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In two previous reviews, we examined how human geographers currently report on projects involving their preferred qualitative methods – interviews and ethnographic observation. This final review steps back from specific techniques to evaluate some of the broader presentational conventions that typify this work. What can be inferred from where these geographers discuss data collection in their papers? Why do they develop new methods and what do they say about fieldwork failures? How often do they reflect on the provisional status of their findings? And what are the implications of how they define their purpose in working with qualitative material? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This quantitative content analysis applies the theory of instrumental actualization to Swiss newspaper coverage of smoking bans in public places. The theory holds that journalists' opinions affect news selection; it is studied here for the weighting and evaluation of arguments in news stories. The editorial stance of newspapers was related to the weighting of argumentative fields and the frequency of contradiction of different standpoints. Therefore, elements of both a dialectical (papers of different stance explicitly contradicting one another) and a rhetorical (papers of different stance speaking of different matters) model of discourse were [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The meaning and value of interdisciplinarity can be described in several, at times even contradictory, ways. Yet, little is known about how these play a role in individuals’ argumentation and everyday thinking. Drawing on Michael Billig’s rhetorical psychology, this paper explores how individuals draw on meanings, values, and connotations of interdisciplinarity to construct arguments and counter-arguments about this practice. This approach sheds light on the contradictions that surround interdisciplinarity, and thus on the rhetorical context in which its meaning is constituted. The value of rhetorical psychology for the study of interdisciplinarity is demonstrated through the analysis of the discourse of 27 interviews with researchers and administrators from a large British university. The analysis identifies 12 interpretative repertoires interviewees use to argue and to think about interdisciplinarity. Highlighting these repertoires and the contradictions between them is relevant for stimulating individuals’ reflexivity, critical thought, and decision-making regarding disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about immigration are salient in the European Union and in Malta in particular. Previous research has demonstrated deep antipathy towards the Arab community in Malta, and social representations of Arabs are mired in a conflation of ethnic and religious categories with negative connotations. This paper presents evidence of the potency, within the public sphere, of negative arguments from cultural essentialism, concerning the integration of Arabs in Europe. The data were obtained abductively from a data corpus containing positive, mixed and negative arguments about Arabs and their integration. Results pointed towards the almost total exclusivity of arguments from cultural essentialism. These posited Arabic culture as an underlying essence that makes integration difficult or impossible. Different forms of culturally essentialist views varied in their emphasis of different aspects of cultural essentialism. Reductionist, determinist, delineatory and temporal aspects of cultural essentialism were all emphasised by respondents. The essentialist exceptions to negative arguments from cultural essentialism were rare and were posed tentatively by participants. Their paucity and manner of delivery substantiate the claim that it is strictly an Arabic cultural essence that is deemed to make integration impossible. Findings are discussed in light of the communicative functions that these dominant argumentative strategies fulfil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific literature has shown abundantly that teacher professional development is a crucial factor for improving the quality of education. In this frame, this research analyzes teacher professional development of in-service higher education teachers who participated in training activities. This research has five goals not previously studied simultaneously in teachers' professional development, namely: (A) improve teachers' conceptions and beliefs; (B) improve argumentative teaching practices; (C) analyze teachers' reflections; (D) establish the hypothetical relationships between types of knowledge of objectives (A), (B), and (C); and (E) analyze knowledge decay after 7 years. The research can be considered as a case study developed in-depth using multiple techniques for data collection and triangulation. The findings strongly evidence a relationship between conceptions and beliefs, argumentative teaching practices, and reflections. In addition, three stages are characterized for teacher professional development, as well as the relationships between the types of knowledge for each stage. Plain language summary: This research falls within the field of in-service higher education training of Colombian science teachers. We inquire into the professional development of three higher education teachers—AXL, MYA, PAB—which participated in several training activities developed in 2012, as well as the degree of permanence of the existing changes in 2019, 7 years after the training process. It is about a case study on the professional development of teachers. It is concluded that not all teachers change in the same way. This means that each change is representative of the stage in which the teacher is. After 7 years, a decline is identified in a teacher who had difficulties in his personal life in order to continue consolidating what he learned 7 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing in science can be challenging for all learners, and it is especially so for students with cognitive or language-based learning difficulties. We examined the effects of a cognitive apprenticeship on student disciplinary writing skills as well as near and far transfer of learning outcomes. This instructional approach included a gradual release of responsibility for learning through