Developing Writers of Argument

Tools and Rules That Sharpen Student Reasoning

Michael W. Smith, Jon-Philip Imbrenda

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781506394404
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Sprachen unterrichten

Better Arguments Make Better Students — and Better Citizens The ability to make effective arguments is not only necessary in students’ academic lives, it’s a transferable skill essential to students’ future success as critical thinkers and contributing members of society. But how do we engage students and ensure they understand argument writing’s fundamental components? This book shows the way, with ready-to-implement lessons that make argument writing topical and relevant. Students form arguments about subjects of interest, and then reflect on the arguments’ organization, giving them reusable structural models. Complete with guidance on applying the lessons’ techniques in a unit-wide context, Developing Writers of Argument offers a practical approach for instructing in this crucial aspect of students’ development.

Part I The Argument for Argument

Chapter 1 Introduction

In one of our favorite Monty Python skits, a man, played by Michael Palin, enters a clinic and explains to the receptionist that he would like to pay for a 5-minute argument. The receptionist directs him to a room down the hallway. When he enters the room, he finds another man, played by John Cleese, sitting at a desk.

“Ah, is this the right room for an argument?” Palin’s character asks.

Cleese’s character brusquely responds, “I’ve told you once.”

“No, you haven’t,” says Palin.

“Yes, I have,” replies Cleese.

The back and forth continues for a few more seconds as Palin’s character becomes increasingly frustrated and eventually proclaims, “Look, this isn’t an argument! It’s just contradiction.”

Cleese’s character answers, “No, it isn’t.”

As the repartee continues, it evolves into an argument about the very definition of argument. Palin’s character asserts, “An argument’s not the same as contradiction.”

Cleese’s character rebuts, “Well, it can be.”

“An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition,” Palin’s character continues.

Cleese’s character ripostes, “Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.”

Palin’s character elaborates his position further. “Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.”

Just as time runs out, Cleese’s character offers up a final rebuttal, “No, it isn’t.”

We sometimes show this clip to our students and ask them to evaluate the quality of the argument that takes place between the two characters. Their responses vary, but for the most part what we find is that their understanding of argument is most closely reflected in the attitude of Cleese’s character. They generally think of argument as an analog for debate or disagreement. While we certainly agree that debate and disagreement can sometimes be very effective classroom tools, we also try to honor the position that Palin’s character emphasizes: Argument is not just debate and disagreement. It’s a process—an intellectual process, a social process, a cultural process. Argument is reasoning. Argument is literacy.

Consider This

Think of five different arguments you’ve seen on TV or in movies. You might consider legal arguments from courtroom dramas, political debates on news shows, family disputes on sitcoms, or disagreements among co-workers. How are arguments typically portrayed in popular culture? Do they reflect the points of view of both characters from the Monty Python skit?

Luckily, we’re not alone in our appreciation for the value of argument. In recent years, literacy scholars have taken up the importance of argument as the basis for quality instruction in classrooms spanning grade levels and subject areas. Michael has previously written about the usefulness of argument as a way to address the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts (Smith, Wilhelm, & Fredricksen, 2012). Jon-Philip has designed and implemented an entire curriculum for college-bound high school students that is based on argument (Imbrenda, in press). Since the focus of this book is on providing teachers with ready-to-use lessons and activities, we’re not going to get into a lengthy review of all the literature around the role of argument in secondary classrooms. Instead, we want to highlight and discuss briefly three primary reasons for teaching argument to all our students:

Argument is not just debate and disagreement.

Argument is reasoning. Argument is literacy.

1. Argument cultivates critical thinking.
2. Argument fosters collaborative reasoning.
3. Argument promotes a sense of social responsibility.

Let’s think about each of these goals in a little more detail.

Argument Cultivates Critical Thinking

We make arguments every day of our lives. Whether we’re choosing the best restaurant to eat at, the right smartphone to buy, or the podcasts we want to listen to on our commutes to work, we’re taking into account many different factors and making a judgment based on how we evaluate those factors. We probably wouldn’t refer to these everyday situations as examples of critical thinking. Most of the time these arguments take place internally, and the thought processes involved happen so fast we’re barely aware of them.

