This article explores historical reasoning, an important activity in history learning. Based upon an extensive review of empirical literature on students' thinking and reasoning about history, a theoretical framework of historical reasoning is proposed. The framework consists of six components: asking historical questions, using sources,…

Aristotle's "Rhetoric" offers a model for applying the concept of the enthymeme to the work of film scholars to understand the role of the audience. Used from an analytic perspective, enthymemes emphasize audience reaction to a film, with the focus on how the film is seen, not on how it was made. Applying viewing skills to a sample of…

As background to an argument for purposive reintegration of discourse study, this paper examines the concept of explanatory discourse as it developed within the Western rhetorical tradition. Following a discussion of the rise of a rhetoric of explanation, the first section cites the roots of the explanatory pedagogy developing during the first…

The assumption that people exert considerable cognitive effort in processing incoming information has been complemented in recent years by the idea that people often perform tasks and make decisions after only minimal information processing. Although both the heuristic and systematic conceptualizations of information processing share the…

An evaluation of four seventeenth and eighteenth century essays on optics revealed early trends in the evolution of scientific articles. The later articles showed a growing tendency to (1) separate practice from pure knowledge, (2) organize information around problems of knowledge and theory rather than around chronological events, (3) emphasize…

This paper reviews recent social psychology studies on the influence of message characteristics, issue involvement, and the subject's cognitive response on perceptions of the communicator. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is used as a framework to discuss various approaches to persuasion, particularly central and peripheral routes to…

Criticizes methodological tendencies of economics and sociological researchers who do not ask "how large is large?" Reliance on statistical significance and existence theorems shows the limits of formalistic rather than humanistic research approaches. Argues that serious scholars develop whole arguments and understand the rhetoric of…

The symbolic function of curricular debate, as it is manifested in the minimum competency testing movement (MCT), is investigated. Curricular debate necessarily reflects the demands of the society in which it arises. The topics that are addressed spring from this milieu and the language in which issues are couched must be appropriate to it.…