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Full-Text Articles in Education

Teaching And Learning Argumentation, Alina Reznitskaya, Richard C. Anderson, Li Jen Kuo May 2007

Teaching And Learning Argumentation, Alina Reznitskaya, Richard C. Anderson, Li Jen Kuo

Department of Educational Foundations Scholarship and Creative Works

This study systematically analyzed social and cognitive processes that underlie the development of argumentative knowledge. Group discussions of controversial issues and explicit instruction in argumentation were expected to help students acquire a sense of the overall structure of an argument, or an argument schema. In a quasi-experiment, 128 fourth- and fifth-grade students from 2 schools completed the same argument-related tasks, after receiving different instructional treatments. In the first treatment condition, students engaged in group discussions of moral and social issues raised in their readings. In the second treatment condition, we supported group discussions with explicit instruction in abstract principles of …


Evaluating Classroom Dialogue Reconciling Internal And External Accountability, Megan Laverty, Maughn Gregory Jan 2007

Evaluating Classroom Dialogue Reconciling Internal And External Accountability, Megan Laverty, Maughn Gregory

Department of Educational Foundations Scholarship and Creative Works

In this article we present an instrument to be used by students and professors to evaluate classroom dialogue. We begin with an explanation of the classroom community of inquiry and why we value it as a pedagogical approach. We then describe our different reasons for evaluating classroom dialogue — including institutional, professional and pedagogical accountability — and describe the inherent conflicts among these reasons. We explain how our evaluation instrument was designed to ameliorate these conflicts. We recount a number of theoretical and practical problems we encountered in designing and implementing the instrument and explain how we attempted to overcome …