Toward a Model of Influence in Persuasive Discussions: Negotiating Quality, Authority, Privilege, and Access Within a Student-Led Argument

It is commonly observed that during classroom or group discussions some students have greater influence than may be justified by the normative quality of those students’ contributions. We propose a 5-component theoretical framework in order to explain how undue influence unfolds. We build on literatures on persuasion, argumentation, discourse, and classroom discussions to develop a framework that models how each participant’s level of influence in a discussion emerges out of the social negotiation of influence itself and the following 4 components that interact with it: (a) the negotiated merit of each participant’s contributions; and each participant’s (b) degree of intellectual authority, (c) access to the conversational floor, and (d) degree of spatial privilege. We then illustrate how the framework works by explaining how 1 student became unduly influential during a heated, student-led scientific debate. Finally, we close by outlining how our framework can be further developed to better understand and address differences in influence in classrooms and other learning contexts.