grade 9 mathematics class. The four students were presented with a mathematical problem-situation typical of a one year long experiment whose domain was an introductory course about functions. This activity was typical in the sense that: (i) it demanded inquiry; (ii) students worked in groups; (iii) they had computerized tools at their disposition; (iv) they were invited to discuss their work in a whole class forum. The role of the technological tools as a trigger for the application of argumentative skills is investigated.