Text-Based Argumentation With Multiple Sources: A Descriptive Study of Opportunity to Learn in Secondary English Language Arts, History, and Science

Abstract

This study presents a descriptive analysis of 71 videotaped lessons taught by 34 highly regarded secondary English language arts, history, and science teachers, collected to inform an intervention focused on evidence-based argumentation from multiple text sources. Studying the practices of highly regarded teachers is valuable for identifying promising practices and stubborn obstacles to reform. We found that although these highly regarded teachers allocated 3 times more class time to working with text than to teacher lecture and explanation, opportunities to engage in text-based argumentation with multiple sources were rare. Furthermore, less than a 3rd of the time allocated to working with text engaged students in actively making meaning from text. When literacy tasks did occur, they were associated with a disciplinary knowledge focus, challenging the notion that literacy activity occurs at the expense of content instruction. Close reading and cross-textual analysis frequently co-occurred with each other and with argumentation, which suggests that intervention designs should foreground these building blocks of argumentation. Disciplinary differences in opportunity to learn indicate that norms of instruction may carry greater weight than disciplinary norms of reasoning and discourse, which suggests that a particular focus on transforming literacy instruction in science may be warranted.