four, 3-day investigations that included authentic scientific experiments, small- and whole-group discussions, and the construction and revision of scientific arguments. Intervention students showed significant gains for both near (effect size = 1.08) and far (effect size = 0.76) transfer disciplinary writing outcomes. These results held true even when compared with a nonequivalent control group (effect size = 1.95). Students with disabilities demonstrated similar rates of growth as peers without disabilities, especially with respect to the quality of their claims and ability to provide scientific evidence. This study provides additional data on the value of cognitive apprenticeships in middle school science classrooms, and the results indicate the importance of discussion in helping students to think and write more like scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's students live within a world filled with complexity, uncertainty, and misinformation; thus, educators need to help all learners, including students with learning disabilities, how to comprehend complex information about the natural world and make credible evidence-based claims. Our study is a first step in making this possible. In this investigation, our goal was for students to make a claim, use evidence and content-specific vocabulary, and then use reasoning to link claims with evidence in an argument. These outcomes were assessed using a pre–post design with a scenario-based assessment administered twice before and once after instruction, which used multimodal STEM text sets to fuse science and literacy learning. Data indicate that (a) both students with disabilities and those without disabilities made significant gains in argumentation and (b) the effects of instruction were similar for both groups of students. Gains for students with disabilities suggest the multimodal STEM text sets provided important scaffolding that enabled this group to learn important content in the general education classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, we use a process data analysis approach to gather additional evidence about students' argumentation skills beyond their performance scores in a computer-based assessment. This game-enhanced scenario-based assessment (named Seaball) included five activities that require students to demonstrate their argumentation skills within a scenario about whether junk food should be sold to students. Our research sample included 104 middle school students. Process data analyses focused on an "Interview" activity in which students explored different locations and interviewed various characters to identify their opinions on the junk food issue and categorize each opinion as pro or con. Students could take various paths to complete the activity. Results indicated that the number of trials students made in the Interview activity predicted their performance on the Interview activity as well as the total Seaball scores. It was also found that most students improved their answers in the Interview activity after receiving automated feedback and making corresponding changes. Besides the connections between student activities and performance, results from analyzing the process data helped us to identify difficult items in the task. We conclude with implications for conducting process data analysis to better assess students' argumentation skills and to inform task design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stagnation of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Writing scores demonstrates the need for research-based instruction that improves writing for all students, especially English learners. In this article, we synthesize the literature on effective instructional practices for this diverse group of learners and describe how these strategies are leveraged in a teacher professional development program that has been previously shown to improve students' argument writing. Then, we share results of a study that focuses on distinct subgroups of secondary English learners students to (a) determine their needs and challenges and (b) examine the impact of a cognitive strategies approach on rhetorical and linguistic aspects of writing at posttest. Results show English learners have considerable challenges with higher-order tasks involved in writing literary arguments and with the linguistic demands of academic writing before receiving the intervention. However, after receiving the intervention, using descriptive statistics and multiple hierarchical linear regression, we show that these students grew in the areas of presentation of ideas, organization, evidence use, and language use. For example, students designated as reclassified English learners (RFEP [Reclassified Fluent English Proficient]) and students who have even more limited English proficiency (designated as EL [English learner] here) show improvements in many aspects of writing, especially in their ability to write claims and use evidence. In contrast, improvements in language use components were more limited for both groups of learners. Moreover, some of the gains due to being in the treatment were significant enough to bring the average EL student close to parity or beyond their EO (English Only) / IFEP (Initial Fluent English Proficient) peers in the control condition at posttest. We conclude by discussing pedagogical implications for English learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytical writing poses particularly challenging, yet often overlooked, language demands that need attention in educational research and practice. In this article, I discuss the Core Analytical Language Skills (CALS) construct and its relevance for school reading and writing. CALS refer to the set of learners' school-relevant language resources that are of high utility to understanding analytical texts across content areas. After a brief review of the relations between mid-adolescents' language and their school reading and writing proficiencies, I offer illustrative examples of individual differences in middle-schoolers' analytical writing and CALS. I argue, on the basis of recent but extensive empirical evidence, that without understanding and addressing the immense variability in the language resources that students bring to school and the language demands of reading- and writing-to-learn tasks and