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Writing is hard for students who are learning English; they often find it challenging to transform what is on their mind in writing. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between the writing test and assessment writing through argumentative writing. Data was analyzed using the correlation test to determine the close relationship between independent and dependent variables. This study involved 100 students from the Department of English Education at the University of Riau, Indonesia. The results showed that the writing test and assessment writing was closely related, as evidenced by the influence and significance between the writing test and assessment writing, which was tested through argumentative writing. The results revealed that the writing test and assessment writing have similar results. Overall, both variables are equally important and related.

The purpose of this study is to see how the inquiry-based nature of science (NOS) argumentation (IB-NOSA) instructional model affects scientific literacy skills. This research used a quasi-experimental method. The design of this research is a pretest-posttest control group design. This study describes the significance of the differences between participants who learn through IB-NOSA, guided inquiry, and discovery learning model. The subjects of this study were 288 students of grade VIII in the 2022/2023 academic year from three junior high schools in Sleman, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Data analysis in this study used an analysis of variances (ANOVA) mixed design. The result showed that there was a difference between the pretest-posttest scores of scientific literacy skills in each group. There was a significant increase in the pretest-posttest scores of scientific literacy skills in each group. Effect size showed that the IB-NOSA in increased scientific literacy skills was 0.79; the guided inquiry was 0.76; and the discovery learning was 0.71. The IB-NOSA was the most effective in improving scientific literacy skills with a gain score of 0.49 (medium). So, it can be concluded that the IB-NOSA instructional model can be used as an alternative solution in improving scientific literacy skills.

This study aimed to investigate grade-7 students' negotiation during the engineering design process regarding the students' status of argumentation training. The participants were 33 students studying at a public urban middle school in Turkey. They worked in small groups on four engineering design tasks about electricity and light. Data were collected through small group audio recordings, student worksheets, and the observation. The data were analyzed by using content analysis. The results indicated that negotiation patterns were similar across all groups. However, differences were found between the group that received argumentation training and the one that did not receive in terms of proposing ideas for material design, using justifications when in agreement with others, counter proposing and acquiring information for better planning and altering the design, and critiquing for design advantages and disadvantages.

Mathematical reasoning has been a critical concern in Turkey especially since the structure of the student selection examination for high schools changed six years ago. The ability to solve the questions in the new exam requires high level reasoning and argumentation skills. Schools, whether they are public or private, prepare 8th graders for this exam with intense educational programs. They frequently use skill-based questions--similar questions to the ones in the new exam, which require high level mathematical reasoning. This study indicates that students gain better mathematical reasoning skills in learning environments promoting collective discussion and argumentation. Hence, these questions need to be solved in these kinds of environments. In this study, two cases are analyzed to understand the argumentation process in classrooms in depth. Audiotapes of two 8 th grade classrooms, one from a public school, another from a private school, are analyzed. The same teaching material--a worksheet including skill-based questions--is used in the classrooms. During analyzing, qualified argumentation pattern--a pattern including students' claims and justifications/evaluations for those claims--is defined. Analysis of classroom audiotapes revealed that that there are significant differences between two classrooms' argumentation structure and type of dialogues emerged in the classroom. In one classroom there is a more qualified argumentation process than in the other classroom. In addition, analysis of the type of the dialogues indicates that two classrooms have different types of dialogues. Overall, the study reveals that despite the differences, both classrooms mostly included teacher-individual interactions and they have little collective discussion.

Background: In Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes, there are concerns about student teachers' English language proficiency. Aim: To discuss the first iteration of the PrimTEd English language and literacy test and analyse the results for information about the test instrument and about student teacher attainment. Setting: South African student teachers in BEd programmes preparing for teaching in primary schools, across six public universities, participated in the test from 2020 to 2022. Methods: The student results for the PrimTEd English assessment were analysed using basic statistics, focussing on the largest samples of first-year and fourth-year students who took both the subtests. The items in each subtest were coded according to their underlying language constructs, and each subtest was subjected to Rasch analysis before the test was considered as a whole. Results: The initial test showed the attainment of fourth-year students (mean = 55%, standard deviation [SD] = 21%, n = 731) was only 3 percentage points higher than that of first-year students (mean = 52%, SD = 20%, n = 1177). Conclusion: The similarities between the first- and fourth-year students' test results is concerning. There remains much work to be done in building student teachers' English language proficiency in BEd programmes. Contribution: The findings and recommendations should be useful to ITE lecturers in designing programmes that enable progressive development of English language and literacy competence from first year to graduation.

The aim of this study is to increase pre-service science teachers' awareness of climate change through online argumentation activities. The study prepared pre-service training content based on online argumentation to increase climate change awareness. For the training, activities were prepared based on online argumentation for the sub-dimensions of climate change, which are content knowledge, awareness of the effects of climate change, awareness of personal initiatives, awareness of industrial initiatives, and tendencies towards preventing climate change. Expert opinions were taken about the activities and then they were finalized. Data was collected through an open-ended questionnaire applied as pre- and post-test. 32 pre-service science teachers from 22 different universities across Türkiye participated in the online training. The climate change awareness form was applied before and after the training. Data was analyzed using a content analysis approach. As a result of the study, it was observed that there was a significant difference in the pre-service teachers' content knowledge of climate change, and they provided more justifications in the sub-dimensions of climate change awareness after the training, and their awareness increased.

