Insights into the analysis of elaborative discourse activities and their impact on argumentative reasoning
Final Report Abstract
Argumentative reasoning is a highly relevant skill in critical thinking and is at the basis of any well-founded decision-making process in everyday life. Thus, developing students' argumentative skills and strategies is of specific interest in education. The project presented here introduces two experimental studies that approach this goal from two different perspectives: Whereas the first study sheds light on the role of the dialog partner's (argumentative) skills for students' (further) argumentative strategy use, the second study investigates the impact of the learning mode itself with a specific focus on the use and integration of scientific and non-scientific evidence. The first study examines the impact of modeling argumentative strategies in dialogical argumentation on students' argumentative behavior. Participants were 54 (27 pairs) middle-school students engaging in pairs in electronic dialogs with a succession of peer pairs who hold an opposing view on a topic. The dialogical experience was identical for all student pairs expect that in the experimental group, in one dialog the opposing pair was replaced by a more capable dialog partner (an „expert"). The results showed that peer pairs' argumentative strategy use was modeled by the interaction with a more skilled arguer. Student pairs who have been discussing with an expert showed increased use of sophisticated argumentative strategies in a follow-up dialog with another peer pair. In contrast, the argumentative strategy use of student pairs who have not been interacting with an expert did not change. Apparently, student pairs accommodated their argumentative behavior to the strategies of their dialogue partners. When they were challenged to engage in a more sophisticated argumentative dialogue, they adapted their behavior concerning deeper strategies of attacking the interlocutor's arguments and defending their own ones. The findings of this study provide a promising approach to foster argumentative skill development in the classroom. Curricula based on the approach of argumentation as a dialogic process could integrate short interactions with a more sophisticated interlocutor. The second study was designed to examine the influence of dyadic interaction on evidence use and evidence understanding in adolescent students. In a 1x2 cross-over study design N = 47 students were either asked to discuss a given topic with their partner and to subsequentiy write an essay individually outlining their opinion or vise versa. During the intervention, students were provided with pieces of scientific and non-scientific evidence. The resulting data of dialogs and essays are currently analyzed with regard to the quantity and quality of evidence use to identify the specific impact of the two distinct modes of argumentation. The findings of the two studies enable us to deduce important hints towards the design of learning environments for middle school students. Beyond this, this work makes an important contribution to the development of coding schemes in the field of argumentation in educational contexts with a particular focus towards the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Publications
- Developing Argumentation Strategies in Electronic Dialogs: Is Modeling Effective? Discourse Processes, Volume 53, 2016 - Issue 4
Mayweg-Paus, E., Macagno, F., & Kuhn, D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2015.1040323)
