About the project

In contemporary society, many difficult judgments we are called on to make involve the aggregation of multiple sources of information, opinion, value, and expertise. Such judgments are particularly difficult when those multiple sources are diverse in kind. For example, the judgments are difficult in making judgments that require us to consider both matters of fact and matters of value, or to integrate evidence from statistics with narrative evidence. These kinds of complex judgments need to be made in areas such as interdisciplinary science and policy (e.g., climate change), the law and courts, end-of-life decisions, or clinical assessment. For example, an end-of-life decision may need to consider scientific evidence, first-person testimonies, legal requirements, personal and professional values, and ethical principles.  

The broad aims of the ARGUE project are:  

(1) to understand how the skill of making better judgments can be enhanced through the process of argumentation; and  

(2) to produce a package of work that can be used in university courses to facilitate students’ and practitioners’ understanding of argumentation.   

Argumentation is often defined as the process of justification of claims with evidence and reasons (Toulmin, 1958). Arguments can take different forms in different disciplines. For example, a more specific definition of the notion of argument in mathematical and scientific contexts is “a connected sequence of assertions that coordinates evidence, accepted facts, theory, canons of correct inference, etc., and is intended to support or refute a claim (e.g., a conclusion or conjecture in mathematics, and a hypothesis or model in science)” (Stylianides & Stylianides, 2009a, p. 70). Whether it is secondary teachers engaging pupils in complex scientific problems such as climate change and genetically modified foods or undergraduate students working on research projects where they have to coordinate evidence from their research to write up a well-founded thesis, the skill of argumentation is relevant to a wide range of individuals.  

Despite the importance of argumentation as a skill, appropriate pedagogical strategies to enhance students’ argumentation skills are not widespread in many university courses, including courses in science (Kelly & Takao, 2002) and mathematics (Stylianides, Stylianides, & Weber, 2017). When argumentation is observed in practice, it is often ill-structured and fragmented, not amounting to deep learning of students (Erduran & Villamanan, 2009). There is now a rich body of educational research, including research conducted by members of our research term (e.g. Erduran, Ozdem & Park, 2015; Stylianides & Stylianides, 2009b), that can inform the design of university courses to infuse argumentation in students’ learning. Some aspects of the teaching of argumentation requires advanced pedagogical skills such as modelling the application of criteria to evaluate different claims (Ozdem et al. 2017).  

Members of our research term have conducted extensive research and development in teaching and learning to facilitate the acquisition of argumentation skills in science and mathematics teachers. However, although we have carried out research and development on argumentation in our corresponding disciplines (Erduran and Guilfoyle in science, and Stylianides in mathematics) for numerous years, we have not systematically explored how this research can be packaged and applied in a cross-disciplinary collaboration to inform more broadly the teaching of argumentation at the university level. The ARGUE project enabled us to integrate the outcomes of our research into a package of work that can be used in the teaching of both mathematics and science, but also more broadly to teaching and learning in other disciplines.  

There is not a widely accepted definition of the notion of argumentation in the literature. Also, in different disciplines argumentation can take different forms and so can be described in different ways. For example, as we will see in other parts of this package of work, the notion of proof in mathematics is a particular form argumentation that is specific to the discipline of mathematics. In order, however, to give the reader a better understanding of the notion of argumentation in this introduction to the project, we will say a bit more about one common definition of argument offered by Toulmin (1958) (see Figure below).

Figure 1. Toulmin’s Argument Pattern (from Toulmin, 1958).

Toulmin is a leading figure who made a significant contribution to argumentation studies. Loui (2005) used citation counts to measure the influence of Toulmin’s work. He reports that citations in the leading journals in the social sciences, humanities, and science and technology put Toulmin and his works in the top 10 among philosophers of science and philosophical logicians of the 20th century. Thus, he concludes, Toulmin’s Uses of Argument, and work in general, have been essential contributions to twentieth century thought. 