Social interactions, including collaborative problem-solving situations, can trigger critical thinking skills. Giving questions that are not routine can trigger students' critical thinking skills in solving problems collaboratively. This research aims to develop non-routine mathematics problems that can be used to explore students' critical thinking abilities in collaborative problem-solving. The research results show that questions with problem criteria that require justification for the solution provided and questions with a graphical analysis approach can be used to explore students' critical thinking skills in collaborative problem-solving. This is proven by solving the problems; each group member contributed to the solution-finding process. The contribution of each group member shows the high intensity of interaction between members. Interaction in the form of exchanging opinions, giving suggestions, and evaluating each other's ideas or answers significantly impacts students' critical thinking abilities. This is seen by the emergence of several students' critical thinking skills (analysis, synthesis, argumentation, evaluation, self-regulation) triggered by suggestions or ideas put forward by other group members. The research results can be a reference for researchers or practitioners exploring critical thinking skills as a guide in developing research instruments.

Inspired by Rebecca Oxford's thought-provoking reflections on language learning strategies, and particularly her orchestra metaphor on how the strategies work together, I conducted a study that seeks to understand how non-native writers employ, configure, sequence and combine individual writing strategies when creating a text in the target language. Four dyads of undergraduate students of English were video-recorded while jointly writing an argumentative essay. The transcripts were analyzed using a general inductive approach to uncover writing strategies emerging in the writing process and to explore how individual strategies are coordinated in task completion. The most important finding is that writers do not randomly sequence the strategies, but they orchestrate them to attain the desired goal. Metaphorically, learners combine writing strategies into 'symphonies of strategies', mirroring the way different instruments of an orchestra create music.

Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) is a pedagogical practice that aims to enhance thinking skills through group dialogue. One way it achieves this goal is by providing exposure to arguments. In a philosophical group dialogue, participants encounter, examine, or construct arguments. These arguments not only emerge spontaneously during discussions but are also integrated into specific activities, some of which draw from the history of philosophy. This report comprises four parts detailing the use of argument maps in P4wc sessions.

Argumentation-based classroom interventions are a growing alternative for stimulating conceptual learning, thinking, and communicative skills. However, not all classroom argumentation is desired, nor does every argumentation design lead students to develop their abilities and understanding. In the educational literature, productive argumentation has been associated particularly with deliberation due to the design properties that deliberative practices demand from students, such as collaborating towards a goal, revising one's own opinion, listening to others, and changing their minds when it is necessary to arrive at a collective decision or problem resolution. We contend that what makes deliberation productive is not argumentation in itself, but how a certain type of design scaffolds students into virtuous-like behavior, which can be the enabling condition for productive argumentation in classroom activities. Through the exploration of three cases of classroom argumentation and discussion experiences, we hypothesize that virtuous-like behavior may serve as an enabling condition for each intervention. In particular, intellectually humble behaviors could be scaffolded within these interventions because all three create the proper environment for students to revise their own positions, listen carefully to others, and change their minds in light of appropriate reasoning or new evidence. Employing an intellectual virtues framework, advances our understanding of how to design classroom environments for productive argumentation. This paper thus presents a novel and pioneering approach to understanding argumentation in the classroom by incorporating the concept of intellectual virtues, bridging the gap between virtues and traditional research, and offering fresh perspectives on the field.

The application of effective teaching methods needs to be implemented to improve the quality of microbiology education which can empower important competencies in the current era. This study aims to analyze the application and trajectory of argumentation-based inquiry learning through the application of microbiology lectures. This research uses research design methods consisting of preliminary design steps, teaching experiments and retrospective analysis. The source of the data comes from student learning activities in argumentation-based inquiry learning implemented in microbiology courses. The results showed that the learning trajectory of Hypothetical Learning Trajectory (HLT) in microbiology lectures with an argumentation-based inquiry model was in accordance with the stages of student research ranging from determining research themes, compiling proposals, designing and implementing data collection, analyzing data, discussing research results, writing research reports to conducting scientific publications in journals. Students who carry out microbiology lectures using argumentation-based inquiry learning through the implementation of different research in the field of microbiology experience a similar learning trajectory so that a specific and distinctive set of Hypothetical Learning Trajectory (HLT) can be formulated.

Although feminist pedagogy has been widely used as a teaching approach in classrooms in higher education to enhance diversity, issues of race and gender are often areas of contestations for non-White faculty. The purpose of this study was to explore how non-White professors, a Black woman tenured full professor and a gay Asian male pre-tenured professor, co-created a feminist classroom and how they negotiated power in that classroom environment. The research questions that guided this study were: 1) what does a feminist classroom look like in higher education; 2) how does the intersection of race and gender influence feminist pedagogy; and 3) what strategies do adult educators and practitioners use to deal with disoriented dilemmas? This research progressed into a longitudinal study, focusing on how the faculty members' praxes grew from critical classroom incidents that the professors believed directly related the negative reactions from students to their positionalities as a Black woman and an Asian man. Three themes emerged from the data: a) Confrontation, b) Resistance, and c) Hostility. Each of these themes are defined and presented through direct quotes from our teaching logs and students' reflections. Discussion and implications for practice are also provided regarding how race and gender matter in feminist classrooms. The concluding section describes how the two faculty members implemented reflective practices in higher education to create feminist classrooms.

In this research, the effects of using Model-Based and Argumentation-Supported Model-Based Inquiry methods on 6th-grade middle school students' knowledge, scientific process skills, and motivation regarding the subject of sound and its properties were examined according to the current curriculum. A total of 77 students attending a state school participated in the study that employed a mixed research design. In the semi-experimental study, two experimental groups and one control group were used. Lessons were taught according to the model-based inquiry method supported by argumentation in the first experimental group, according to the model-based inquiry method in the second experimental group, and according to the current curriculum in the control group. In the research, achievement tests, scientific process skills tests, and motivation scales were administered as pre-tests and post-tests for data collection. The obtained data were analyzed using One-Way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). According to the obtained results, it has been determined that the Model-Based and Argumentation-Supported Model-Based Inquiry methods significantly differ from the current curriculum in terms of student achievement and motivation. Furthermore, it has been observed that the Argumentation-Supported Model-Based Inquiry method is more effective than the Model-Based Inquiry method in enhancing students' development of scientific process skills.

