This study examines whether middle-school students' dense, extended engagement in an argumentation curriculum promoted development of argument skills, specifically increased use of direct counterargument and improved argument evaluation skill. A total of 56 students in two classes participated twice a week for three years (grades 6, 7, and 8) as part of their regular school curriculum. Students attended an urban middle school affiliated with a large university and were predominantly Hispanic and African-American and from lower and lower-middle socioeconomic backgrounds; 20% were from middle-class Caucasian families. In addition to its central element - electronically conducted pair dialogs on social issues - the curriculum encompassed a range of activities including small group preparation of arguments and reflective activities. A third class of 23 served as a comparison group; they also met twice a week over the same time period. They addressed similar social issues in more traditional whole-class discussion and wrote essays. Assessments of dialogic argumentation skill and argument evaluation skill initially and at the end of each of the three years indicated that that the curriculum promoted the use of counterargument generally and the direct counterargument skill specifically. Performance of the experimental group increased over time in both respects and exceeded that of the comparison group. Students participating in the intervention also engaged in more sustained direct counterargument sequences than did students in the comparison group at the final assessment. Parallel improvements in argument evaluation skill of the experimental group relative to the comparison group suggest that evaluation skill responds to practice much the same way as does argumentation performance. Theoretical implications for our understanding of developmental mechanisms are considered, as well as educational implications.

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This study traces the development of Lincoln-Douglas debate in Texas. The history of this type of debate from the Great Debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas to the Reagan-Mondale debates is considered. In addition, the merits of this type of oral controversy are explored. The reasons for the creation of L-D debate and its introduction into the forensic curriculum are discussed. In order to measure L-D's growing acceptance in the debate community, the results of a questionnaire of Texas Forensic Association debate coaches is evaluated. This study found that L-D debate is growing in participation in Texas schools. The distinct features of L-D enable it to be an innovative and challenging form of discourse.

Educational standards increasingly emphasize argumentation skills as goals fundamental to academic success, but schools largely fail to develop these skills in students, particularly among those in educationally disadvantaged populations. The present study examines development of argument skills among disadvantaged middle schoolers by engaging them in dialogs with a more capable adult over the course of a school year, in the context of a twice-weekly argumentation curriculum. Over four successive topics, participants in the curriculum engaged in six sessions of argumentive dialog per topic. Dialogs were conducted electronically between a pair of peers holding the same position on the topic and successive peer pairs holding the opposing position. Students were randomly assigned to treatment and comparison conditions. For students in the treatment condition, unknown to participants (due to the electronic medium), for half of the dialogs the opposing peer pair was replaced by an educated adult. These alternated with dialogs with peer pairs. Students in the comparison condition participated only in peer dialogs. The adult model arguers sought to concentrate their input on advanced argument strategies, identified as Counter-C (critique) and Counter-U (undermine), to the maximum extent possible. Effects on students were evaluated by their performance in their peer dialogs over the year and in a final dialogic assessment on a new topic in which students argued individually with an opponent (rather than in collaboration with a same-side peer). By the second of four topics, the more advanced argument strategies began to appear in a greater proportions of utterances in the dialogs of students in the treatment condition, compared to those in the comparison condition. The effect of condition increased over successive topics. It also persisted beyond the treatment context to the transfer task. These findings are suggestive of the power of engagement with a more competent other as a means of developing higher-order cognitive skills, as well as less complex social and cognitive competencies, where learning through apprenticeship has already been demonstrated to be a powerful learning mechanism. These findings are of particular significance for the educationally disadvantaged population studied here, who often are afforded inadequate opportunities to develop higher-order cognitive skills. Pedagogical and social implications are discussed.