Yet we probably all know a few people who seem to go a step further when it comes to certain kinds of everyday decisions. People who are very tech-savvy and carefully compare products based on complex hardware specifications. People who are particularly mindful of the nutritional quality of the foods they eat. People who are keenly discerning about the kinds of media they choose to consume. They’re the people whom we go to for suggestions when we’re not so sure what we want. Jon-Philip’s brother, an engineer, spent nearly 2 months doing research before he purchased a new laptop. He compared dozens of pre-built models and even went a step further in comparing the specific components inside those pre-built models to decide if he wanted to go ahead and build one himself. His comparisons were richly informed by his expertise in the field of electrical engineering and by his understanding of the exact things he needed his laptop to be able to do effectively. We might be more inclined to refer to his decision-making process as an example of critical thinking because we have a clear sense of how his decision was influenced by information available to him and the deep knowledge needed to understand and interpret that information. In fact, part of what makes so-called critical thinking different from just plain old thinking is that critical thinking requires that we have some degree of awareness of what’s happening when we make decisions, consider evidence, generate interpretations, and act upon our judgments. Critical thinking is about getting beyond “Here’s what I think,” and into the realm of “Here’s what I think. Here’s what makes me think that. And here’s why it matters.” In this respect, we agree with Michael’s mentor, George Hillocks, when he argues that the kind of critical thinking we often champion as an essential goal of education is, in fact, sound argumentation (Hillocks, 2010). Simply put, thinking critically and arguing effectively are the same thing!

Critical thinking is about getting beyond “Here’s what I think,” and into the realm of “Here’s what I think. Here’s what makes me think that. And here’s why it matters.”

When we shift the focus of our instruction onto argumentation through lessons like the ones in this book, and give our students frequent opportunities to build arguments across a variety of situations, we’re cultivating the kind of explicit awareness of their own thinking that characterizes Jon-Philip’s brother’s meticulous efforts to select the best laptop computer. We’re helping them to move beyond their tacit judgments and into the deeper and often much more complex inner workings of those judgments. If we do so over time, we help our students become flexible and strategic in their academic lives. This kind of thinking becomes a habit, and with encouragement, they are able to transfer their new skills to the reading, writing, and range of other tasks they are frequently expected to carry out for school. We hope that the lessons and tools we present in this book will serve as good examples of how argumentation cultivates the kind of critical thinking we want our students to engage in on a regular basis in our classrooms—and will provide practice for your students to do the same. Our lessons are designed to teach students to carefully consider the knowledge and information available to them, while providing them with questions that are relevant to their lives both inside and outside of the classroom.

Consider This

While teachers widely agree that critical thinking is an important goal of learning, there is not always as much agreement around what we mean by the term critical thinking. What are your criteria for critical thinking in your classroom? How do your criteria compare with our criteria of thinking that involve explicit awareness of how we consider evidence, generate interpretations, and make judgments?

Argument Fosters Collaborative Reasoning

Much of what we just discussed in the previous section reflects fairly common understandings about the value of argument as in the development of individual learners. However, an equally valuable yet frequently overlooked aspect of argumentation is its inherently social nature. Newell and his colleagues (2011) proclaim the benefits of argument as a social practice carried out by groups of people across many different contexts as opposed to viewing it only as a reflection of an individual’s cognitive ability. Such benefits are particularly important for us as educators to understand, as research has shown that the kinds of collaborative reasoning that characterize socially directed arguments can become powerful contributors to deep and meaningful learning (Clark et al., 2003; Nussbaum, 2008). Recognizing argument as a social practice helps us get beyond debate and disagreement and into the kinds of collaborative conversations that impact the world in important ways.

As a social practice, argument is paramount to the cooperative efforts of professionals in many fields. For example, Hagler and Brem (2008) examined the ways that professional nurses in critical care environments relied on argumentative reasoning to provide care for people with very serious medical conditions. Through ongoing series of polite informal exchanges of both information and interpretations of that information, nurses were able to combine their knowledge and expertise when reaching agreements about how to handle specific patients. This study is but one of many instances in which argumentative reasoning is shown to be central to the kinds of collaboration involved in people’s professional lives.

Research has shown that the kinds of collaborative reasoning that characterize socially directed arguments can become powerful contributors to deep and meaningful learning.

Moreover, evidence has shown that students who participate consistently in collaborative arguments in the classroom can develop powerful habits of reasoning as they adopt the successful strategies of their peers (Clark et al., 2003). Students who struggled to generate effective arguments on their own showed tremendous improvement once argument was placed in the forefront of the social activity in the classroom. Much as the nurses in the critical care centers, students in classrooms became active participants in their own learning as they worked together to reach agreements. Due to its inherently social nature, argument bridges the important divide between the individual learner and the social dynamic of the classroom. We hope that the tools and lessons we present in this book will serve as good examples of how placing argument at the center of instruction can transform a classroom dynamic into one that is rich with talk and other forms of cooperative activity.

Consider This

Can you think of a recent experience where you and one or more colleagues had to “argue” to come to a consensus around an important issue in your school? Did you think of what you were doing as an argument? Was the discussion ultimately beneficial?

Argument Promotes a Sense of Social Responsibility

In January of 2015 the Pew Research Center published a report on the findings from a study in which they examined Americans’ attitudes toward the importance of science and the value of scientific findings (Kennedy & Funk, 2015). They administered surveys to a representative sample of 2,002 adults and compared their responses to the responses of 3,748 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). What the report found is somewhat ala...