The use of language in digital discourse for marketing has rapidly developed through mass media. This paper elucidates how advertisers employ various pragmatic strategies to persuade the recipient to act (behavior) by purchasing specific products. This study utilized different theoretical and conceptual frameworks (Theory of Reasoned Action and Aristotle's Models of Persuasion) to address the shortcomings of the social cognitive approach in studying persuasion, to investigate how language of advertisements can influence the recipient's thinking of a product from a psychological perspective. Guided by the principles of TRA, the present study argues that persuasion in advertisements is structured by three dimensions: attraction (through language features and appeals), evaluation (through beliefs, attitudes, and intention), and behavior (social acceptance or reluctance). This study revealed eight persuasion techniques employed by advertisers including demonstrating distinction, honoring commitment, expressing authority, hyperbolizing, glorification, providing proofs, expressing solidarity, and proving success. Showing distinction and Honoring commitment were the most frequently used strategies. Additionally, the study found that strategies of persuasion involved ethical, logical, and emotional appeals for their large effect on the recipient as they contribute to the recipient's positive evaluations. Appealing to reasoning (logic) is the most common one in slogans.

The most important skill in modern education is critical thinking and its necessary elements are agencies and voices which are force, ability, or power to make decisions or changes. Despite numerous efforts to increase Thai students' critical thinking skills, their ability to construct social and academic arguments is still far too weak. In addition, while these efforts mainly focus on students' critical thinking skills, little attention has been given to other education stakeholders such as education, institutions, schools, and teachers which potentially provide room for teachers and students to be critical. In this study, we investigated the ideological indexation of education stakeholders in a series of Thai educational policies (TEPs) years 2016-2018 from the Ministry of Education, Thailand. In TEPs, we utilized the corpus linguistic frequency function to locate the possible stakeholders and applied the framework of syntactic corpus analysis for agency identification (FO-SCAAI) to lexically elicit their agencies and voices which are important elements in modern education. The findings revealed an understanding of the representation of varying degrees of education stakeholders' agencies in TEPs. The implications of this study will lead to the realization that education stakeholders lack agencies and voices. We hope that upon realizing their lack of agency, the involved parties will make changes by providing more agencies to education stakeholders through modern education in Thai education policies.

With the rise of neoliberal reforms and efforts to privatize education, there is a growing need to examine how actors and groups from the public and private sectors influence educational policy change together. In this article, we advance a critical approach to understanding the changing discursive space of educational politics by following discourses through an expansive policy network that goes beyond its traditional boundaries. Specifically, we draw on argumentative discourse analysis (ADA), which allows for the analysis of how and why various actors and groups come together to assign certain meanings to educational phenomena or problems, leading to policy responses or changes. Rooted in Foucault's notions of discourse and power, ADA offers a unique approach to discourse analysis that can illuminate policy change through discourse coalitions. Three case studies from educational policy scholarship are discussed to illustrate the value and utility of ADA in future critical education policy studies.

This research explores the innovative integration of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 within a university-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing course, illustrating a novel approach to academic instruction. The course follows the ADDIE instructional design model, encompassing five systematic stages: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. This model serves as the backbone of the course structure, ensuring a comprehensive educational experience. The incorporation of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework in this course facilitates the effective integration of GPT-3.5 by enabling instructors to align advanced AI capabilities with appropriate pedagogical strategies, thereby enhancing the learning experience. TPACK guides educators in applying GPT-3.5's features in a manner that is contextually relevant and pedagogically sound, ensuring the technology's use complements the course content. The findings from this research are significant. They reveal that GPT-3.5 addresses three fundamental challenges often encountered in academic writing courses. Firstly, it enhances efficiency by providing immediate feedback and generating content ideas, accelerating the writing process. Secondly, GPT-3.5 ensures cohesive organization within students' writing, guiding them to structure their thoughts more logically. Lastly, it serves as a reliable substitute for traditional peer reviewers, offering critical and objective feedback that students can use to refine their drafts. As students engage with AI, they enter a dynamic partnership. This collaboration with GPT-3.5 fosters critical thinking and empowers students to develop a distinctive writing voice. Through this interaction, students are not merely passive recipients of knowledge but active participants in a learning process that is augmented by cutting-edge technology. This study not only provides insight into the potential of AI-augmented academic writing but also highlights GPT-3.5's role in promoting writing proficiency. It demonstrates that the application of AI in education can enhance the learning experience without compromising the individuality of student expression.

Students are required to master effective sentences to support their writing skills. However, students often struggle with comprehending and constructing effective sentences due to their limited proficiency and competence. This research examines the comprehension of effective sentences through grammaticality judgment tests and its implications for writing instruction. This research employs mixed methods. Two hundred three first-semester students from Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang were selected for research using purposive sampling. Data was collected using grammaticality judgment tests and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was carried out quantitatively using the Mann-Whitney U Test and qualitatively to describe patterns of findings. The results showed that 57% of students comprehended quite well, and 25% comprehended. Learners' comprehension of effective sentences is predominantly concerned with language efficiency rather than grammatical structure and lack of explicit linguistic knowledge. Effective sentences, especially parallelism, clarity, and explicit linguistic knowledge, are partially understood. The Mann-Whitney U Test shows that first- and second-language students comprehend effective sentences identically. Furthermore, male and female learners are dissimilar in their ability to comprehend effective sentences. Writing learning can emphasise mastery of effective sentences, explicit language knowledge, and collaborative writing based on language acquisition order and student gender. These findings can be applied to writing instruction by improving students' mastery of effective sentences in collaborative writing.

