What familial aspects matter? Investigating argumentative competences of learners at the beginning of secondary schooling in the light of family-based resources

Educational research has traditionally considered measurable familial resources in terms of economic and cultural capital, e.g. socioeconomic background (SES), as important predictors of children's school and linguistic attainment. Going beyond this agenda, the present article aims to make a contribution by investigating interactive resources, e.g. parental communicative practices, which are assumed to have a relevant influence on children's argumentative competences at the beginning of secondary schooling (grade 5). Two cases from the FAcTS project1 that deviate from the usual SES-achievement connection are analyzed using a plurality of methods: based on a concept of global discourse competence, the results of an assessment of two persuasive texts are linked to the micro analytic reconstruction of linguistic patterns in domestic parent–child interactions of an oral argumentative nature. The study combines information from questionnaire data with qualitative analysis and discusses the explanatory power of the different familial resources for children's argumentative performance.