texts, schools run the risk of maintaining and even exacerbating the inequalities that exist in the larger society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although authors often create literary texts in order to comment on issues of personhood and human relationships, reading and writing about literary texts in schools is often focused on close analysis of literary elements or exploration of one's own experience with the text. Thus, students' written arguments about literature typically do little work in the world toward understanding the human condition. In response, we argue for a theoretical and instructional framework of reading and writing about literature called Dialogic Literary Argumentation. Dialogic literary argumentation asks students and teachers to engage in reading, dialogue, and argumentative writing about how they and others make meaning out of literary texts, what the meaning says about what it means to be human together, and how we might act in and on the worlds in which we live. In this article, we explicate the various elements of this theoretical framework that situates the student's literary argument within their own cognitive processes, social interactions in classroom events, and broader sociocultural contexts. Students' composed arguments draw on multiple texts (the literary text, others in and beyond the classroom, their own experiences, the literary discipline, and the world), which are mediated by various classroom dialogues, scaffolds, and supports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current approaches used in educational research and practice to evaluate the quality of written arguments often rely on structural analysis. In such assessments, credit is awarded for the presence of structural elements of an argument, such as claims, evidence, and rebuttals. In this article, we discuss limitations of such approaches, including the absence of criteria for evaluating the quality of the argument elements. We then present an alternative framework, based on the Rational Force Model (RFM), which originated from the work of a Nordic philosopher Næss. Using an example of an argumentative essay, we demonstrate the potential of the RFM to improve argument analysis by focusing on the acceptability and relevance of argument elements, two criteria widely considered to be fundamental markers of argument strength. We outline possibilities and challenges with using the RFM in educational contexts and conclude by proposing directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we share what we learned about undergraduates' struggles in writing quality summaries, comparison texts, and argumentative essays that were components of a unique course, Learning How to Learn. This course was designed to address core psychological issues that impede optimal learning for students from all majors, many of whom are preparing to attend professional or graduate school. Although never intended to be a course devoted to academic writing, the struggles we uncovered made it apparent that without addressing these students' writing difficulties, especially with argumentation, optimal learning was not achievable. For each form of writing central to the course (i.e., summaries, comparisons, and argumentation), we not only describe the challenges we have documented over the past six years, but also the instructional responses we instituted to counter those challenges. We conclude by sharing insights we have garnered from this experience that may serve others who are confronting similar issues in their students' writing abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative analysis of Euroscepticism explores what it means in two nations and what is then articulated in specific newspapers. The theoretical terrain, Italy’s and Britain’s post-war relationships with the European Union, the countries’ media structures and the specific context of Il Giornale (owned by Silvio Berlusconi’s family) in Italy and The Times in the United Kingdom (owned by Rupert Murdoch) are mapped out. Some 21 interviews were conducted with relevant journalists and politicians (including reporters covering Europe for the aforementioned) offering further context. A critical discourse analysis of news stories and commentaries then spans the last decade. Although there is some Euroscepticism in Il Giornale, it has historically been localised, yet now seems to be growing in intensity. In The Times, however, the Euroscepticism conveyed is more pervasive and deeper. Its fact-based news can actually be very persuasive – ironically more akin to the commentary-laden news of Il Giornale – as the debate looms ahead of the planned 2017 UK referendum on European Union membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores one teacher's instructional method for teaching life sciences using argumentation and argumentative writing rather than simple templates for writing claims and evidence. The microethnographic discourse analytic case study reported here included the teacher and 26 "advanced" eighth-grade students in a suburban middle school. Nine consecutive video-recorded lessons and related data were analyzed, focusing on how the teacher and students constructed the theory of evolution during instructional conversations about evidence and reasoning and about the content of students' written arguments on the theory. The teacher created a context in which students developed arguments with teacher support to ensure that they were learning to use argumentation as a heuristic to understand concepts and to engage in argumentative practice central to doing science. The modes of participation of two case study students are contrasted to explore two different trajectories and to examine particular cases of writing a lab report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversation argument theory is used to analyze seven online discussions of colorism, a form of skin tone prejudice. Discussants' comments (N = 587) expressed ad hominem acts (17%), reasoning activities (59%) and delimitors (e.g., addressed objections, 37%). Unlike general forums confrontation-initiated forums had more ad hominem acts. Posts with compared to posts without ad hominem acts had fewer reasoning activities and delimitors. General colorism forums were the most civil and developed, findings that have implications for