This study focused on investigating common writing errors made by a group of Thai students who participated in online collaborative writing using Google Docs, and understanding their satisfaction and attitudes on this writing approach. The participants consisted 32 Thai first-year English major students who were purposively selected from their Writing I course. The researcher collected and analyzed eight argumentative pieces of writing, identifying a total of 484 errors. The most frequently occurring error areas were incomplete sentences (15.75%), spelling mistakes (13.50%), and word choice issues (12.25%), with grammatical errors being the most prevalent (72%). Following grammatical errors were lexical (12%) and mechanical errors (4%). To gauge students' satisfactions and attitudes, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were employed. The findings revealed that the students were highly satisfied with online collaborative writing with an average satisfaction score of 3.50. Overall, the students exhibited a positive attitude towards online collaborative writing, finding it useful due to its flexibility in terms of allowing them to work from anywhere at any time and for its ability to boost their motivation. The study's findings provide valuable insights for English teaching professionals in Thailand to consider when instructing students in writing.

This study examined the effects of students' argumentation standpoints on their argumentation learning in the context of socio-scientific issues (SSIs). To that end, four kinds of argumentation standpoints were defined: affirmative standpoints, oppositional standpoints, multiple standpoints, and non-standpoints. These four kinds of standpoints allow for six possible combinations of any two of the different kinds of standpoints, which enabled us to conduct six kinds of 2-team format debates. The resulting differences of students' four types of arguments (i.e., claims, warrants, rebuttals, and qualifiers) generated in six types of debates were examined. This study invited 208 10th-grade students to participate in a quasi-experimental research design. The results showed the affirmative group students demonstrated superior performance in terms of claims and warrants, and the oppositional group students had the largest number of rebuttals. The students in the debate with combinations of affirmative and oppositional groups exhibited the best performance regarding the generation of claims, warrants, and rebuttals. Based on the results, the present study concluded the standpoint had significant effects on the students' argumentation learning, which suggests that teachers can investigate students' standpoint on the learning topic of SSI and their prior knowledge about the standpoint before teaching.

This study aimed at examining the performance of generative artificial intelligence to extract argumentation elements from text. Thus, the researchers developed a web-based framework to provide automated assessment and feedback relying on a large language model, ChatGPT. The results produced by ChatGPT were compared to human experts across scientific and non-scientific contexts. The findings revealed marked discrepancies in the performance of AI for extracting argument components, with a significant variance between issues of a scientific nature and those that are not. Higher accuracy was noted in identifying claims, data, and qualifiers, as opposed to rebuttals, backing, and warrants. The study illuminated AI's promise for educational applications but also its shortcomings, such as the increased frequency of erroneous element identification when accuracy was low. This highlights the essential need for more in-depth comparative research on models and the further development of AI to enhance its role in supporting argumentation training.

This study describes the factors that enhanced students' construction of arguments when participating in culturally infused discussions at an undergraduate English as a foreign language British Culture course. The research was conducted at a university in Northwestern Colombia. This paper presents a section of the results of a larger project whose objective is to identify the elements that aid participants in building and elaborating arguments in culturally infused discussions. Socratic questioning was an integral element of the discussions. To attain the purpose of this study, a qualitative single-case design was employed. Findings show that the factors facilitating the construction of arguments could potentially be peer scaffolding, previous knowledge, connection to participants' reality, and curiosity and inquiry. This study makes important contributions to the field of critical thinking skills work in English as a foreign language setting, particularly argumentation, as it sheds light on relevant aspects to foster students' collaborative argumentation.

This study investigated EFL classroom talk using Halliday and Matthiessen's (2013) meta-functions framework. Four female participants, including two experienced and two inexperienced teachers, taught similar grammar subjects to their intact classes. Classes were video-recorded and transcribed by the researchers. The meta-functions included topical themes, multiple themes, theme markedness and theme patterning. The results demonstrated differences between the experienced and inexperienced teachers' discourse on the use of simple themes, multiple themes, marked themes, and theme patterning. The total number of simple themes used by the inexperienced teachers was higher than their experienced colleagues, except for the interrogative clauses. However, the experienced teachers used more interpersonal and textual themes. In addition, patterns of theme development were found to be different in discourses of experienced and inexperienced teachers. The researchers concluded that the experienced teachers' talk was more cohesive, elaborated, and systematic. Moreover, it was shown that experience can play an important role in shaping language teachers' talk and theme/rheme distinction can be used as an effective tool to investigate the nature of it. Several implications concerning various stakeholders are provided at the end.

This study aimed to analyze common syntactic errors found in the argumentative essays of third-year English major students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Van Lang University, Vietnam. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to obtain data in this study. The quantitative approach involved counting and calculating the frequency, percentage, and ranking of syntactic errors, while the qualitative method was adopted to explain these errors. The instrument for collecting data was argumentative essays written by 37 third-year English majors enrolling in Writing-5 at Van Lang University. Microsoft Word was used to collect and analyze syntactic errors and sentence structures, while Microsoft Excel was employed to calculate the frequency and rank of these errors and structures. The results found that the five most frequent errors in their essays were at the noun phrase and sentence levels. These errors included run-on sentences, preposition errors, article errors, sentence fragments, and pronoun errors. Through error analysis, it was indicated that the majority of errors made by students were due to the negative transfer from their first language and the literal translation. Based on the findings, language teachers and syllabus designers could use these results as guidance to design appropriate teaching methods and materials.

