Promoting Students’ Attention to Argumentative Reasoning Patterns

Abstract

Argument-based interventions in science education have largely been motivated by the perspective that students lack knowledge of argument. Recent studies, however, suggest that contextual factors influence students' argument quality. The authors hypothesize that a key limiting factor lies in students' abilities to recognize when to employ knowledge related to argumentative reasoning. Students hold knowledge that can remain inert if the context fails to trigger access. The article reports on two experiments exploring the influence of context on recognition of argumentative reasoning. Each experiment used performance on a categorization task as the dependent variable. The first experiment (E1) tested the effect of targeted cues on participants' identification of fallacious reasoning patterns. The second experiment (E2) examined the role of scenario context. E1 revealed a significant advantage in promoting detection of fallacious reasoning patterns when targeted cues were present. E2 suggests that the broad context of scenarios also influences reasoning patterns. These findings reveal that lack of knowledge of argument may not be the principal constraint on students' argument abilities. Rather, contextual details can have a significant influence on activation of knowledge bases that contribute to argumentative reasoning. Instructional implications are discussed.

Managing uncertainty in scientific argumentation

“…Typical classroom pedagogies focus largely on delivering correct knowledge, while students’ understanding is treated as deficient, incomplete, and misaligned with scientific concepts, and often blended with alternative knowledge and misconceptions (Larkin, ). Consistent with Cavagnetto and Kurtz (), we interpret that students’ epistemic understanding of argument in Ms. Kay's class may be treated more commonly as a deficiency rather than a resource to manage uncertainty.…”

“…In this study, we qualitatively address what Manz () called “productive moments of uncertainty,” focusing on how teachers use epistemic understanding of argument as a resource in the practice of social negotiation to manage uncertainty and lead students to develop conceptual understanding. Consistent with Manz and other scholars (e.g., Cavagnetto & Kurtz, ; Leitão, ; Ryu & Sandoval, ), we consider uncertainty management during argumentation not only an activity for knowledge clarification after scientific inquiry but also a practice embedded in all inquiry activities for knowledge development . Drawing upon situative theory (Greeno, ), we focused on whole‐class discussion to unpack how the resource is used productively to raise uncertainty, open social negotiation space, maintain uncertainty to deepen students’ reasoning, and reduce uncertainty to develop coherent knowledge.…”

“…One way to productively manage uncertainty in science argumentation is to place greater emphasis on students’ existing understanding as a resource to develop canonical knowledge (Cavagnetto & Kurtz, ; Ha & Kim, ; Richards, Jones, & Etkina, ). Taber and García‐Franco () proposed that students’ understanding of phenomena “is initially purely implicit” (p. 102) and may consist of several alternative conceptions.…”

Cognitive skills in education: typology and development

“…In our action research we proceeded from the premise that the key cognitive skill to be developed in students was argumentative reasoning as logical arrangement of evidence generated and evaluated for the purpose of problem solving in the course of cognition [34]. To teach argumentative reasoning we created conditions for the learners to utilize contextual knowledge of the text to produce their own "small theory".…”

Categories in conflict: Combating the application of an intuitive conception of inheritance with category construction

“…The use of intuitive and scientifically sound reasoning and conceptual knowledge appears to be affected by the context of the assessment. For example, our own work has found that scientific situations can decrease the use of particular logical fallacies when compared to everyday contexts (Cavagnetto & Kurtz, ). Similarly, students differentially access intuitive conceptions of evolution depending on the type of organism present in assessment items (Ha, Lee, & Cha, ).…”