Argumentative Discussions Research Articles

A Systematic Review of Pedagogical Practices for Integrating Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Science Teaching

This systematic literature review seeks to investigate the pedagogical practices that can be used to encourage the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in science classrooms. By adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guideline method, past studies on pedagogical practices in integrating Indigenous knowledge in science classrooms were explored, resulting in the analysis of 25 papers as part of this review. The research findings revealed several strategies for incorporating Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) into science education in schools, such as engaging students in argumentative discussions, the use of contextualised Indigenous instructional materials, working with Indigenous knowledge keepers and elders, and engaging students in experiential learning activities. The study also emphasised the advantages of the different pedagogies that can be used in integrating IKS into science education, including the enhancement of critical thinking skills and the generation of new knowledge. The reviewed studies showed that acknowledging and utilising a range of approaches assists teachers in successfully integrating IKS into their science instruction. The implications of these findings are anticipated to be valuable for policymakers, curriculum developers and educators.

Arguing across spaces in an online epistemic community

Abstract Wikipedia is the most consulted source of information on the web, on a global level. The collective writing of articles, open to the participation of all, can give rise to major conflicts between contributors, in texts and debates, given the high stakes involved in achieving agreement on a public presentation of controversial topics. We present analyses of how disagreements are managed across socio-technical and dialogical spaces in French Wikipedia, with respect to two case studies, on Freud and the Turin Shroud. We adopt a mixed methods approach, combining results of analyses of interviews with moderators in these articles and argumentative discussions underlying them, within a broadly pragma-dialectical framework. We show, on one hand, that moderators’ attempts to resolve disagreements by requiring participants to cite sources simply displace conflicts to the nature of those sources, their validity, their authors and the good faith of their proponents. Debates concerning sources themselves draw on social actors’ perspectives in dialogical spaces, beyond the discussion itself. Disagreements are managed rather than resolved dialectically by displacing them to alternative socio-technical spaces, such as different sections of the text itself, or participants’ personal pages.

Scientific commentaries are dealing with uncertainty and complexity in science

Authors tend to cite scientific knowledge with higher certainty and lower complexity. Scientific comments, such as editorials and letters to the editor, may signify a distinction by offering constructive compliments or criticism on prior work. This study aims to understand why certain papers receive formal comments and their applications. We find that the rate of commented papers has remained stable at around 4 % for 30 years. Next, to explore the characteristics attracting formal comments, we designed a comparative study between over 0.8 million commented biomedical papers (study group) and the entire over 30 million PubMed records (baseline control group). First, based on citation sentiments of over 17.7 million documents from Scite.ai, we find that commented papers tend to be highly cited, whereas strongly contradicted and intensely disputing (i.e., receive both positive and contradicted citations), with a rate ratio of 2.2 times of baseline. This reflected the inherent controversy of content in triggering extensive argumentative discussion. Second, by mapping descriptors and qualifiers of Medical Subject Headings between the commented group and the baseline group, we observe that the prominence level for commented papers ranked from the social-related to biological-related fields and from applied to basic research topics. The observed spectrum aligns with the “hierarchy of sciences” model, in which the “hardness” of science decreases, and its complexity increases. Commented papers and their accompanying comments may provide a corpus for argument mining on uncertain and complex topics to support more informed and unbiased decision-making.

Oral streptococci S. anginosus and S. mitis induce distinct morphological, inflammatory, and metabolic signatures in macrophages.

Oral streptococci, key players in oral biofilm formation, are implicated in oral dysbiosis and various clinical conditions, including dental caries, gingivitis, periodontal disease, and oral cancer. Specifically, Streptococcus anginosus is associated with esophageal, gastric, and pharyngeal cancers, while Streptococcus mitis is linked to oral cancer. However, no study has investigated the mechanistic links between these Streptococcus species and cancer-related inflammatory responses. As an initial step, we probed the innate immune response triggered by S. anginosus and S. mitis in RAW264.7 macrophages. These bacteria exerted time- and dose-dependent effects on macrophage morphology without affecting cell viability. Compared with untreated macrophages, macrophages infected with S. anginosus exhibited a robust proinflammatory response characterized by significantly increased levels of inflammatory cytokines and mediators, including TNF, IL-6, IL-1β, NOS2, and COX2, accompanied by enhanced NF-κB activation. In contrast, S. mitis-infected macrophages failed to elicit a robust inflammatory response. Seahorse Xfe96 analysis revealed an increased extracellular acidification rate in macrophages infected with S. anginosus compared with S. mitis. At the 24-h time point, the presence of S. anginosus led to reduced extracellular itaconate, while S. mitis triggered increased itaconate levels, highlighting distinct metabolic profiles in macrophages during infection in contrast to aconitate decarboxylase expression observed at the 6-h time point. This initial investigation highlights how S. anginosus and S. mitis, two Gram-positive bacteria from the same genus, can prompt distinct immune responses and metabolic shifts in macrophages during infection.IMPORTANCEThe surge in head and neck cancer cases among individuals devoid of typical risk factors such as Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection and tobacco and alcohol use sparks an argumentative discussion around the emerging role of oral microbiota as a novel risk factor in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). While substantial research has dissected the gut microbiome's influence on physiology, the oral microbiome, notably oral streptococci, has been underappreciated during mucosal immunopathogenesis. Streptococcus anginosus, a viridans streptococci group, has been linked to abscess formation and an elevated presence in esophageal cancer and OSCC. The current study aims to probe the innate immune response to S. anginosus compared with the early colonizer Streptococcus mitis as an important first step toward understanding the impact of distinct oral Streptococcus species on the host immune response, which is an understudied determinant of OSCC development and progression.

Teachers’ interventions in science education at primary school. The role of semiotic resources during argumentative interactions in classroom

ABSTRACT Background In the field of science education, adults often set up practical-based activities with the idea of stimulating children’s reasoning and approaching science in a playful way. Although the potential role of objects in stimulating social practices has been considered in the literature, how teachers work on semiotic aspects of argumentation is still less explored. Purpose In this paper, the purpose is to identify how practice-based experiences settled up by teachers shape children’s argumentation in science education. Sample design and methods We analyzed argumentation in science tasks involving a total of 39 children (6–7 years old) and their three teachers, coming from two different classrooms of cycle 1 (Harmos, grades 3–4) 1 recruited in the French speaking-part of Switzerland. The tasks were video-recorded and then transcribed. Through the lenses of the pragma-dialectical approach, we selected the argumentative discussions emerging during the experiences and we performed a qualitative analysis of these interactions, by looking at different semiotic resources: speech, gaze direction, deictic gestures, and position of physical objects. Results The findings show that teachers play a crucial role in sustaining children’s argumentation by the integration of different semiotic resources during the activities. Conclusion As argumentation in classroom evolves through the mobilization of various communicative tools, the present study can contribute to strengthen the interplay between different channels of interaction during science education at primary school.

Representing and Determining Argumentative Relevance in Online Discussions: A General Approach

Understanding an online argumentative discussion is essential for understanding users' opinions on a topic and their underlying reasoning. A key challenge in determining completeness and persuasiveness of argumentative discussions is to assess how arguments under a topic are connected in a logical and coherent manner. Online argumentative discussions, in contrast to essays or face-to-face communication, challenge techniques for judging argument relevance because online discussions involve multiple participants and often exhibit incoherence in reasoning and inconsistencies in writing style. We define relevance as the logical and topical connections between small texts representing argument fragments in online discussions. We provide a corpus comprising pairs of sentences, labeled with argumentative relevance between the sentences in each pair. We propose a computational approach relying on content reduction and a Siamese neural network architecture for modeling argumentative connections and determining argumentative relevance between texts. Experimental results indicate that our approach is effective in measuring relevance between arguments, and outperforms strong and well-adopted baselines. Further analysis demonstrates the benefit of using our argumentative relevance encoding on a downstream task, predicting how impactful an online comment is to certain topic, comparing to encoding that does not consider logical connection.

Analyzing science teachers’ support of dialogic argumentation using teacher roles of questioning and communicative approaches

The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers use different types of discourse to support dialogic argumentation. Dialogic argumentation is a collaborative process in which students construct arguments together and examine arguments presented by their peers. Science teachers can use argumentation as a vehicle to help students gain a working understanding of science content and the nature of science and its practices. Whole-class closing discussions from video-recorded lessons are analyzed to study the discourse used to support argumentation by two physics teachers in lower secondary schools. Analysis of discourse includes coding of communicative approach at the episode level and coding of teacher roles of questioning at the level of speaking turns. Student argumentation is also assessed on the basis of dialogicity and complexity of arguments. Findings characterize different ways of orchestrating argumentative discussions. Authoritative episodes were characterized by the presence of the dispenser role, with teachers retaining ownership over ideas and classroom activities to emphasize the correctness of a justification. Dialogic episodes of classroom interaction showed openness to student perspectives, but teachers’ use of questioning roles revealed different ways of orchestrating argumentative discussions. The moderator role granted ownership of ideas to students to either pursue a single student’s argument in more depth or to directly contrast opposing justifications. Less commonly used were the roles of coach and participant, which teachers used to elicit student justifications in more depth or support students in examining the arguments of their peers. Examination of discourse using multiple frameworks revealed differences in teachers’ values and the impact of the use of teacher questioning roles on student contributions to argumentative discussions.

Arguments from Popularity: Their Merits and Defects in Argumentative Discussion

How to understand and assess arguments in which the popularity of an opinion is put forward as a reason to accept that opinion? There exist widely diverging views on how to analyse and evaluate such arguments from popularity. First, I define the concept of an argument from popularity, and show that typical appeals to the popularity of a policy are not genuine arguments from popularity. Second, I acknowledge the importance of some recent probability-based accounts according to which some arguments from popularity are epistemically strong arguments, but also contend that despite these strengths such arguments have at most limited value in argumentative discussions. Finally, I show that there are at least five different ways that arguments from popularity can be fallacious, and examine what this means for an account of the Fallacy of Popularity.

ЛОГИКО-КОГНИТИВНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЯ ВОПРОСА-ПРЕФОРМЫ В АРГУМЕНТАТИВНОЙ ДИСКУССИИ

The article presents the results of the study of the discussion snippets in the form of question-answering structures using the “argumentative discussion” construct; the study was based on the scripts of video panel discussions on the YouTube platform. Involving the methodology of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation in part of the analytical reconstruction of argumentative discourse, the author does not take as a basis the concept of persuading a rational addressee, which is common in argumentative theory, but takes the idea of verifying the point of view of cognitive agents of communication. It allows to consider the dialogic structure as a multi-subject procedure for checking the objectivity of knowledge of the participants in the discussion. The purpose of the article is to explore the question utterance in the position of the preform in the question-answering unity. The article contains scientific data from the field of erothetic logic, which shows that the question can be interpreted as a fragment of reasoning. For the reconstruction of cue-question, the concept of symptosymmetric proportionality of the components of dialogical unities is used. We analyzed all speech units in dialogic syntagmas in the form of Argumentative Step. Such an analysis showed that the basis of the question contains elements that perform argumentative functions. The focal meaning of these elements is found in response cues. As the result, the symptosymmetric models Preform-thesis ↔ refutation by facts, Preform-thesis ↔ antithesis, Preform-clarification ↔ correction were obtained. The interim result of the study is that the cue-question in the position of the preform is also a marker of a violation of the logical-categorical norms of reasoning and ad hoc errors.

The naming of emotions in dispute mediators’ strategic manoeuvring: a case study using a French language corpus

Abstract This paper sets out to analyse why dispute mediators identify disputants’ euphoric and dysphoric emotions in the context of mediation discussions, turning them into “said” emotions. Our analysis is based on a corpus of seven role-played mediation sessions, which took place in French. Adopting the notion of strategic manoeuvring from argumentation studies, we consider recurring instances of the presentational device of naming emotions, as used by the mediators. Our findings show that the mediators name emotions in two ways. First, they identify dysphoric emotions that lie at the root of the parties’ conflict, making these explicit. Second, they present to the parties a trajectory of their emotions, which moves from dysphoric to euphoric through the discussion that takes place during mediation. These two presentational strategies correspond to three functions that relate to the mediator’s goal of helping the parties find a solution to their conflict: clarifying the core of the conflict, empowering the parties as co-arguers and making emotions part of an argumentative discussion.

The Voice of Academics on Omnibus Law on YouTube: Undermining Public Transparency

Agenda-building is concerned with negotiating interests in social systems and forces structured and carried out by a group of people. This study explores the agenda-building of the academics to intervene in the Job Creation Act (UUCK) policies that are delivered through YouTube. UUCK is an omnibus law, regulations made based on the compilation of rules with different substances and levels. UUCK in Indonesia was passed on October 5, 2020, with the main aim of simplifying regulations to improve the investment climate in Indonesia. However, the law has been opposed by many groups of people, starting from workers, students, academics, NGOs, and environmental activists, because the law is considered to be not pro-people. This study analysed dialogue texts about UUCK using agenda-building theory in 12 dialogue videos with a total duration of 25 hours and 40 minutes on YouTube uploaded in 2020. This research shows that YouTube facilitates public voices represented by academics amid positive narratives about UUCK that are spread in the mass media and the internet. The study has found four significant narratives within the pros and cons discussions of UUCK on YouTube that were built by academics. These four significant narratives are employment issues, regulatory issues, investment, economy and business and environmental issues. The UUCK sentiment was dominated by the rejection of UUCK, as mentioned above. The findings of this study indicate a firm rejection of UUCK, with scientific arguments from academics showing that the government has not built a transparent discussion regarding UUCK. This study recommends a more transparent, open and argumentative discussion from all UUCK stakeholders to minimise community friction.

Specifying the literacy pedagogy moves through genre-based instruction for advanced second language teaching: developing multiple literacies through systemic functional linguistics

ABSTRACT While the multiliteracies framework proposed two decades ago has had a considerable effect on the field of second language (L2) teaching and learning, its successful implementation has been found challenging, both on the conceptual and practical levels. In this paper, we discuss the main hurdles of putting the approach into practice and argue for the use of the genre-based instruction in combination with key constructs of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as a framework that can help address these challenges. Connecting the multiliteracies pedagogy with the genre-based approach, we delineate specifically how the literacy pedagogy moves and knowledge processes that constitute them can be implemented in content- and language-integrated L2 instruction. We illustrate the approach by reporting on the materials development project that focuses on a particular public discourse theme (banning the burka in Austria) and advanced literacy genre (Argumentative Discussion). The project serves as an example of formulating the advanced L2 learning goals and designing activity types that can be used for developing the multiliteracies curricula in other instructional and thematic contexts.

Empowering the collective reflection-based argumentation mapping strategy to enhance students’ argumentative speaking

It is crucial to design learning strategies for English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners in the context of proliferating and cultivating argumentative speaking. Argumentation mapping aims to provide a visual depiction of collaborative arguments in order to unravel students' engagement in constructing argumentative discussion. The employment of argumentation mapping is fundamental to maintaining students' virtual social practice. However, in the conventional argumentation mapping approach, the acquisition of argumentation skills does not yield successful argumentative dialogue-to-speaking practice. The collective reflection aims to promote a group of learners’ reflective thinking and higher order thinking by way of collaborative tasks and group monitoring. This strategy allows students to reflect on their group works when dealing with argumentative knowledge. Hence, this study referred to the educational theory of collective reflection practice and proposed its practice in the Collective Reflection-based Argumentation Mapping (CR-AM) learning strategy. This strategy was applied to an EFL speaking course to enhance students' argumentative speaking. Twenty-four students were recruited as the CR-AM strategy group, with 22 in the conventional Argumentation Mapping (AM) strategy group. The findings indicated that the CR-AM learning strategy could significantly improve students' argumentative speaking performance and their lexical complexity. Although students' critical thinking was at an equivalent level in both groups, students' communication and collaboration tendencies were much higher in the CR-AM strategy group. Based on the argumentation mapping discourse, it was verified that instructing students to extend their activities of classifying collective arguments and monitoring group reflection could effectively support their engagement in argumentation mapping discourse and enhance their argumentation skill performance.

“Critique is not a verb”: is peer review stifling the dialogue in disaster scholarship?

PurposeIn this position piece, the authors will reflect on some of their recent experiences with the peer-review process in disaster studies and show how debate can so easily be stifled. The authors write it as a plea for healthy academic argumentative discussion and intellectual dialogue that would help all of us to refine our ideas, respect others’ ideas and learn from each other.Design/methodology/approachThe authors provide reflection on our own experiences. All the examples here are based on the anonymous (double-blinded) peer reviews that the authors have received in the past two years in response to papers submitted to disaster-related journals.FindingsThe authors show that the grounds for rejection often have nothing to do with the rigour of the research but are instead based on someone's philosophy, beliefs, values or opinions that differ from that of the authors, and which undermine the peer-review process.Research limitations/implicationsThere is so much potential in amicable and productive disagreements, which means that we can talk together – and through this, we can learn. Yet, the debate in its purest academic sense is a rare beast in disaster scholarship – largely because opposing views do not get published.Originality/valueThe authors call for ideological judgement and self-interest to be put aside when peers' work is reviewed – and for intellectual critique to be used in a productive way that would enhance rather than stifle scholarship.

Salient deliberative norm types in comment sections on news sites

Civil and argumentative public discussions are considered crucial for functioning democracies. Among other factors, the quality of user discussions of political issues on news sites depends on prevalent discussion norms. We integrate injunctive and descriptive norms into news comment research, assuming that the degree of salience of the respective norm influences the commenting behavior. Furthermore, we discuss how technical affordances such as default comment sorting determine the comment visibility and thus the salience of norms. Using data from a content analysis of 8162 comments on eight German news sites, we investigate how the two norm types influence deliberative forms of commenting. The results show that different types of salient injunctive and descriptive norms promote norm-compliant commenting. Furthermore, the default comment sorting can determine which comments are more or less salient. The results underline the importance of distinguishing different norm types in analyzing the quality of user comments in comment sections.

"МНЕ КАЖЕТСЯ, ЧТО ИСТИНУ Я ЗНАЮ И ТОЛЬКО ДЛЯ НЕЕ НЕ ЗНАЮ СЛОВ": АРГУМЕНТАЦИЯ, ЕЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ И ВОЗМОЖНОСТИ

The problem of argumentation caused by the ambiguity and multi-functionality of the phenomenon itself is ranked to be an infinite one. In ancient times argumentation used to be rightly considered a component of cognition and a method to prove the truth. Its functions today have extended considerably – from systematizing the knowledge to influencing rhetorically human views and behavior. It fulfills even more ambitious targets affecting the essence of ethical standards and thus the social and political background of the society. Teaching argumentation is a constituent of the modern educational system in Russia. In accordance with the requirements registered in the State Educational Standard for higher professional training of the Russian Federation (2010), experts in the humanitarian non-linguistic fields must demonstrate the ability to critical thinking which, in its turn, presupposes thinking and speaking logically in both – native and foreign – languages, holding, formulating logically one’s thoughts in the native and foreign languages, holding argumentative discussions, accepting or counter arguing a debatable issue. The author considers the phenomenon of argumentation applying the activity approach and thus analyzing its aims, correlating argumentation and proof concepts, and estimating teacher (argumentator) – student (recipient) relationships. In addition to this, the paper is aimed at considering the factors of transforming educational process from an informative to an argumentative (persuasive) one in which argumentation might be regarded as a method of impact

Argumentation as a discourse practice (Didactic and Linguistic concepts)

Argumentative competence, written or oral argumantation skills are essential in the process of academic non-academic communication. Raising this competence is of particular importance in the education process, which ultimately focuses on promoting the development of general, intercultural communication and stratehic learning skills.The competence to create an argumentative text is complex and includes different dimensions, which means the selection, construction, grouping of arguments, the proper conduct of argumentative reasoning. The systematization of the various concepts and respectives contained in it allows the arguments to be divided into two groups: speaker-oriented and interaction-oriented.Argumentative discussions and organized discussions processes generate discourse that is equated with the notion of community. Argumentation from the perspective of discourse analysis is a discource practice, which is realized in a specific context (contextualized), arises interactively, develops, models and is perceived by the participants in the interaction as argumentation. Strategic reasoning skills, as a discourse practice, instill in everyone in a particular society, in a particular discourse area, mandatory and important knowledge for all and form a solid system of thinking that ultimately leads to reasoned discussions processes.

Stock issues and the structure of argumentative discussions: An integrative analysis

We develop a method for analyzing argumentative discussions centered around the notion of ‘stock issues’, i.e., the field-dependent standard issues addressed by the participants in such discussions. The method yields an overview of the structure and content of complex argumentative discussions with multiple participants, including the activated stock issues and the ‘depth’ of the argumentation advanced per each stock issue. We start from the assumption that any given discussion context requires a set of stock issues to be addressed by the participants through their argumentation, tied together by a decision rule regulating the weight of each stock issue on the matter at hand. The building blocks of our method and the results of its application are illustrated through an example. We discuss several extensions and problems, concluding with directions for further research.

Homo Philosophicus: Reflections on the Nature and Function of Philosophical Thought

The philosopher is a fundamental mode of existence of the human being, yet it is experienced only by a minority, an elite. Those constitute, among themselves, a subspecies of Homo sapiens that is sometimes dubbed Homo philosophicus. Our goal here is to investigate, in depth, the philosophical foundations of this ontological-anthropological concept. We analyze the concept of the philosopher into three basic components: the thinker, the artist, and the mathematician, arguing that the three fundamentally participate in maintaining the operation of the philosopher machine. The following text can be considered a contribution to metaphilosophy, written as a structured opinion piece, encompassing a series of reflections drawn from the writer’s own experience as a philosopher. The mode of the presentation is a mixture of personal and experimental writing styles, intentionally avoiding the rigid form of overtly analytical and argumentative discussions. Although numerous philosophers will be discussed below, four key figures, Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, and Guattari, occupy a special position in our overall opinionated view on the nature of philosophy.

Passive elementary student's constructed epistemic emotions and patterns of participation during small group scientific modeling

AbstractIn this qualitative case study, we purposively selected a passive student in elementary science class from a small group and examined what factors contributed to her socially and momentarily construction of epistemic emotions. We used various data such as emotion diaries, transcripts of the video recordings, postlesson interviews, and field notes to document her involvement in the six lessons of the scientific modeling of the human respiratory system. Our analysis revealed that she constructed the epistemic emotions of frustration, anxiety, and joy. Her nonparticipation and constructed epistemic frustration in Lesson 1 were because of her unfamiliarity with the task and her perception that her ideas will be rejected by others. Due to her lack of previous knowledge, that desire to engage in the small group argumentative discussions was affected by her perception that her ideas would be rejected. With slightly increased familiarity and a sense of acceptance in Lessons 2 and 3, she displayed passive participation and constructed epistemic anxiety because she was not certain whether her opinions were scientifically correct or not. With the uncertainty of her ideas, she was not able to develop a personal motivational drive to engage in effortful participation. Finally, she exhibited active participation and constructed epistemic joy in Lessons 5 and 6 when she became familiar with scientific argumentation and scientific modeling, in addition to her developed sense of full acceptance. These results indicated the intertwined relations of affective, cognitive, and social aspects of learning on student's participation and construction of epistemic emotions.