Scientific argumentation skills are a key component of science learning practices needed by students in the 21st century. Where the essence of scientific argumentation is to support the argument with evidence and reasoning and then refute the claims and evidence of the opponent's argument. Supporting arguments with evidence and reasoning can be facilitated through inquiry activities. Meanwhile, refuting claims and evidence from opposing arguments can be facilitated through debate activities. Inquiry and debate can be a solution to improving students' scientific argumentation skills. This study aims to prove the truth of this statement through a systematic literature review by applying the PRISMA 2020 criteria which are expanded by bibliometric analysis with the help of the VOSviewer software. The results of the study show that research related to inquiry, debate, and their influence on students' scientific argumentation skills has a pretty good trend. In Indonesia the research climate is still quite good, research topics are still in great demand, and it is very possible to carry out research innovations on related topics. Another finding is that the integration of inquiry and debate in science learning can be a potential strategy to improve students' scientific argumentation skills.

This study investigated the use and functions of metadiscourse markers in English as a foreign language (EFL) virtual classroom during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study examined which metadiscourse markers--interactive or interactional--were used more frequently and how they were employed in an EFL context. It explored two interactive metadiscourse resources (code glosses and evidentials) and two interactional metadiscourse resources (attitude and engagement markers). The study utilized a mixed-method approach, using Hyland's (2004) two-componential taxonomy, to analyze a corpus of 303,148 words from 35 online lectures (90 minutes each) delivered by three university instructors in the UAE. The Mann-Whitney U test was employed to determine any significant differences in the use of these resources and their subcategories. The results revealed that the three instructors used more interactional than interactive resources. The qualitative analysis showed that code glosses and evidentials were primarily used to manage the flow of information, provide elaboration on propositional content, and provide evidence to support arguments. They were also employed to achieve cohesion and logical coherence in online classrooms. In contrast, attitude and engagement markers were used to engage students and signal the instructors' attitudes toward their material and audience. The study concludes with pedagogical implications for EFL instructors, students, and syllabus designers to foster social justice and fairness in the online learning environment, ensuring all students feel valued and empowered in their educational journey.

Understanding by Design (UbD) is a well-known curricular methodology aiming at leading students to develop a deep understanding of the arguments proposed by teachers. Through a path including stimulating questions, student motivation, deepening of the argument, reflection, design and assessment of authentic performances, the students develop a broad understanding of the learned argument. While there are plenty of articles describing various experiences in classrooms and schools showing the benefits of UbD, rarely has this methodology been the object of experimental or quasi-experimental studies. A study conforming to quasi-experimental criteria has been performed in a Swiss vocational school, where a teacher taught two groups of students using UbD principles, while using with a third group a more usual teaching approach. The curriculum topic was the study of mathematical relations and functions. The results, collected during one school year, showed that the first two groups outperformed the third and that the effect of UbD lasted at least for one school year. Since the teacher remained the same, we can likely attribute the outcome to the use of the methodology.

Enhancing proficiency in argumentative writing in English has always been a challenge for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Despite the widespread use of argumentative essays in international tests such as International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and Tests of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in recent years, the learners usually fail to meet satisfactory achievement levels in the EFL context. This paper investigates the issue closely by reviewing Myanmar EFL learners' needs, wants, and problems in developing argumentative writing. Although there has been some discussion on factors that potentially challenge EFL learners' argumentative writing, more research is needed on the integrated assessment to cater to the learners' needs. This analysis reports the results of a group of undergraduates (n = 44) in Myanmar. This research was based on triangulation data, including sources from questionnaires administered to the students' purposes, preferences, and challenges, and analyzing students' argumentative writing structurally and qualitatively for reasoning. The findings reveal that students were eager to learn argumentative writing, particularly for their immediate needs. Though students were not well trained with a communicative teaching approach in their curriculum, they preferred to learn argumentative writing dialogically, using classroom debates. They favored learning future argumentative writing courses by communicating meaningfully. Regarding the challenges in argumentative writing, most students could not produce counterarguments and rebuttals. Based on the data elicited from the students, this needs analysis proposed implementing the integrated learning-to-argue and arguing-to-learn instructions and using argumentative literacy practices to engage students in dialogic learning in the EFL context.

This meta-analysis evaluated how well learners' conceptual understanding, environmental attitudes, and pro-environmental behavior were improved by the Socio-Scientific Issues (SSI)-based approach based on the literature (2017-2021). The research analyzed various studies on the efficacy of SSI-based techniques, such as argumentation, case-oriented approaches, and problem-based learning. The findings showed a strong positive influence on learners' understanding of intricate environmental concerns and their propensity for sustainable conduct. While the study found that the SSI-based approach fosters critical thinking and involvement in several noteworthy ways, it also uncovered potential publication biases in certain aspects. Furthermore, the research stressed the necessity of context-specific strategies and interdisciplinary collaboration to improve the robustness and application of SSI-based interventions in climate change education. The results highlight how the SSI-based approach can cultivate proactive, environmentally conscientious, knowledgeable citizens ready to address urgent global concerns.

Using a product-based teacher professional development workshop in the Just Do Math program as a case, this study investigated the discourse between teachers and teacher educators from three perspectives, namely focus, form, and flow, to see how the two cohorts communicated in the co-construction, whether the co-construction is feasible to produce innovative teaching materials, and what the feasible dialogical modes are for this co-construction. The participants included four experienced university-based mathematics teacher educators and 38 mathematics teachers. The discourse from the eight 3-hour sessions of the workshop was collected. The findings included that both teachers and teacher educators focused more on students' development of concepts than on learning motivation, even if learning motivation was one main problem to be solved. Feasible dialogical modes for co-construction in teacher professional development workshops in the context of East Asian educational cultures were revealed, which could be described as teacher educator-centred but teacher-focused.

