The idea of a high level of literacy being important to holding the social fabric of the country together seems to be shared by policy-makers and professors, although they may disagree on the definition of literacy. Policy-makers like high tech; professors like book learning. Current trends in higher education reflect society's increasing…

Analysis of the transcript of a social worker's interview with a five-and-a-half-year-old girl allegedly sexually abused by a man focuses on how the interview was conducted and elements that suggest it should not be used as testimony. First, inconsistencies in the transcript that cast doubt on the child's reliability are noted, and the truth of…

A series of three studies looked at argument across significant contexts to understand what students must learn to "argue" in these contexts and carry out their practices. Study 1 involved 19 pre-college minority writers who were asked to take a "rival hypothesis" stance to their source texts that discuss issues in minority…

Personal narrative writing can be encouraged and used effectively in classes and in in-service workshops because it is accessible, because the writers may use their own voices, because they can tell their own stories, and because it helps them to make sense of their own experiences. However strong the case made for this form, though, there are…

This paper reports on a case study focusing on the development of students' capacity to develop and assess arguments in the context of instruction in high school genetics. It is part of a wider project whose goals were: (1) the identification of the conditions for argument (and in general scientific reasoning) to occur in science classrooms; (2)…

Department chairmanship responsibilities are becoming heavier in the face of the demands associated with issues that challenge academic communities at the close of the 20th century. A director of forensics is occupied with decisions about the forensics program's philosophy, to provide understanding and impetus for team and individual goals, and…

The public speaking course has been around for a long time but, while there have been changes, the heart of the course remains intact. The many skills and sensitivities instructors try to cultivate in their students come together in three fundamental metaphors that may reflect deep tendencies in what is taught. In the first metaphor, student as…

Critical thinking skills are inherent in limited preparation forensic activities which, with some modification, can be successfully incorporated in virtually any classroom situation. Furthermore, extemporaneous and impromptu speaking provide educators with certain advantages over debate activities in terms of assessment and classroom logistics. In…

Noting that college students in the 1990s are once again becoming interested in religious/spiritual phenomena, this analysis of religious humanism as persuasive discourse first touches upon the event-filled 1960s and 70s, which saw social unrest and turbulent change, much of it emanating from university students. As background, the analysis points…

Beliefs about distinct differences between expressive and academic discourse unnecessarily complicate the teaching of writing. A composition pedagogy which fails to attend to the complications arising from the rhetorical aspect of language leads to the promotion of reasoning as separable from context. Reasoning then becomes a skill to be learned…

Following the failure of several school levies, the Cincinnati Public School System placed a $9.83 million levy on the ballot in 1991 which passed in spite of tremendous odds against it. The Cincinnati tax levy campaign was successful largely because it adapted to the unique nature of ballot issue campaigns. First, it provided proactive leadership…

Few challenges involved in forensics coaching are as challenging as finding and maintaining qualified students in the program. Urban commuter colleges possess unique opportunities for developing broad-based, diverse forensics programs. The University of Missouri-St. Louis (UM-St. Louis) provides an example of how directors might take advantage of…

As pressures within university communities continue to mount to provide validation of outcomes and maximize use of scarce financial resources, forensic teams can establish their own validity while helping communities in their time of need. As society begins to splinter and its problems fester, forensics can offer American communities the very…

To address the need for writing assessment tools, two analytic measures for evaluating managerial writing were used: the Analysis of Argument Measure based on Toulmin's (1958) elements of an argument, and the Persuasive Adaptiveness Measure, which draws on the Delia, Kline, and Burleson (1979) ranking system for scoring the degree of social…

A study examined the influence of two different writing tasks on the ways in which students evaluate arguments on one controversial issue. Subjects, 20 first-year college students, evaluated 2 argumentative articles on the issue of drug legalization. Subjects rated the strength of the argument of each paragraph as they read. Ten of the subjects…