Scaffolding the Argumentative Writing Via Human Rights Teaching in the Greek Elementary School

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing research interest in children’s writing ability in various genres, used in their specific cultures. Argumentative writing commands a considerable part of this research for several reasons, including the relationship of argument to the cognitive development and critical thinking as well as the difficulty of constructing an argumentative text. The latter was evident in a recent study by this author concerning the quality of argumentative texts written by students of 4th and 6th grade in a number of Greek primary schools. The present research investigates and compares the quality of children’s argumentative writing before intervention, with the quality of the writing after instruction with specifically prepared lessons about Human Rights. These lessons indirectly teach argumentative writing. Method: Qualitative and quantitative analysis with various measures enabled researchers to compare written argumentative texts before intervention with those produced after Human Rights teaching of 19 ten-year-old Greek students in one elementary school. The results show that the ability to construct argumentative texts is considerably enhanced through the indirect teaching used as learning scaffold.