Many EFL learners believe writing is a hard skill to master. Project-based learning is argued to be an effective solution to the problem. This study is aimed to look at the effect of Project-based learning (PJBL) on English writing skill for Indonesian EFL learners and their perceptions of PJBL. A mixed-method approach was implemented in this study. A pair sample T-test was used in analyzing the quantitative data of the written test while the descriptive-qualitative technique was applied in analyzing the data of the interview. Participants are thirty-nine tertiary students from Universitas Tidar. From the study, Indonesian EFL learners believe project-based learning influenced their writing skill in many ways. The result of this study is that there was a significant difference in project-based learning on English writing skill in pre and post-test for EFL learners which favor the improvement in grammar, vocabulary, organization, and content writing of the text. Project-based learning enhances the learners in linguistics aspects such as vocabulary knowledge, grammatical conventions, and punctuation. Besides, it also enhanced the learners' critical and creative thinking in the process of writing. In addition, project-based learning also motivated the learners to write as they were habituated to the independent learning situations that demand them to follow through all the processes accordingly: not to be left behind. Further studies are suggested to gain a deeper and broader comprehension of project-based learning's effect on student's writing skill.

We analyze here how pre-service teachers explicate their views about the wave-particle duality of photons and what role it plays in their arguments supporting the quantum nature of light. The data for the analysis is provided by 12 written reports about the double-slit experiment with feeble light. The analysis is based on constructing semantic networks corresponding to pre-service teachers' written texts. Contingency-like associative correlation between word-pairs is used to differentiate between word-pairs, where associations of two terms or words is systematic. Such associations indicate connections, which are significant for key term vocabularies in construction of inferences and arguments. Based on that information of the key vocabulary we then construct the structure of pre-service teachers' argument for the nature of the photon and its wave-particle duality, in the form of directed argument graphs (DAGs). The results show that argument structures in four to six out of 12 cases meet the goals set for pre-service teacher education. In these cases, experimental aspects and wave-particle duality play an important role in the pre-service teachers' argument and its structure.

The study explored the impact of peer critiquing on preservice teachers' understanding of the nature of science, scientific inquiry, and argumentation in an undergraduate science content course. The aim was to investigate innovative teaching strategies that enhance preservice teachers' comprehension of these key aspects. This study showcased implementing these strategies in which the preservice teachers actively critique and evaluate each other's work, fostering a culture of constructive feedback and reflection. Data were collected from 38 preservice teachers from three data sources that included a group argumentation of an assigned environment scenario of the endangered species, a peer critique of a video presentation of the scientific explanation of an individual environmental science topic, and finally a peer critique on someone else's scientific inquiry study that could either be observational or experimental. To achieve this goal, we used the class activities to incorporate new ideas within the classroom by documenting the preservice teachers' practices as they reflect upon their peers' practices. While video critiques indicated a general competency, there was a need for further development in analyzing scientific concepts. The final class critiquing session demonstrated preservice teachers' self-awareness and understanding of the importance of relevant research in scientific inquiry. Peer critiquing activities positively impacted preservice teachers' reasoning skills, as evidenced by their ability to construct well-reasoned arguments and analyze empirical evidence. By examining preservice teachers' experiences and outcomes, we seek to provide valuable insights and recommendations for educators striving to enhance preservice teachers' understanding of the nature of science and scientific inquiry through peer critiquing.

Visualization and argumentation are central processes in the learning of geometry, giving rise to specific lines of research in mathematics education. However, it is worth asking whether they should be developed independently or if it is possible and in what way an articulation between them can be promoted. The objective of this paper is to search for this articulation within the most recent advances in empirical research on the teaching and learning of geometry in Spain. The analysis is approached through the tasks used in research employing two theoretical frameworks which have been developed in Spain, the Onto-Semiotic Approach and Configurational Reasoning. Two main types of task were found in the selected studies: visual tasks and conjecture-and-proof tasks. The results show that in visual tasks the articulation between visualization and argumentation is only necessary in some tasks, in which argumentation aims to justify or to describe the external representation provided as a solution. However, in conjecture-and-proof tasks the articulation between visualization and argumentation must always be present to resolve the task. Analyzing this articulation helps to detect and gain a better understanding of the difficulties that students encounter in solving these types of task. In visual tasks, argumentation helps to understand difficulties associated with the use of visualization. In conjecture-and-proof tasks, visualization determines the argumentation followed, in such a way that many of the difficulties originate more from the visualization than from the process of argumentation.

Organizations are building sustainable practices due to newer regulations and a commitment to the greater good. They are targeting the majority of consumers who want to live a sustainable lifestyle. As a result, universities have an opportunity to integrate sustainability topics into their coursework. This study addresses a curriculum gap that exists by introducing a project-based assignment using the SHIFT framework by White, Habib, and Hardisty (2019a), which outlines the triggers associated with influencing sustainable behaviors among consumers, namely, social influence, habit formation, individual self, feelings and cognition, and tangibility. We explain the relevance of the project via a literature review on the growing importance of sustainability to consumers, outline the project requirements and recommendations for execution, and share our experiences and those of our students using the project.

