Developing Dialogic Argumentation Skills: A 3-year Intervention Study
Abstract
Argumentation is increasingly recognized as a fundamental intellectual skill, but evidence suggests that few adolescents or adults are skilled arguers. This article reports on an extended (3-year, twice weekly) intervention designed to afford dense practice in dialogic argumentation to middle-school students from traditionally academically disadvantaged backgrounds, with the goal of supporting development of argumentation skills. Students collaborated with peers who shared their positions on a series of social issues, both in small-group argument-building and reflective activities and in electronic dialogues with a succession of opposing-side peers. Annual assessments of individual argumentative skills on new topics showed students gaining in argumentative discourse skills across all 3 years of the intervention. Continued gains during the 3rd year, however, were concentrated among students who began with the least skill, highlighting the potentially equalizing role of such an intervention.
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Practice in dialogical argumentation has a positive effect on argumentative writing skills.
“Dialogical argumentation practice contributes positively to argumentative writing skills.”
From Teaching argumentative synthesis writing through deliberative dialogues: instructional practices in secondary education (2021) · cites this paper as Crowell & Kuhn, 2014
Several interventions have shown that dialogic activities transfer to individual writing tasks.
“Several interventions developed in academic contexts have shown the transfer of the dialogic activities to individual writing tasks (Crowell & Kuhn, 2014;Kuhn & Crowell, 2011;Litosseliti et al., 2005;Reznitskaya et al., 2001).”
From Teaching argumentative synthesis writing through deliberative dialogues: instructional practices in secondary education (2021) · cites this paper as Crowell & Kuhn, 2014
Prior studies have shown benefits of dialogic activities in argumentative writing, especially when dialogues have a deliberative rather than persuasive goal.
“Several studies had already shown the benefits of dialogic activities in argumentative writing processes (Crowell & Kuhn, 2014;Kuhn & Crowell, 2011;Kuhn et al., 2016;Litosseliti et al., 2005;Reznitskaya et al., 2001), especially when these dialogues are raised with a deliberative rather than persuasive goal (Felton et al., 2009(Felton et al., , 2015b(Felton et al., , 2019;;Villarroel et al., 2016)”
From Teaching argumentative synthesis writing through deliberative dialogues: instructional practices in secondary education (2021) · cites this paper as Crowell & Kuhn, 2014
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References 39 · Cited by 179
- Authors
- Crowell, A., & Kuhn, D.
- Affiliations
- Columbia University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Crowell, Amanda
- ORCID
- Kuhn, Deanna
- Venue
- Journal of Cognition and Development
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2014-04-03
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 363-381
- ISSN
- 1524-8372 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7647
- OpenAlex
- W1978678569
- Cited by
- 179
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 7.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Cognition and Development (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- This work was supported by an award from the Institute of Education Sciences.
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
- Social Sciences › Education › Education and Critical Thinking Development
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Linguistics and Discourse Analysis
- Keywords
- dialogic argumentation, argumentation skills, argumentative discourse, intervention research, junior high school students, peer collaboration, social problems, equalizing effect
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