Abstract
The ability to analyze arguments is critical for higher-level reasoning, yet previous research suggests that standard university education provides only modest improvements in students’ analytical-reasoning abilities. What pedagogical approaches are most effective for cultivating these skills? We investigated the effectiveness of a 12-week undergraduate seminar in which students practiced a software-based technique for visualizing the logical structures implicit in argumentative texts. Seminar students met weekly to analyze excerpts from contemporary analytic philosophy papers, completed argument visualization problem sets, and received individualized feedback on a weekly basis. We found that seminar students improved substantially more on LSAT Logical Reasoning test forms than did control students (d = 0.71, 95% CI: [0.37, 1.04], p < 0.001), suggesting that learning how to visualize arguments in the seminar led to large generalized improvements in students’ analytical-reasoning skills. Moreover, blind scoring of final essays from seminar students and control students, drawn from a parallel lecture course, revealed large differences in favor of seminar students (d = 0.87, 95% CI: [0.26, 1.48], p = 0.005). Seminar students understood the arguments better, and their essays were more accurate and effectively structured. Taken together, these findings deepen our understanding of how visualizations support logical reasoning and provide a model for improving analytical-reasoning pedagogy.
Highlights
Grasping the logical structure of arguments is foundational for higher-level reasoning and scholarly work
What pedagogical approaches are most effective for cultivating these important skills? Here we investigate the effectiveness of a seminar-based undergraduate course in which students learned to analyze arguments in text by producing visualizations of their logical structure
To assess whether this intensive training in argument visualization leads to generalized benefits for analytical reasoning, we administered equivalated LSAT Logical Reasoning forms to both seminar students and control students at the beginning and end of the semester (i.e., 85 days later)
Summary
Grasping the logical structure of arguments is foundational for higher-level reasoning and scholarly work. While one of the central aims of higher education is to equip students to comprehend argumentative texts and to reason clearly about them,[1] the prerequisite skill of parsing such text into its logical components is rarely taught explicitly in universities. Standard university education provides at best modest improvements in students’ analytical-reasoning abilities.[2,3,4] Since many students do not arrive at university with developed analytical skills, the benefits they can derive from readings and coursework are limited. We investigate the effectiveness of a seminar-based undergraduate course in which students learned to analyze arguments in text by producing visualizations of their logical structure. Argument visualization traces to nineteenth-century logic pedagogy,[5] and has been further developed in recent years.[6,7]
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