designing online forums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students are expected to come into the current college classroom already possessing certain skills including the ability to write at the appropriate academic level regardless of discipline and the ability to create well-structured arguments. Research indicates, however, that most students entering college are underprepared in both areas. One strategy that may help students write at a more academic level is teaching students to focus on spending their time on revision. In the current study, we examine two potential sources of difficulty in the revision of argumentative essays: a poorly developed argument schema and a poorly developed global revision task schema. We created and tested the effectiveness of two written tutorials designed to provide college students information to saturate their knowledge base as well as provide them with procedural tasks to complete. We found that without instruction, students focused their revisions on making local wording changes that did not qualitatively improve their essays. An argument tutorial helped students make higher level global changes, include more argument content, and improve the structure of the essay. A global revision tutorial also helped students make more substantive structural changes. Thus, both tutorials helped students improve their revisions, and the tutorials were completed independently by the students successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports the design and effects of a practical, pedagogic experiment motivated by the wish to encourage greater 'active learning' in first-year tutorials along with a range of other learning skills, in particular the practice of 'good' argumentation. The project has its roots in a formal accredited programme in teaching and learning that provided frameworks for thinking about how to change the assessment regime and in a measure of dissatisfaction with the existing, 'conventional' organization of the tutorial as a site of learning. The aim was to create an environment in which the students prepared thoroughly for each tutorial, engaged in challenging discussion, and reflected on what and how they were learning. The method employed was to centre the assessment regime on the tutorial itself in conjunction with frequent and rapid feedback on student work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on social interactions during family mealtimes to examine the types of arguments used by parents to convince their children to eat. The results of this study show that feeding practices during mealtimes are dialogically constructed by parents and children together. Parents mostly used arguments based on the quality and quantity of food, adapting their language to the child's level of understanding. Future research might consider the observations and the subtle qualitative analyses of social interactions among family members as examples of possible ways to recognize the dialogical construction of feeding practices during mealtimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers problems and advantages of philosophical involvement with sciences distant from our own. It endorses the view that, rather than testing of philosophical hypotheses against historical data, this is a matter of interpretation and explication. Guidelines for accessing and interpreting others' sciences are proposed: a common ground maxim, relating to our need to find practices, questions and beliefs that we share with them; and a coherence maxim, relating to the need to do justice to the often alien ways in which others' beliefs and practices may form coherent systems. Examples are then given of ways in which examination of distant sciences, guided by the common ground and coherence maxims, can challenge current philosophical assumptions and enrich our philosophical agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy researchers have explored how video games might be used as supplementary texts in secondary English language arts (ELA) classrooms to support reading instruction. However, less attention has been focused on how video games, particularly online educational games designed to teach argumentation, might enhance secondary ELA students' writing development. In this article, we describe how the pedagogical feedback provided by one such game, Quandary, influenced two seventh graders' written arguments in advocacy letters addressed to the state governor regarding a local environmental disaster. We compare these two embedded cases to data from 10 focal students, as well as patterns from 114 seventh graders (in five ELA classes). Based on our analysis of screen-capture video of students' gameplay, drafts of their advocacy letters, and video-stimulated recall interviews, we conclude that game feedback rewarding or penalizing predetermined right or wrong player moves may encourage students to develop argumentation strategies that are less effective in more complex rhetorical situations and may foster a false sense of competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports an investigation of a professional development program to enhance elementary teachers' ability to engage their students in argument from evidence in science. Using a quasi-experimental approach, three versions were compared: Version A—a 1-week summer institute with a 2-week summer practicum experience and 8 follow-up days (four per year), Version B without the practicum experience, and Version C—a revision of Version A in Year 3. All teachers were videoed twice each year, and the videos were rated using an instrument to measure the quality of discourse. All versions led to a significant improvement in teachers' facilitation of classroom discourse. Neither the practicum nor the revised program had an additional effect. Implications for the field are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For entrepreneurial narratives to be effective, they need to be judged as plausible and have to resonate with an audience. Prior research has, however, not examined or explained how entrepreneurs try to meet these criteria. In this article, we addressed this question by analysing the micro-level arguments underpinning the pitch narratives of entrepreneurs who joined a business incubator. We discerned four previously unidentified rhetorical