The question of how education research can be 'useful' is an enduring and challenging one. In recent years, this question has been approached by universities through a widespread 'impact' agenda. In this article, we explore the tensions between usefulness and impact and present six stories that reflect on research use with communities. These stories engage issues of the risk of usefulness, the time that is needed to work collaboratively for research usefulness, whether theories developed in universities can be useful to communities for understanding the problems they face, who has the power to steer research to serve their purposes, and how community collective action can enhance the usefulness of research. The article concludes with a section that reflects on the importance of continuing to engage with the debates about research use in often highly commercially oriented university environments. This article brings together diverse voices that wrestle with the politics of research use beyond the neat, linear narratives of change that impact agendas tend to portray. These illustrations of the ethical dilemmas encountered through navigating research use with communities contribute to an ongoing conversation about refusing capitalist and colonialist logics of research extraction while working within institutions often driven by such logics.

Teaching middle school students with learning disabilities strategies for writing essays that incorporate information from source texts helps prepare them for academic success. The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate the effects of self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) writing instruction using technology tools implemented by special education teachers on the source-based argumentative writing performance of middle school students with learning disabilities. In this quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design study, three middle school special education teachers engaged in online Practice-Based Professional Development. The teachers then implemented SRSD writing instruction to teach source-based argumentative writing with technology tools. Implementation of the SRSD writing instruction by special education teachers positively impacted the number of argumentative elements, quality, number of transitions and length of students' source-based argumentative essays. Teachers implemented the intervention with high fidelity and quality and felt that the intervention supported their students' writing. Teachers and students were positive about the SRSD writing instruction. This study adds to the evidence base that SRSD is an effective writing intervention for middle school students with learning disabilities.

In a randomized trial that collects text as an outcome, traditional approaches for assessing treatment impact require that each document first be manually coded for constructs of interest by human raters. An impact analysis can then be conducted to compare treatment and control groups, using the hand-coded scores as a measured outcome. This process is both time and labor-intensive, which creates a persistent barrier for large-scale assessments of text. Furthermore, enriching one's understanding of a found impact on text outcomes via secondary analyses can be difficult without additional scoring efforts. The purpose of this article is to provide a pipeline for using machine-based text analytic and data mining tools to augment traditional text-based impact analysis by analyzing impacts across an array of automatically generated text features. In this way, we can explore what an overall impact signifies in terms of how the text has evolved due to treatment. Through a case study based on a recent field trial in education, we show that machine learning can indeed enrich experimental evaluations of text by providing a more comprehensive and fine-grained picture of the mechanisms that lead to stronger argumentative writing in a first- and second-grade content literacy intervention. Relying exclusively on human scoring, by contrast, is a lost opportunity. Overall, the workflow and analytical strategy we describe can serve as a template for researchers interested in performing their own experimental evaluations of text.

Many studies have examined the effect of argumentation-based instruction methods on student achievement in the literature. However, there was no mixed-research synthesis study providing a holistic overview of quantitative and qualitative research findings of primary studies. To fill this gap in the literature, the study investigated the effects of argumentation-based instructional practices on student achievement. It also aimed to reveal the factors affecting these practices by combining the quantitative and qualitative research findings. Therefore, a mixed-research synthesis was employed to achieve this purpose. The study included 72 quantitative and 22 qualitative studies. The data obtained from the quantitative studies were combined using a meta-analysis method, and the qualitative data were combined using a thematic synthesis method. Several analytical themes were created regarding the factors affecting argumentation-based instruction, and various analytic themes (recommendations/hypotheses) were developed accordingly. According to the data from the thematic synthesis, 13 analytical themes emerged. The meta-analytic results indicated that the argumentation method had a large positive effect on student achievement (g = 0.927, 95% CI [0.789, 1.064]). Also, the moderator analysis revealed that argumentation-based instruction highly affected student achievement in Chemistry and Mathematics than others. Also, the time allocated to courses was influential in increasing student achievement. Lastly, attempts were made to explain the variance between studies included in the meta-analysis using the analytical themes developed in the thematic synthesis. The thematic synthesis results indicated that the learning outcomes and the environment should be taken into consideration in argumentation-based instruction and that some deficiencies should be resolved.

Developing students' source-based argument writing skills is a vital educational goal for the 21st-century information society. Consequently, researchers and educators continually seek ways to understand and improve students' capacities for advancing arguments and synthesizing multiple documents, texts, or sources in a range of subject areas in secondary schools. This study examined differences between middle and high school students' argument essays (N = 207) in multiple dimensions of source-based argument writing in history, the dimensions writing in history, and the relations of identified dimensions to overall writing quality. Using multivariate analysis of covariance, middle and high school students' writing significantly varied in areas of writing related to language use, the presentation of ideas, and evidence use. Their writing varied less so for skills related to historical thinking, indicating a lack of development in these skills across secondary school. Findings from confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling showed a bifactor model with a general factor and 4 specific factors--Presentation of Ideas, Evidence Use, Language Use, and Historical Thinking--best represented writing in this genre, with the general factor strongly predicting holistic writing scores. Implications for both research and educational practice are discussed, including the importance of attending to developmental variation in discrete writing skills.

Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) includes multiple socio-cognitive processes that can be challenging to investigate. Constructing arguments is a key practice at the intersection of CPS and science learning. To understand how students construct arguments and develop science knowledge during CPS, we focus on team synchrony--the extent of similarity of navigation actions between team members--in a game-based learning environment. Specifically, we examined the impact of team synchrony on students' argument construction and science knowledge acquisition in a science learning game, "Alien Rescue." Using a mixed methods approach, we analyzed a range of in-game data and performance data of 69 teams from 146 sixth-grade students. Our results show that team synchrony enhanced students' science knowledge acquisition, whereas its effects on argumentation features were nuanced: (a) higher team synchrony groups were more productive in constructing backing compared to low team synchrony groups in conditions where their prior knowledge was high, and (b) there was no significant difference between the two groups in generating claims. We also identified two illustrative cases to show the observed relationship between team synchrony and complexity of arguments that students constructed as a team. Our study has implications for tracing learning processes through log and textual data to understand students' CPS process and performance, which consequently inform the design of scaffolds that support students' CPS.

