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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/ef9v-2s25 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Bruun, Karen Sybille |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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