ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Designing A Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Situation For Broadening And Deepening Understanding Of The Space Of Debate

• by: Michael Baker, Matthieu Quignard, Kristine Lund - UMR 5612 GRIC, Groupe de Recherches sur les Interactions Communicatives, Équipe Interaction & Cognition, C.N.R.S. & Université Lumière Lyon 2 & Marije van Amelsvoort - Department of Educational Sciences, Utrecht University

1. Introduction: Collaborative Argumentation-Based Learning (CABLE)
In the continuation of research on the role of socio-cognitive conflict in cooperative learning (Doise and Mugny, 1981), it has been conjectured that the cooperative resolution of such conflicts in argumentative interactions could be the most important factor (Mevarech & Light, 1991). More recent research has begun to elucidate the processes by which the types of argumentative interactions that arise spontaneously during cooperative problem solving can lead to co-construction of knowledge (Baker, 1996, 1999). For example, the interactional pressure imposed by mutually recognised verbal conflict can lead students to refine meanings, to dissociate notions and to elaborate more coherent discourses, either during argumentation phases, or else as a means of resolving, dissolving or closing them.[*]

However, such argumentative interactions — particularly those that operate on a conceptual plane — are relatively rare, especially in scientific and other disciplines taught in school. There are undoubtedly good reasons for this (see e.g. Golder, 1996; Quignard & Baker, 1999; Quignard, 2000). For example, the topic must be intrinsically debatable, students must be motivated to argue with respect to it, there should be an appropriate intersubjective distance between students’ points of view (c.f. Rommetveit, 1979), students should have sufficient knowledge of the topic, interpersonal relations and socio-institutional factors should not prevent free expression of divergent views, and so on. One particular paradox concerning conditions for argumentative interaction and for learning itself is especially important here: in learning situations that are designed so that students will co-construct new knowledge, by hypothesis, they will not have the kind of coherent and firmly entrenched points of view that could lead to dialectical confrontation (Nonnon, 1996). We should thus expect that students’ discussions would rather correspond to a cooperative exploration of a dialogical space. In this paper, we refer to such a space that is explored by students’ in cooperative learning situations during their argumentative interactions, as the space of debate. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – She Blinded Me With Science: Material Argument In The Indianapolis Children’s Museum

• by: Susan Balter-Reitz - DePauw University

Children’s museums, which have been in existence for just over 100 years, are the growth sector of the museum industry. While other museums and tourist attractions have struggled to sustain attendance, children’s museums have welcomed record numbers of visitors. In 2000, the 400 children’s museums in the United States attracted 33 million visitors (Sangiorgio 2002: 70). The popularity of these museums is so high that the Association of Youth Museums reports that 100 new Children’s museums are currently in the planning phase (Atkin 2000: 15). While these museums naturally attract children and their parents, there is also a close association between children’s museums and educational institutions. Thus, the children’s museum serves not only as a place of play, but also a place of serious intellectual activity. Critics of children’s museums have complained that they are “frivolous; lacking content, rigor or standards; and dangerously blurring the lines between playgrounds, Disneyland, and museums” (Schwarzer 1998: 66). Yet, few scholars have closely examined the types of materials that are being offered to children in these museums. Despite these criticisms, there is no doubt that exhibits presented in children’s museums are carefully planned and executed, and that much pedagogical theory is involved in the implementation of the displays offered to visitors. This very careful attention to display begs for critical scholars to analyze the types of arguments that are being presented to visitors in these museums, especially given the power that these institutions have in formulating claims about the importance of culture and science to very impressionable audiences.

This paper will investigate how the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, recently ranked by Child Magazine as the top children’s museum in the country, creates arguments about science in its displays. While children’s museums include much more than science alone, science is usually given a preferred position within the museum. In fact, the Indianapolis Children’s Museum devotes nearly half of its exhibition space to scientific exhibits. Scientific discovery and the knowledge of science are two themes that resonate both in contemporary children’s museums and in the development of the children’s museum, so it seems apropos to investigate what types of arguments these sites make about science and scientific discovery to their audiences. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Linked And Independent Premises: A New Analysis

• by: Gregory Bassham - King's College Pensylvania

Most introductory logic and critical thinking textbooks include a discussion of linked and independent premises. The core intuition underlying this distinction is clear. In some arguments, the premises work together as a logical unit in such a way that the amount of support offered by one or more of the premises is dependent on the other(s). Example:
Case 1
1. All members of the Oakwood Society are over 50 years old.
2. Bert is a member of the Oakwood Society.
3. Therefore, Bert is over 50 years old.

Here, neither of the premises provides any support for the conclusion without the other. Taken together, however, the premises validly imply the conclusion. Thus, the premises interact to produce a degree of support that is not simply the sum of the supports of the individual premises. Premises of this sort are said to be linked[i].

In other arguments, the premises work completely separately and independently of one another, in such a way that the degree of support they provide for the conclusion remains the same even if some or all of the other premises are omitted or assumed to be false. Example:
Case 2
1. Harry’s car has a flat tire.
2. Harry’s right leg is in a cast.
3. Harry’s driver’s license was recently suspended.
4. Therefore, Harry won’t drive his car to the game. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – The National Education Reform Debate And The Rhetoric Of The Contrarians

• by: Shawn Batt - Department of Communication, University of the Pacific

Abstract
In the years between 1991 and the present, Gerald Bracey and other so-called “contrarians” have called into question the dominant view of schooling in the United States. According to the contrarians, many widely held myths about public education are false, including the view that schooling and the economy are closely related and the notion that the schools are failing. The contrarians provide an exemplary case of public moral argument, one that draws attention to many salient issues in argument criticism: the role of experts in public discourse, the status of facts in public debates, the relative values of consensus and dissensus, and shifting communication practices within the public sphere.

