To better prepare undergraduate students as informed citizens, they need skills to evaluate and interpret scientific data that are relevant to real world scenarios. Socioscientific issues are typically complicated or debatable issues that require individuals to evaluate their background knowledge and make decisions with respect to social and…

Organizations are building sustainable practices due to newer regulations and a commitment to the greater good. They are targeting the majority of consumers who want to live a sustainable lifestyle. As a result, universities have an opportunity to integrate sustainability topics into their coursework. This study addresses a curriculum gap that…

Courses: Storytelling, persuasion, gender and communication, argumentation and debate. Objectives: In this essay, I map a unit-specific activity for an undergraduate class in argumentation and debate. I argue for the integration of a trans-affirming pedagogy as a key rhetorical frame in communication studies courses. Such pedagogical commitments…

Collaboration scripts and heuristic worked examples have been described as powerful scaffolds to support skill acquisition in CSCL. While CSCL scripts particularly facilitate argumentative discourse within groups, heuristic worked examples provide heuristics and worked out pathways to solve domain-specific tasks. Yet, both scripts and heuristic…

This study investigated the effect of explicit nature of science (NOS) instruction and explicit argumentation instruction in socioscientific and scientific contexts, on students' NOS conceptions and their argumentation skills. Undergraduate students enrolled in two sections of a science content course were assigned into two groups: Socioscientific…

Scientific argumentation is a key practice in the construction, confirmation, and legalization of scientific knowledge. Although studies on scientific argumentation have been relatively plentiful, there are few quantitative studies on how students mentally perceive scientific argumentation, given that traditional quantitative tools such as Likert…

Despite the importance of scientific argumentation, it rarely occurs in science classrooms. Researchers have designed argumentation interventions to bridge this gap, but those efforts have limited impacts on transforming existing classroom practices. Argumentation is a linguistically social interaction. It is necessary to go beyond understanding…

Engineering design-based STEM integration is one potential model to help students integrate content and practices from all of the STEM disciplines. In this study, we explored the intersection of two aspects of pre-college STEM education: the integration of the STEM disciplines, and the NGSS practice of engaging in argument from evidence within…

This dissertation conducts rhetorical criticism of the public controversy prompted by higher education reforms proposed by Texas Governor Rick Perry in his 2008 "Seven Breakthrough Solutions" packet and summit. The analysis begins by exploring "topoi," or commonplace arguments, raised during the argumentation between Perry and…

While instruction from the communication center and library has supported students and teaching for many years, we seek a more intentional collaboration between these support services and the basic communication course. This article follows a pilot case study performed to explore student perceptions of an in-class collaborative session designed to…

The present study examines university students' perceptions of learning academic terminology and using specialised language, and discusses the consequences of their vision. The aim is to elucidate the relationship between academic culture, academic education and the construction of knowledge in higher education. The fields of meaning and the level…

The article raises questions about how argumentation is situated in science and religious education. Argumentation is about the justification of claims with reasons and evidence. It is a way of reasoning in both science and religious studies. A current 3-year research and development project entitled "Oxford Argumentation in Religion and…

Experimental evidence has shown the effect of peer-group argumentation on scientific concept development. However, questions regarding how and why it happens remain. The aim of this study is to contribute, with experimental evidence gathered in naturalistic settings (classrooms), to the understanding of the relationship between peer-group…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the production of pragmatic markers (PMs) by multilingual students in a CLIL context. Previous studies have analyzed pragmatic competence in multilingual settings (e.g., Cenoz, 2003; Martín-Laguna & Alcón-Soler, 2015; Portolés, 2015; Safont & Portolés, 2016). However, to the best of our…

Bilingual education programmes involving English are currently experiencing an unprecedented rise in popularity, both at school and at university levels. While one of the aims of such educational programmes lies in developing both academic knowledge and language proficiency, our understanding of the interface between these two elements -- language…