Middle school social studies teachers are increasingly working on argument writing in their classrooms so that students can successfully write counterarguments that acknowledge competing perspectives about historical and social issues by the end of eighth grade. The authors' prior research indicates that eighth-grade students "can" grow significantly in writing arguments and counterarguments with the support of their teachers' implementation of six 3-day inquiries that focused on compelling questions with multiple plausible responses, primary sources that represent two opposing perspectives, explicit instruction and guided practice in reading, analysis, and argument writing supported by tools. Yet the authors also saw that students who read below grade level and multilingual learners (MLLs) did not improve at the same rate as their peers who were more proficient in reading and English language, even though students' growth was still significant. The authors partnered with teachers to develop Read.Inquire.Write. (RIW), a curriculum that offers a scaffolded approach to support MLLs and students who benefit from greater literacy support in progressing toward the goal of writing effective social studies counterarguments over the course of three years. One key form of scaffolding that RIW introduces is a breakdown of social studies argument writing into three increasingly complex types -- interpretation, critique, and counterargument -- and a focus on one argument type per grade level in order to build the skills and understandings needed for successful counterargument over time. The argument types progress from one-sided arguments where students make a case for their interpretation of sources in sixth grade, to critiques of others' arguments in seventh, to developing two-sided arguments with counterarguments that rebut others' claims in eighth. The authors' purpose in this article is to share one aspect of the scaffolding the authors created -- the break down into three types of argument writing and progression in using them to build the skills needed for counterargument writing over time -- and how the writing of student Naseem, an MLL who read below grade level, developed in response to such scaffolding.

Readers should construct a coherent discourse during reading comprehension. The ability to build coherence has been examined using coherence and cohesion judgment tasks. Although eye-tracking studies have been conducted on building coherence or processing cohesion among native language users, few such studies have been conducted with second language learners. This study investigated the process of conducting a task using eye-tracking with 30 Japanese university students who were asked to judge the coherence between two sentences on a screen. The 24 stimulus items consisted of four conditions (with or without coherence and cohesion), and six items were assigned to each condition. The fixation duration in some areas and frequencies of the regressions were measured. The results showed that the difference in fixation duration between conditions was not statistically significant, but the frequencies of regressions were significantly different, with incoherent-cohesive pairs having more regressions than incoherent-incohesive pairs. Thus, the study revealed that readers might make more inferences because of the contradictory information of the condition, which partly supports previous research on native participants.

Argumentative writing is a fundamental aspect of undergraduate students' academic and scientific writing related to critical thinking and problem-solving skills. However, previous studies have shown that students face various difficulties with argumentative writing, such as unclear and illogical ideas, less-structured arguments, and unbalanced interpretation of issues, data, and evidence. This study aims to improve the argumentative writing skills of undergraduate students by integrating computer-supported argumentative writing tools, such as annotation, conversational agents (CAs), and collaborative concept maps, into an online learning management system. Since the study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, these tools can support meaningful learning activities and investigation in argumentative writing. The researchers divided sixty participants into the experimental group (N = 30) and the control group (N = 30). The results showed that the experimental group's writing achievements outperformed the control group, and the three tools effectively improved the five elements of argumentative writing, including claims, grounds, warrants, backings, and rebuttal. Furthermore, a deep analysis found that the number of annotations, valid CAs' responses, and argument nodes on collaborative concept maps can significantly predict students' argumentative writing development. Moreover, students perceived that the incorporated tools could effectively improve their argumentative writing skills.

Conversation circles in kindergartens can foster discursive abilities such as argumentation. This paper analyzes argumentation in conversation circles in a kindergarten with respect to the function of narrative argumentation. We focus on second stories as a specific narrative form that is characterized by relating in content and form to a before told narrative thereby displaying similarity and alignment. In this paper, we will analyze videographed conversation circles in a kindergarten. Our methodological approach is interactional and qualitative, informed by conversation analysis and narrative analysis. We will argue that preschool children use second stories for argumentative purposes in cooperative argumentative exchanges and through them produce interactional alignment.

The study examines the interactive functions of gesture repetitions as a specific form of interpersonal synchronization in argumentative decision-making processes of peers (1-6 graders). Based on a collection of 13 instances, gesture repetitions are investigated in the process of collaboratively co-constructing arguments. Drawing on multimodal interaction analysis, a description is provided of how gestures are aligned and laminated with other multimodal resources, such as body posture and gaze, into multimodal repetitions during the co-construction of both arguments and counterarguments. The study illustrates the way in which multimodal repetitions serve to mark coherence between the participants' turns and contribute to the argument. As the multimodal resources are highly synchronized with each other, multimodal repetitions also make the collaboration of specific participants publicly visible to all interactants, thereby attaching more importance to the sharedness--and persuasiveness--of the constructed argument. The analysis therefore focuses on both depictive and pragmatic gestures that are conceived as parts of multimodal gestalts (Mondada, 2014), and describes different trajectories of co-constructions that entail interactively successful as well as unsuccessful examples.

This study developed a brief training, the Integrative Writing Training (IWT), to introduce students to two types of rhetorical devices (i.e., direct and indirect integration) that can be used to communicate cross-textual connections through writing. The training did not significantly increase the volume of integration included in students' written responses, composed based on multiple texts, relative to a control group; although improvements were found when students were compared to others receiving a writing-organization focused training. Directions for future research and, particularly, the need to attend to students' use of rhetorical devices to communicate integration when writing based on multiple texts are discussed.