strategies that these entrepreneurs used to achieve narrative plausibility and resonance. Our findings further suggest that temporality and product development status may shape how entrepreneurs use these strategies. By outlining these aspects of entrepreneurial rhetoric, we contribute to opening up the black box of narrative resonance and plausibility and advance work on the role of rhetoric in entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project aimed to develop an engaging formative assessment that simulates the social and dialogic processes that are often missing in traditional instruction and assessment of argumentation. In this article, we describe the design of an argumentative reasoning task within a scenario-based assessment enhanced with game elements (Seaball—Semester at Sea). This Seaball task requires students to classify foods as "junk food" or not, by identifying relevant evidence to support their decisions and evaluating reasoning errors in others' arguments. Data from a small-scale study of 42 middle school students revealed that students performed significantly better on questions requiring selection of appropriate evidence than questions requiring identification of logical fallacies. Additionally, students' total scores were significantly correlated with external measures of argumentation skills, and with teacher's ratings of their argumentative writing skills. Survey indicated that students perceived the game-enhanced scenario-based assessment as engaging. Implications for formative assessment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argumentation schema theory guided four experiments on the processing of plausible and implausible reasons and warrant statements testing the hypothesis that most reasons produce greater agreement with claims than when claims are presented without support. Another hypothesis was that leaving warrants unstated often produces greater agreement than when the warrant is made explicit. In Study 1, American participants were more likely to agree with claims after they read arguments than beforehand—even those with implausible reasons and warrants. In Study 2, American history and environmental science majors read brief arguments and agreed more with implausible arguments than claims alone. Study 3, with Chinese participants, replicated some but not all earlier results. In Study 4, with Chinese participants, blatantly false claims supported by bogus reasons yielded marginally greater agreement than unsupported claims. These findings suggest that many people have uncritical argumentation schemata with low support thresholds, making them vulnerable to weak and bogus arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerical arguments are increasingly present in security communication and are widely assumed to possess a distinct capacity to make an argument convincing, thereby contributing to the dynamics of securitization. Yet, does the inclusion of numbers really enhance the strength of rhetorical attempts to convince an audience that something or someone is a security problem? We examine this question by developing an experimental design that connects cognitive theories of information processing with theories of security and risk communication. Contrary to a widely shared view, our results suggest that numbers do not have a direct, unambiguous, or unconditional impact on the strength of security rhetoric. Quantitative information only enhances direct attempts to securitize issues under very specific circumstances and, even in these cases, has ambiguous effects. Factors such as the legitimacy of the individual who makes the argument may play an important role in determining the impact of numbers in security communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how two conflicting views regarding science-society relations—science as the arbiter of truth and as a social endeavor—perpetuate a tension in the way scientific consensus and evidence are called upon in climate change debate. In our analysis of interviews with climate change campaigners, we employ argumentation theory and social representations theory to identify and account for three discursive strategies of responding to climate contrarian arguments: direct confrontation by dichotomous arguments, de-dichotomization by addressing background assumptions, and concession to minor scientific uncertainties. We discuss these strategies emphasizing the science-society relations evident in each. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facilitating students’ acquisition of higherorder thinking skills is imperative in the 21st century. Although some types of text have been shown to enhance higherorder thinking, the effects of many novel forms of text have yet to be investigated. As such, the purpose of the present study was to explore the extent to which a relatively novel form of text (i.e., intratextual persuasive message) served as a catalyst for students’ higherorder thinking as evidenced in the quantity, quality, and content of their arguments before and after reading. The findings revealed that the quantity of students’ arguments increased from prereading to postreading and the content of the reasons provided by the students was more in line with those of the authors, whereas the quality of students’ arguments decreased over time. Interestingly, relatively few students altered their position on the central question from the text. Rather, the nature of the data indicated that students engaged in case-building as they read the text. As a result, the intratextual persuasive message was only minimally effective at enhancing students’ higherorder thinking. Implications for research and practice are forwarded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An arguer's position at a given point in an argument can be characterized as a set of commitments. The present study considers the perceptions of ordinary language users about the implications of making a concession for the contents of the conceder's commitment set. In particular, we examine two sources of influence on such lay perceptions—conversational distance(i.e., the number of turns separating the concession from commitments incurred earlier in the argument) and an individual'sprior beliefsregarding the content of the argument. Across two studies, college students were administered an