Mathematical argumentation skills (MAS) are considered an important outcome of mathematics learning, particularly in secondary and tertiary education. As MAS are complex, an effective way of supporting their acquisition may require combining different scaffolds. However, how to combine different scaffolds is a delicate issue, as providing learners…

Findings of this study suggest that scientific argumentation can play an effective role in addressing complex socioscientific issues (i.e. global climate change). This research examined changes in preservice teachers' knowledge and perceptions about climate change in an innovative undergraduate-level elementary science methods course. The…

Today argumentation is widely emphasized in the policy documents in Europe, and the US. Once we look at the literature in the last two decades, many studies noted students' challenges in this process. On the other side of the coin, we see in-service teachers with problems to support this process. Unfortunately, very few studies focused on this…

Science educators increasingly seek to support students' participation in scientific practices, particularly epistemic practices, that is, those that ground authority for knowing in the discipline. Argumentation is one practice that has received significant attention in the research literature. However, scholars who take a sociocultural stance…

Genetics literacy is becoming increasingly important as advancements in our application of genetic technologies such as stem cell research, cloning, and genetic screening become more prevalent. Very few studies examine how genetics literacy is applied when reasoning about authentic genetic dilemmas. However, there is evidence that situational…

Socio-scientific issues (SSI) have proven to be suitable contexts for students to actively reflect on and argue about complex social issues related to science. Research has indicated that explicitly teaching SSI argumentation is a good way to help students develop their argumentation skills and make them aware of the complexity of SSI. However,…

How to read the Confucian Classics today? Scholars with philosophical training usually emphasize that the philosophical approach, in comparison with the classicist and historical ones, is the best way to read the Confucian Classics, for it can dig out as much intellectual resources as possible from the classical texts in order to show their modern…

Typically developing writers in fifth (n = 110, M = 10 years 8 months) or seventh (n = 97, M = 12 years 7 months) grade wrote informative, compare and contrast, and persuasive essays for which the content was held constant--two mountains with a history of volcanic eruption. Relevant background knowledge was provided by reading text and showing…

With the rapid advancements of technology, online communication in both K-12 and post-secondary instruction has been widely implemented. Instructors as well as researchers have used various frameworks to evaluate different aspects of online discussions' quality. The online discussions take place synchronously or asynchronously in chat rooms,…

This study sought to investigate the arguments that ecologists engage in as part of their work and to compare their arguments with the way in which ecological arguments have been presented in school argumentation tasks. Ten ecologists, in subfields ranging from individual/behavioral ecology to global ecology, participated in semistructured…

We contend that the classroom-discourse routine of IRE/F (teacher initiation, student response, teacher evaluation/follow-up) is a genre of argumentation that is both collaborative and implicit because teachers and students cooperate during IRE/F exchanges not only to make and mirror knowledge claims but also to suppress justification for those…

This study explored the impact of argumentation-promoting collaborative inquiry and representational work in science on primary students' representational fluency. Two hundred sixty-six year 6 students received instruction on natural disasters with a focus on collaborative inquiry. Students in the Comparison condition received only this…

Courses: Communication Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism, Introduction to Rhetoric, Introduction to Communication, Media Studies, and Persuasion courses. Objective: The aim of this activity is to introduce and explain the method of ideological criticism through commonplace advertising.

Despite a plethora of opinions on how to improve US education, a remarkable consensus has emerged that someone or something is to blame for the failures of the public school system, argues rhetoric scholar Mark Hlavacik in this new and insightful book examining the role of language and persuasion in the rise of the accountability movement.…

Students enrolled in a basic communication course are required to self-examine their communication apprehension by means of the PRPSA (McCroskey 1970). The present study qualitatively examined pretest and posttest responses from 793 students enrolled in a basic communication course to assess their understanding of their communication apprehension.…