Although converging evidence indicates that argumentive thinking and writing are best promoted by collaboration with others, it is still unclear which instructional approaches exert most benefits. The present study builds on the success of using a dialogic approach to develop argumentation skills in middle school students. The key component of the approach used here is the creation of an adversarial classroom setting in which students engage deeply in dialogic argumentation, which is viewed here as a process involving two or more individuals who hold opposing views. In dialogic argumentation, the focus of students’ attention will tend to center on the discursive goals of strengthening their own positions and weakening the position of the opponents. These goals of discourse ensure that students not only exercise supporting their claims with reasons and evidence but also practice making and responding to critiques, which is said to promote students’ mastery of the argument-counterargument-rebuttal structure. While the literature describes compelling advantages of dialogic approaches, it also reports valid concerns. A main concern is that during dialogic argumentation arguers have diverging goals of advancing their own positions, which may prevent the integration of opposing arguments. In an attempt to explore whether this disadvantage can be minimized, the present study examines whether the addition of a collaborative writing activity, as a form of peer argumentation that draws students’ attention towards a converging goal, to the dialogic curriculum provides students a further degree of support in developing their argumentive writing skills. It is hypothesized that collaborative writing would serve as a bridge between dialogic and individual argumentation by changing the focus of students’ attention from the adversarial to the collaborative dimensions of argumentation. To examine this hypothesis, two classes of sixth grade students participated in a month-long intervention that promoted deep engagement in dialogic argumentation on a series of challenging topics. Groups differed only with respect to participation in collaborative writing. Analysis of individual essays on the final intervention topic indicates that students who participated in collaborative writing showed gains relative to students who didn’t in coordinating evidence with claims, specifically in drawing on evidence to make claims that are inconsistent as well as consistent with their favored positions. On a transfer topic, students in the collaborative writing condition continued to surpass students in the individual writing condition; however, the gains were restricted to drawing on evidence to make claims that are consistent with the students’ favored positions. The results support the claim that the combination of adversarial and collaborative forms of peer argumentation in classroom instruction is a promising path for developing middle school students’ argumentive writing skills. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Skills of argument have attracted the attention of educators but remain challenging to both assess and develop. In contrast to the traditional essay, dialogic argument requires reflection on and coordination of one’s own claims with those of an interlocutor. Investigating a tool for assessing an individual’s dialogic argument skill is an objective of the present work. Building on an earlier study by the author and colleagues, and informed by philosophical writings on objectives of argumentation, undertaken here is a conceptual analysis of instances of dialogic argumentation by skilled arguers in order to discern its essential characteristics. The identified set of characteristics is then used as a basis for evaluating the argumentation skills exhibited by a sample of sixth grade students. A practical purpose is development of an assessment tool for use in educational contexts, identifying the range and variation of argumentation skills individuals bring to dialog. A value of the individual instrument referred to as a constructed dialog and developed and employed here, is that it overcomes the statistical problem created by lack of independence between participants in a dialog which requires that the unit of analysis be the pair-- thereby defeating the objective of assessing the skill of an individual. Empirical results document that young adolescents display competence in some basic skills of argumentation but, even following an intervention designed to build and exercise such skills, they continue to use these sparingly and to lack other equally fundamental ones. Discussion addresses implications for education, as well as the potential for use of the constructed dialog as an assessment tool for evaluating an individual student’s skill in argumentation and the associated understanding it reflects regarding the nature and objectives of argumentation.

The purpose of this thesis is to determine the impact of intermediate school forensics on high school forensic programs in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. First, the thesis records student and instructor evaluations of both the intermediate school and high school forensic programs. Second, it compares the evaluations by students with intermediate forensics and students without intermediate forensics. Third, it discusses the impact of intermediate forensics on high school forensic programs. This study reveals that intermediate forensics is beneficial to high school forensics. Previously trained students teach and interest others in high school. They are more confident, have more initiative and win more than other students.

Learning via apprenticeship is widely regarded as a powerful mechanism. To examine the role of apprenticeship learning and practice in developing argumentive thinking and writing, young adolescents (n = 64) participated in a four-week dialogic argumentation activity. They drew on available evidence and engaged 20 daily sessions in one-to-one electronic dialogues on contemporary social issues, anonymously, with a series of opposing-side partners. To assess the proposition that adolescents' argumentation skill advances via apprenticeship with a more skilled partner, in an experimental (but not control) discourse condition, a skilled adult arguer replaced a peer in half of the dialogues. Effects on students were evaluated in the dialogue and individual writing contexts. In the dialogue context, performance in initial peer dialogues during the first day of the workshop and in a final dialogic assessment on a new topic were evaluated. In the individual writing context, performance on the last workshop-debate-topic essay and non-workshop-debate topic essay were evaluated. Data were analyzed according to previously identified and well-validated coding schemes on counterargument and argument strategies. Although all participants showed skill gains, students in the experimental condition advanced in argumentive reasoning more rapidly than those in the peer-only control condition. Specifically, the strongest counterargument strategy (counter-undermine) appeared in greater proportions of idea units in the dialogues of students in the experimental condition, compared to those in the comparison condition. Only “weaken-other” improvements in dialogue reached significance in transferring to essays. These findings extend upon and support previous work on the power of dialogic engagement and engagement with more competent others as a mechanism of apprenticeship learning. Pedagogical and social implications are discussed.

