The authors designed an assignment for a writing class for late-secondary and early-college students, one with a central goal of giving students the opportunity to engage with a controversial topic by identifying and representing views other than their own. The authors called it a "not my opinion" assignment, and they piloted it in a…

This qualitative multicase analysis investigated the role of "educational niceness" and "neutrality" (e.g., Baptiste, 2008; Bissonnette, 2016) in preservice English teacher feedback on sociopolitical issues in student writing. As part of the field experiences for several ELA methods courses at two universities, one urban and…

The effective application of food science depends on social constraints, yet the training for food scientists does not adequately consider the contested social context under which food is processed, packaged, and prepared. We recently co-taught a new course ("Arguing about food") intended to introduce students to critical perspectives on…

In this experimental study, 151 middle school students explored 3 historical controversies, first reading and discussing primary source documents in groups, then writing arguments on their own. Students were either randomly assigned to an experimental condition, using argumentative schemes and critical questions as guides during discussions, or to…