Toulmin’s framework illustrates the structure of an argument in terms of an interconnected set of a claim; data that support that claim; warrants that provide a link between the data and the claim; backings that strengthen the warrants; and, finally, rebuttals which point to the circumstances under which the claim would not hold true. More specifically, a claim is an assertion put forward publicly for general acceptance. Data and warrants are the specific facts relied on to support a given claim. Backings are generalizations making explicit the body of experience relied on to establish the trustworthiness of the ways of arguing applied in any particular case. Rebuttals are the extraordinary or exceptional circumstances that might undermine the force of the supporting arguments. Toulmin further considers the role of qualifiers as phrases that show what kind of degree of reliance is to be placed on the conclusions, given the arguments available to support them. 

The ARGUE training resources were developed in the context of two 3-hour sessions in each of two courses within the University of Oxford’s Department of Education: the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and the MSc in Learning and Teaching (MLT). PGCE is a course for training future teachers and has a cohort of about 190 interns in all subjects (science, mathematics, history, English, geography, etc.). MLT is a part-time Master’s course designed to cater for the needs of practising teachers. It typically recruits about 100 students a year in all subjects.  

The participants were Stylianides’ students in the mathematics PGCE course, and Erduran and Guilfoyle’s students in the science MLT course. The mathematics course included 30 interns who were preparing to qualify as secondary mathematics teachers. Most of these interns had a bachelor’s degree in mathematics or the equivalent. The science course included 8 in-service science teachers who were pursuing a part-time Master's degree. Collectively, the two programmes helped provide an indication of a broad range of issues that are relevant to professional programmes (i.e., PGCE) and academic research programmes (i.e., Master's). The latter can also serve as an example module for adaptation and use in doctoral courses that rely on research capacity development.   

Given that the project involved courses related to teachers (in-service and pre-service), the focus of our sessions was to present participants with opportunities to develop their knowledge of argumentation from the particular lens of teaching:  

• develop pedagogical strategies to teach arguments; 

• engage actively as members of a professional learning community; and 

• critically reflect on their own teaching practices and explore how they can apply argumentation in their own professional context. 

The sessions involved both formal and informal learning with an emphasis on reflection and joint problem solving, and it included a range of pedagogical strategies promoting active learning and interactions, such as group discussions and presentations.  

Although the project was conducted in the context of the PGCE and MLT courses, focusing on science and mathematics in- and pre-service teachers, special attention was paid to the production of resources and strategies that will have wider appeal and use within a range of disciplines; it is our belief that the teaching of argumentation needs to take account of both disciplinary norms and the particular professional context of its users. For example, as we will see in the package of work, there are particular strategies that can be used in any setting to promote argumentation. “Playing devil’s advocate” is one such strategy. The strategy involves the instructor deliberately offering a counter-argument in order to sustain discussion and invite further justifications of the participants’ own arguments. More concrete examples and recommendations of how this and other strategies can be utilised in instructional settings are provided as part of the package of work.  

The project was not only research-informed, but also detailed data were collected to evaluate the implementation of the training thereby informing further developments of the package of work. Since the package was intended to be flexible for adaptation and use in different contexts, we collected data to help us determine how best to present and organise the package. All training sessions were audiotaped and videotaped, and samples of work produced by the students during the sessions were documented. Videos, pictures and other resources from the sessions (with appropriate consent from the participants) fed into the training package to give other users a sense of how potential participants might perceive the work. These resources will allow other lecturers and trainers develop a good understanding of how the resources looked like in our sessions and help them consider how they can possibly adapt them for use with their own students.  

The outputs of the project are not only evidence-based using existing research knowledge about effective strategies for promoting argumentation in mathematics and science learning, but can also be applicable to
other courses in the Social Sciences Division or beyond. Specifically, we hope that the training package can be flexible enough for adaptation and use with different cohorts of students (e.g., MSc or DPhil programmes)
and practitioners (e.g., teachers, economists). We expect that the package will be particularly beneficial for supporting academics who are interested in improving their teaching skills through innovative and evidence-based effective
pedagogical strategies.  

The package is organised around the following three broad questions: 

• What is the meaning of argumentation in the context of a particular discipline?  

• How do we introduce students to the meaning of argumentation? What can be some discipline-specific considerations in doing so?  

• How do we apply the meaning of argumentation in relevant contexts?

The user can navigate the resources flexibly through the hyperlinks. Our recommendation is to explore the three questions and associated resources in order as that would make the most sense conceptually, but different users
can navigate the questions/resources in the way that fits their needs.