States that isolation of small portions of life can result in revelation, the power of metaphor occurs when connections are viewed and meaning is derived from the whole, and at times the question of meaning has been translated into a search for order. (CMK)

Models of persuasion (e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and conceptual change (Dole & Sinatra, 1998) acknowledge that reader elaboration of and engagement with a given text increases the potential for belief change and that the process of elaboration or engagement is fueled by reader motivation. However, little is known about the predictive powers of…

Biographers have called Walt Whitman "America's most influential and innovative poet" and some have even called him "the greatest of all American poets." But in the winter of 1862-63, even as he was gaining a reputation as a talented poet, Whitman was forty-three years old, volunteering as a nurse in Union hospitals, and…

The research reported in this study focuses on an investigation into the teaching of argumentation in secondary science classrooms. Over a 1-year period, a group of 12 teachers from schools in the greater London area attended a series of workshops to develop materials and strategies to support the teaching of argumentation in scientific contexts.…

Deliberative civic education is broadly conceived as instruction that utilizes varying forms of classroom deliberation and deliberative exercises to enhance the democratic skills of citizenship and to increase understanding of democratic practice. The purpose of this essay is to explore how the contemporary, critical elements of rhetorical study…

Learning to engage in civil discourse requires students to maintain an openness to new points of view and attitude change. In a public speaking course based on principles of civil discourse, classroom procedures were designed to foster subjective reframing by engaging students in the disorienting exercise of supporting multiple perspectives on the…

In this paper we present three cases of instructional design that illustrates both horizontal didactising, the activity of using already established principles to design instruction, and vertical didactising the activity of developing new tools and principles for instructional design. The first case illustrates horizontal didactising by…

In this article, we elaborate methodologies to study construction of knowledge in argumentative activities. For this purpose, we report on a quasi-empirical study on construction of knowledge through successive argumentative activities on a controversial issue. A group of 120 fifth grade students participated in successive argumentative…

Peter Webster believes that a study of the history of music teaching and learning in North America will likely reveal very few examples of extended and well-argued professional discourse. By "discourse" he means a continuous expression or exchange of ideas designed to present contrasting views on important issues in the music teaching…

In this article, the author offers social studies educators a means to deepen students' understanding of and skills for constructive disagreement by bringing together four areas of study that inform one's awareness of the role of the body in democratic life. The author includes specific curricular suggestions and classroom activities that…

In the Spring 2005 issue, Wang, Schnipke, and Witt provided an informative description of the task inventory approach that centered on four functions of job analysis. The discussion included persuasive arguments for making systematic connections between tasks and KSAs. But several other facets of the discussion were much less persuasive. This…

What images should we study? Which have value? Which are significant? These questions lie at the heart of one of the most critical issues in art education today in the debate over whether the field should maintain a narrow focus on fine art or expand its scope to include all of visual culture. In this article, I argue for the inclusion of…

For decades, scholars have worked to understand the precise manner in which messages affect attitudes and ultimately behaviors. The dominant paradigm suggests that there are two methods or routes to attitude change, one based on careful consideration of the messages and the other based on simple decision rules, often referred to as heuristics…

This article presents a sketch for a theory of the rhetorics involved in categorisation and the creation of culture in online communities. Persuasion, or shaping perceptions of the world, is never incidental to social life, but living online necessarily involves persuasion as it is difficult to bring force to bear, although people can be…

With the rise of poststructuralist critiques of the autonomous subject, attention has shifted from the nature of "intentional persuasion" to the constitutive nature of discourse. Although this turn has led to valuable new insights into the nature of rhetoric, it also threatens to discount one of the most vital contributions of the rhetorical…