argument task assessing the extent to which a concession by the protagonist of an argument on the last move indicated changes to other commitments incurred earlier in the argument. Results indicated that participants were more likely to judge a concession as indicating a change in prior commitments if (a) the commitment was incurred later in the argument than earlier, and (b) the participant disagreed with the protagonists’ thesis in the argument. In addition, performance on deductive reasoning tasks predicted individual differences in the conversational distance effect, but not the belief bias effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most assessments of students’ argumentive writing and in most research on the topic, students write on topics for which they have no specific prior preparation. We examined development in the argumentive writing urban middle school students did as part of a two-year dialogic-based intervention in which students engaged deeply with a series of topics and participated in various kinds of electronic and verbal dialogic activities related to the topic. Students’ achievements exceeded those typical of the extemporaneous expository writing of middle school students. The gradual developments observed over time included ones in (a) addressing and seeking to weaken the opposing position, (b) identifying weaknesses in a favored position and strengths in an opposing one, (c) connecting and integrating opposing arguments, and (d) using evidence to weaken as well as support claims. In addition to identifying a trajectory of what develops in the development of argumentive writing, these analyses support the claim of dialogic argumentation as a productive bridge to individual argumentive writing and highlight the contribution of deep engagement with the topic in enhancing writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that novice writers tend to ignore opposing viewpoints when framing and developing arguments in writing, a phenomenon commonly referred to as my-side bias. In the present article, we contrast two forms of argumentative discourse conditions (arguing to persuade and arguing to reach consensus) and examine their differential effects on my-side bias in writing. Our data reveal that when asked to write an essay to support their opinions on capital punishment, individuals who had argued to reach consensus were more likely to cite claims that challenge their position, reconcile these claims with their position, and make use of claims that had originally been introduced by their dialogue partners. We discuss these findings in light of educational policy and practice and caution against an overemphasis on using persuasive discourse as a means of teaching argumentative reasoning and writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative intellectual engagement is held in high regard in contemporary educational thought as a pedagogical practice of broad value to K–12 students. To what extent is this enthusiasm warranted? Is the practice uniformly productive, or does variability exist in the contexts in which collaboration is effective, the mechanisms involved, and the objectives achieved? In addition to examining these questions, this article suggests further questions that might be addressed with the objective of establishing a more comprehensive base of evidence to substantiate the practice of collaborative learning. Finally, the article reconsiders why collaborative cognition should be a critical concern. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Common topics are words or phrases used to develop argument, and commonplaces aid memory or catalyze frames of understanding. When used in argumentation, each may help interested parties more effectively communicate valuable scientific and environment-related information. This article describes 12 modern topics of environmental rhetoric, identified from 125 interviews, and discusses them in relation to their topical fluidity and managerial, generative, and encapsulated utility: “Al Gore,” “balance,” “common sense,” “environment as setting,” “experience,” “extremism,” “man’s achievements,” “pragmatism,” “proof,” “religion,” “recycling,” and “seeing is believing.” Findings suggest that “environment” is a complex topic with many potential implications—using topics common to environmental rhetoric to shape argumentation may facilitate more productive environment-related communication. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The influence of one teacher’s scaffolding moves on children’s performance in free-flowing child-led small-group discussions was investigated. Three moves were examined: prompting for and praising the use of evidence, asking for clarification, and challenging. Lag sequential analysis was applied to a corpus of over 5,300 speaking turns during 30 discussions to identify recurrent turn-by-turn patterns of teacher-child and child-child talk initiated by the teacher’s moves. A complex system of influence among discussion participants was documented in which the teacher’s moves had delayed effects as well as immediate effects, indirect as well as direct effects, and reciprocal instead of unidirectional effects. Some children appropriated scaffolding moves of the teacher and began to spontaneously employ the moves in later discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The resources of rhetorical theory, the classical theory of persuasion, can be marshaled to help physicians evaluate patient complaints for which there is no corresponding objective evidence and which rely, therefore, on the persuasiveness of patients to be taken seriously (contestable complaints). An appropriate focus for the evaluation of such complaints is argumentation itself: what, in the absence of objective evidence of disease, counts as a good argument for a patient to be eligible for medical attention? How do patients convince physicians that they are ill and in need of care — and, conversely, how do physicians convince patients, when the need arises, that they are well and not good candidates for medical intervention? Two rhetorical concepts are especially productive for the analysis of argumentation. One is kairos, the Sophistic notion of contingency, and the other is pisteis, the Aristotelian catalogue of persuasive appeals. A focus on types of arguments directs attention