香港教育在課程和評估等方面均十分重視學生口語或書面論辯的能力，不論是學習階段內的全港性系統評估，還是學生完成中學課程後所參加的中學會考 (2012年之前) 或文憑考試 (2012年後)，均要求學生參與小組討論，訓練並考核學生評價觀點的強弱、適當回應組員的觀點的能力。香港教師能夠引導學生綜合書面論辯篇章的組織，並指導學生提出理由支持自己的觀點，但少於培養學生如何理解乃至評價他人觀點的根據，以及回應並發展反駁的能力。學生能夠評價書面篇章內容，也能在教師指導下辨識作者觀點的理據，但在小組討論中建立相反觀點以說服持不同意見的其他成員，表現仍見不足。 本研究旨在發展理論架構與分析程序，以分析中學生在中文小組討論中的論辯。為此，本研究探討了中文小組討論的論辯話語的特徵、學生表達觀點與理據所運用的策略、批判地回應對手的方式，特別是發展反駁、評價對手觀點與理據，以及表達與有衝突的觀點。 十八名來自九所中學的中學畢業學生按學校與性別的分層隨機分配到三組六人組別中，參與時限為廿五分鐘的中文小組討論。他們須討論一項禁止學校小賣部售賣垃圾食物，並禁止學生?帶垃圾食物回校的措施是否合理。學生的討論經謄錄後，在質性分析軟體 (NVivo) 的輔助下，運用話語分析和非形式邏輯中的論辯理論分析，以發現學生在討論中建構論辯的模式，包括：意念、言語行為、論辯圖式、討論的四個中文小組論辯討論的四個層次、廿五項讓學生得以建構論辯並參與討論的言語行為、六種論辯圖式及發展反駁的相關批判問題、討論的五階段，特別是學生傾向於把相互矛盾的論點統合為沒有衝突的討論發展方向。 本研究提出了理論架構與分析程序，把學生在中文小組討論的論辯歸類，以分析論辯的特徵。本論文所提供的研究程序、理論架構、分析程序，以及學生在中文小組論辯討論的表現，有助中國語文課程及其他課程中論辯教育的課程發展、教學設計與評估。最後，本論文探索了研究設計的優點與不足，並提出了日後繼續發展本研究的可能方向。 The ability of Hong Kong students to frame arguments in written and spoken exchanges in Chinese is afforded high priority in Hong Kong secondary schools and is strongly emphasised in the Hong Kong Curriculum. The ability to attend to points made in a discussion, to identify strengths and weaknesses in assertions and content and to make appropriate counter responses has been formally examined in the matriculation examination since 2007. Teachers are comfortable about developing students‘ competence in identifying micro- and macro-structures in text content, and in using these to support opinions expressed in writing. They are less assured about teaching students how to perceive the grounds for counter-arguments and making measured responses and rebuttals of what others in a group have said. Students are able to critically examine text content, to appreciate points advanced and to assemble these in written responses, but, partly due to the Confucian endorsement of avoiding confrontation and disharmony, senior secondary students are apprehensive about public discussions in which they are asked to formulate opposing points of view and persuasive arguments to peers who hold conflicting standpoints. The study set out to assist teachers by establishing a theoretical framework and procedure for analyzing students‘ contributions in group discussion in Chinese. To achieve this, it was necessary to investigate characteristics of discourse; to identify the strategies students employ in presenting reasoned points of view; to critically analyse the contributions of others, especially those presenting counter-arguments; to weigh the merits of opposing opinions; and to present propositions against those expressed by fellow group members. Eighteen final year secondary school students from nine schools were selected, randomly placed into stratified groups of six and asked to participate in twenty-five minute long group discussions of the merits of a school policy prohibiting the sale of junk food in the school canteen and bringing junk food into school. The students‘ utterances were transcribed and points of argument examined using conversational discourse analyses, the logic of the arguments advanced being analysed with the assistance of research software (NVivo). Patterns of argument formulations by the students in the discussions were found. Levels of idea units, speech acts, argumentative scheme and discussion were identified and twenty-five types of spoken exchanges enabling students to construct arguments during the group discussions were identified. Six types of argument shemes were found; and types of critical questions for stimulating justifications and rebuttals of what participants said in the discussions were noted. A five-stage process of presenting arguments in the discussions emerged, together with a tendency for the students to attempt to integrate disparate and heterogeneous points of view into homogeneous standpoints. The research proposes procedures for analyzing and categorising the arguments students raise in group discussion in Chinese, and a framework for developing teaching students how to formulate and sustain telling arguments as part of the Chinese Language Curriculum. The strengths and weaknesses of the research are set out and the implications for further research and current practice are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy