What Is Meant by Argumentative Competence? An Integrative Review of Methods of Analysis and Assessment in Education

Abstract

The need to enhance argument skills through education has become increasingly evident during the past 20 years. This need has resulted in an ongoing discussion that focuses on students’ and teachers’ argumentation and its support. However, apart from the extended competence-based discourse, no clear and homogeneous definition exists for argumentative competence and its constituent skills. To respond to this deficiency, we conducted an integrative literature review focusing on the methods of argument analysis and assessment that have been proposed thus far in the field of education. Specifically, we constructed an interpretative framework to organize the information contained in 97 reviewed studies in a coherent and meaningful way. The main result of the framework’s application is the emergence of three levels of argumentative competence: metacognitive, metastrategic, and epistemological competence. We consider this result the beginning of further research on the psycho-pedagogical nature of argument skills and their manifestation as competent performance.