away from types of patients (difficult, suspect, malingering and so on), and provides a more neutral means of judging claims to illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of the professional discourse of literary studies have focused solely on published scholarly articles and have produced contradictory evidence regarding the knowledge-building function of literary argument. In this study, 9 English department faculty members use a ‘think-aloud’ procedure to read four lyric poems and compose a short text proposing a hypothetical conference talk about them for a professional conference. Data are analyzed using the commonplaces, or ‘special topoi,’ of literary argument. Results show that (a) different topoi are used when scholars read literary texts and in constructing written arguments and (b) some special topoi are used for communal knowledge building and others are used as audience appeals that may not reflect a commitment to knowledge building. The author concludes by comparing the findings of the study to those of other researchers of literary argument and to those of researchers of scientific argument construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functional interdependence of word, image, narration, and reason is recognized as a fundamental condition of modem-day persuasion, yet a substantial gap still exists in our understanding of how static textual elements interact to generate dynamic, persuasive narratives. This article attempts to narrow that gap in understanding through the development of a simulation semantics approach to rhetorical analysis as applied to print advertisements in medical journals. Located within the broader field of cognitive linguistics, simulation semantics is a theory of linguistic meaning based on the hypothesis that language users run mental simulations of perceptual and motor content of experiences which distribute inferences from these simulations during language comprehension and production. Using the perspectives and methods of conceptual blending, a programmatic model of meaning construction developed by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) and elaborated by many associates (e.g. Brandt and Brandt, 2002; Coulson and Oakley, 2000), the article attempts to show how a simulation semantic approach can lead to cognitively plausible explanations of how persuasion works in a genre of print advertisements aimed at physicians and medical practitioners I call learning-for-doing. In addition, I seek to further refine conceptual blending theory as an interpretive framework by arguing for the need to incorporate the notion of a grounding space as well as the need to distinguish between conceptual blending and conceptual integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of four instructional methods on students' mathematical reasoning and metacognitive knowledge. The participants were 384 eighth-grade students. The instructional methods were cooperative learning combined with metacognitive training (COOP+META), individualized learning combined with metacognitive training (IND+META), cooperative learning without metacognitive training (COOP), and individualized learning without metacognitive training (IND). Results showed that the COOP+META group significantly outperformed the IND+META group, which in turn significantly outperformed the COOP and IND groups on graph interpretation and various aspects of mathematical explanations. Furthermore, the metacognitive groups (COOP+META and IND+META) outperformed their counterparts (COOP and IND) on graph construction (transfer tasks) and metacognitive knowledge. This article construction (transfer tasks) and metacognitive knowledge. This article presents theoretical and practical implications of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel (as opposed to familiar) tasks can be contexts for students' development of new knowledge. But managing such development is a complex activity for a teacher. The actions that a teacher took in managing the development of the mathematical concept of area in the context of a task comparing card stock triangles are examined. The observation is made that some of the teacher's actions shaped the mathematics at play in ways that seemed to counter the goals of the task. This article seeks to explain a possible rationality behind those contradictory actions. The hypothesis is presented that in managing task completion and knowledge development a teacher has to cope with three subject-specific tensions related to direction of activity, representation of mathematical objects, and elicitation of students' conceptual actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers data from a hospital that was introducing an experimental new facility onto an existing site, including the process of institutionalization of the argument 'The new facility requires radically new working practices.' The data are used to test a proposed integration of Barley and Tolbert's (1997) model of the psychological mechanisms involved in institutionalization with a political model of how motives vary during the stages of organizational change. There is some empirical support for a congruence between the two models, namely, that psychological encoding matches with political recognition, psychological enactment matches with political transition, and psychological replication and externalization match with political consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, discourse makes and sustains the worlds we live in. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is one form of a justifiably reflective and suspicious inspection of how discourses shape and frame us; and it is explicitly intent on making a difference, and not merely describing extant conditions. Why, then, has it met with some resistance from language analysts? For CDA to make more of a difference, I argue it needs to critique some of its own theoretical distinctions (e.g. between description and interpretive explanation), it needs to be more critical and more demanding of the text linguistics it uses, it must strive for greater thoroughness and strength of evidence in its argumentation while pursuing simplicity of presentation, and it must not shrink from prescribing correction or reform of particular hegemonizing discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]