This 8-year longitudinal case study of Fabiola, a Spanish-English bilingual, investigated her argumentative writing development, focusing on her use of evidence to support and develop arguments over time from high school through university. Data sources included 36 writing samples. Texts across grade levels and course types were analyzed to…

How might we balance assistance and penalties to intelligent tutors and educational games that increase learning and interest? We created two versions of an educational game for learning policy argumentation called Policy World. The game (only) version provided minimal feedback and penalized students for errors whereas the game+tutor version…

This article investigates youth judgments of the accuracy of truth claims tied to controversial public issues. In an experiment embedded within a nationally representative survey of youth ages 15 to 27 (N = 2,101), youth were asked to judge the accuracy of one of several simulated online posts. Consistent with research on motivated reasoning,…

The purpose of this study was to examine students understandings about nature of science (NOS) and their arguments in context of controversial socio-scientific issue (SSI). A total of 74 11th graders in six schools in Saudi Arabia participated in the study. The instrument used was a questionnaire consisting of four scenarios addressing SSI about…

Background: Integrated reading-into-writing tasks are increasingly used in large-scale language proficiency tests. Such tasks are said to possess higher authenticity as they reflect real-life writing conditions better than independent, writing-only tasks. However, to effectively define the reading-into-writing construct, more empirical evidence…

High school students with high-incidence disabilities and struggling writers face considerable challenges when taking high-stakes writing assessments designed to examine their suitability for entrance to college. I examined the effectiveness of a writing intervention for improving these students' performance on a popular college entrance exam, the…

This paper investigates the effects of task-level versus process-level prompts on levels of perceived and objective consensus, perceived efficacy, and argumentation style in the context of a computer-supported collaborative learning session using Interactive Management (IM), a computer facilitated thought and action mapping methodology. Four…

Successful collaborative learning is often conceptualized in terms of convergence, a process through which participants' shared understanding increases. This conceptualization does not capture certain successful collaborative learning processes, especially in the humanities, where multiple perspectives are often celebrated. Such is the context of…

In this era, society needs young students to think and do what they should do in the 21st century. This research aims to promote reasoned argumentation in science for lower secondary students, which is relevant to prepare citizens in a world of change. The participants in this study were 33 lower secondary students. The findings found that…

Michel de Montaigne's "L'art de Conférer" offers a moral groundwork for students' learning of "havruta," a traditional Jewish form of studying in pairs, based on collaborative critical text-based learning, that can be applied to students everywhere. The article attends to the nature of "havruta" learning and to…

This study investigated the influence of requiring elementary students to participate in a detective role-playing game, within which students had to be for or against a controversial issue. Three intact sixth grade classes (N = 94) participated in this study. One class of students was asked to search for supporting evidence for one side of an…

In this article, the author shares the results of a case study that explored how using student-produced video essays supported historical thinking. The goal of this study was to explore the intersection of historical literacies in relationship with digital practices and see how digital literacies might be used to engage students' historical…

As writing instruction expands beyond the language arts classroom, students with disabilities, English language learners, and others who struggle with writing continue to need support with written expression. A timely practice to support student writing is the use of technology. This study used a quasi-experimental group design to examine the…

Background: Dialogic teaching, specifically the use of argumentation in teaching, is seen as promoting scientific literacy and understanding. However, international evidence consistently shows that the prevailing modes of classroom talk are monologic. The problem is how to transform science education into dialogic and argumentative spaces. One way…

This two-week quantitative experimental study aimed at making a comparison among the effects of individual and collaborative pre-task planning, both with and without receiving teacher feedback on structural organization and clarity of argumentative essays. The participants were 120 Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, assigned…