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Students Need Support in Creating Arguments
Research suggests many benefits for including argumentation in the classroom, but also shows that students have difficulty constructing arguments. When students in grades 5-12 have been asked to construct arguments without specific instruction in this area, they typically generate weak arguments (Means & Voss, 1996). Even with instruction, students still have difficulty providing certain components of arguments, such as describing their reasoning for why their evidence supports their claim (McNeill et al., 2004). Students need instructional support as they construct arguments. The Showing Evidence Tool provides scaffolds for students and strategies for you to use in class to help students create high-quality arguments.
Strategies for Supporting Students in Argumentation
- Describing the framework. Providing students with an argument framework and the rationale behind that framework can help students create stronger arguments (Lizotte, McNeill, & Krajcik, 2004). Showing Evidence provides that framework for students through the graphical representation and various hints in the tool. Discuss these features and the general framework with your students to help them see that including such information helps them justify their claim and create a stronger argument.
- Considering the context. Although the form of an argument is the same across content areas, what counts as acceptable justification varies by content area (Passmore & Stewart, 2002). Evidence in science may consist of numerical measurements from an experiment. Evidence in English may consist of a quotation from a piece of literature. Focus class discussions to help students understand what is appropriate justification in your particular context.
- Considering the audience. The audience for which an argument is constructed determines what counts as an effective argument (Voss & Van Dyke, 2001). If an argument is constructed to persuade a young child rather than a governmental agency, the nature of the argument will change. When your students construct arguments, encourage them to consider their audience. Try assigning them a specific audience to convince.
- Modeling. Demonstrating for students how to construct an argument or critique an argument can result in students’ own arguments being stronger (Lizotte, McNeill, & Krajcik, 2004). Students can have a difficult time understanding what counts as a strong argument. Give students models for different examples of arguments, This will help them understand how to apply this general framework to specific contexts.
References
Driver, R., Newton, P., & Osborne, J. (2000). Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms. Science Education. 84 (3), 287-312.
Jiménez-Aleixandre, M.P., Rodríguez, A.B., & Duschl, R.A. (2000). “Doing the lesson” or “doing science”: argument in high school genetics. Science Education, 84, 757-792.
Kuhn, D. (1992). Thinking as argument. Harvard Educational Review, 62(2), 155-177.
Lizotte, D.J., McNeill, K.L., & Krajcik, J. (2004). Teacher practices that support students’ construction of scientific explanations in middle school classrooms. In Y. Kafai, W. Sandoval, N. Enyedy, A. Nixon & F. Herrera (Eds.), Proceedings of the sixth international conference of the learning sciences (pp. 310-317). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
McNeill, K.L., Lizotte, D.J, Krajcik, J., & Marx, R.W. (2004, April). Supporting students’ construction of scientific explanations using scaffolded curriculum materials and assessments. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.
Means M.L., & Voss, J.F. (1996). Who reasons well? Two studies of informal reasoning among children of different grade, ability, and knowledge levels. Cognition and Instruction, 14, 139-178.
Passmore, C., & Stewart, J. (2002). A modeling approach to teaching evolutionary biology in high schools. 185-204.
Reznitskaya, A., & Anderson, R.C. (2002). The argument schema and learning to reason. In C. C. Block, & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 319-334). New York: The Guilford Press.
Toulmin, S. (1958). The uses of argument. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Voss, J. F., & Van Dyke, J. A. (2001). Argumentation in Psychology: Background Comments. Discourse Processes, 32(2&3), 89-111.
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