The National Education Reform Debate and the Rhetoric of the Contrarians
So many people have said so often that the schools are bad that it is no longer a debatable proposition subject to empirical proof. It has become an assumption. But it is an assumption that turns out to be false. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that American schools have never achieved more than they currently achieve. And some indicators show them performing better than ever. (Bracey, 1991, p. 106)
That most people would read these last two sentences with intense skepticism grants Gerald Bracey’s rhetoric a degree of critical interest. While substantial extant does suggest that Bracey may be right (Sandia National Laboratories, 1993), the claim that American schools are doing just fine merits attention because it contravenes what everyone believes to be certainly true. Since 1991, Bracey has made some version of the schools-are-doing-fine argument repeatedly, both in his annual Phi Delta Kappan reports, and in his other articles and books. Along with the other so-called “contrarians,” Bracey has attempted a remarkable rhetorical feat by calling into question the dominant view of schooling in the United States.

Bracey and the contrarians provide an exemplary case of public moral argument, one that draws attention to many salient issues in argument criticism: the role of experts in public discourse, the status of facts in public policy, and shifting communication practices within the public sphere. Drawing upon the “spheres of argument” literature as well as Boothian ethical criticism, this paper explores these themes and develops the premise that meaningful expert contributions to public moral argument can be hindered by an inappropriate confounding of expert and human moral virtue. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Linguistic Criteria For Demarcation And Hierarchical Organization Of Episodes In A Problem Solving Task

• by: Sandra Bégoin-Augereau & Josiane Caron-Pargue - UMR CNRS 6096 "Langage et Cognition" (LaCo) Université de Poitiers - Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société (MSHS)

Introduction
Argumentation implies reasoning, and an important aspect of this process involves processes of reorganization of the adressee’s representation. The same processes of reorganization happen in the course of problem solving, a traditional topic of research in cognitive psychology. Traditionally, in the study of problem solving processes, with or without interaction between partners, the reorganization of the subject’s representation was drawn from impasses, viz from the situation where the AI system simulating the problem failed. The system was considered to set the right representation when the resolution was optimal, and to shift into the wrong representation when the strategy moved aside from the optimal one. More recent researches in this area try to focus on the study of the reorganisation of the representation and to elaborate criteria for a more refined approach of its definition, in terms of pauses, backtracks, illegal moves, constraints (Richard, 1982, 1993), or in terms of adjustments to the external world through preliminary simulations of the planning, for example SOAR (Rosenbloom & al., 1991), case based planning (Hammond, 1989). Let us notice some more deepened studies focus on particular steps of the strategy (Allport, 1989; Welsh, 1991; Begoin-Augereau, 2002).

Some other studies focused on the analysis of concurrent verbal reports following Newell & Simon (1972) and Ericsson and Simon’s model (Ericsson & Simon, 1979, 1984), which had the peculiarity to link the linguistic form to the content of the memory of attentional processes (Short Term Memory). In spite of Nisbett & Wilson’s criticisms (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) and without falling into the trap of introspection, they demonstrated that thinking aloud verbalizations during a problem solving task have to be considered as a coding of the information available in short term memory. In this line Vanlehn (1991) showed that the reorganization of the representation is not linked only to impasses, and that several linguistic marks, notably interjections, point to reorganizations of the subject’s representation, according to the insights of the Gestalt approach (Ohlsson, 1984a, 1984b ; Simon, 1987). Read more

ISSA Proceediings 2002 – Two Ways Of Analysing A ‘Light Mix’ Newspaper Article

• by: Hilde van Belle - Lessiushogeschool Antwerp

In most communication situations, the pragma – dialectic rules are violated in a more or less flagrant way. Most of the time, people do not talk or argue as reasonably and rationally as they want to or believe they do. This is a problem, not for most communication situations, but for the above mentioned rules. In a ‘normative’ approach, the most common ways of talking and communicating are treated as deviations. As analysis contains more than determining the correctness of an argument, this polarization – along with the dialectical system of protagonist versus antagonist – might leave us helpless in the grey zone where arguments are more or less right or wrong.
Perelman & Olbrechts Tyteca show that the assumption of logical arguments is questionable. They distinguish so called quasilogical arguments: arguments that are based upon the status of logic. Many others have tried to describe the complex and often ambiguous ways of argumentation and persuasion, and to take into account the variety of situations in which they occur. They have developed ways of reasonable thinking adapted to different fields. Others propose to broaden the general scope and for instance to make room for ‘emotional’ arguments in argumentation theories, next to the ‘rational’ arguments of allegedly ‘calm and cool’ speakers (Gilbert: 1995). Roman Jakobson pointed out the six different functions in language, which are always at work at the same time in the same utterance. As a consequence, when an argument is analysed as if it were limited to the rational aspect of the message, we have to consider the fact that this kind of analysis takes place on a more or less abstract level. Read more