Dialogical Argumentation Research Articles

Eschatology of the Singularity: “Deus ex machina” in the Construction of Film Images of the Future

The mixed assessment by critics and theorists of the deus ex machina artistic device common in popular cinema requires a more thorough study of its dramatic and narrative functions in science fiction films. It is in the construction of film images of the future that this technique is combined with a fantastic assumption, expressing the narrator’s attitude towards artistic narration and becoming an argument in dialogue with the viewer. The study reveals, based on the analysis of empirical material, the multifunctionality of deus ex machina using the example of the development of the theme of technological singularity in cinema. The analysis of films significant for the development of the science fiction (Sci-Fi) genre and the most popular television series among science fiction fans today demonstrates the evolution of the deus ex machina technique. In addition to the trivial function of arbitrary resolution of peripeteia, it acquires various dramatic functions (accelerating or slowing down the rhythm of action, connecting parts of the plot in a large form), obtains the properties of scaling and fragmentation, synchrony and asynchrony with a fantastic assumption, adding complex narrative functions to the toolkit of expressive means, through which the narrator reveals or, on the contrary, conceals his attitude to artistic reality, involving the viewer into the game of probable meanings. The authors of the article come to the conclusion that the theme of technological singularity has been penetrating cinema since its appearance in the work of L. Lumiere and determines, depending on the narrator’s attitude to the topic, the vector of techno-skepticism or techno-optimism in the eschatological dilemma that characterizes the cosmogony of traditional religions. The article is of interest to researchers and film lovers and contributes to the study of artistic and scientific communication.

Integrating dialectical constructivist scaffolding-based argumentation mapping to support students’ dialectical thinking, oral and dialogical argumentation complexity

Integrating dialectical constructivist scaffolding-based argumentation mapping to support students’ dialectical thinking, oral and dialogical argumentation complexity

Analysis of Teachers’ Perspectives Towards the Use of IKS to Improve STEM Education for Sustainable Development

This study focuses on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education teachers’ perspectives on integrating indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) into a multidisciplinary STEM framework to promote sustainability. The aim is to understand how integrating the values, ethics and worldviews of the global community can contribute to a sustainable mindset. Through an examination of the research background and pedagogical foundations, as well as a review of existing literature, it becomes evident that teachers’ perspectives are pivotal in fostering a sustainable mindset among students. To encourage social dialogue that has the potential to evolve teachers’ perspectives, a 6 month workshop focused on dialogic argumentation was provided to a group of basic education and university STEM teachers. The workshop aimed to explore the evidence- and reasoning-based arguments that influenced their perspectives regarding the role of IKS in STEM education. Analysis of data collected through questionnaires and interviews yielded the following findings: (a) initially, most teachers had mixed feelings about the role of IKS in STEM education for sustainable development; (b) a significant number of teachers reported that the dialogic argumentation workshop helped them transition from a negative to a positive attitude towards acknowledging the complexity of the role of IKS in promoting various approaches to achieving sustainability goals; and (c) several others, particularly university teachers, attributed IKS with the potential to enhance reflective reasoning in order to solve complex sustainability problems. The implications of these findings for classroom practice, particularly in terms of utilising IKS to enhance STEM teacher education, are highlighted in the paper.

Opportunities and hindrances for promoting interdisciplinary learning in schools

ABSTRACT Background Influential philosophers have suggested that interdisciplinarity is crucial for ecosystem management and scientific practice, and for education to democracy. However, a historical review of the rise of disciplines points at their compartmentalization in schools. An analysis of core construct categories of three disciplines, shows that this compartmentalization may decrease when dialogic argumentation is enacted. This background led us to launch an interdisciplinary program in schools. In previous publications, we identified multiple constraints in its implementation and listed design principles for affording interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. Method We adopt a narrative approach to analyze classroom talk, and ask whether and how interdisciplinary processes emerge in this talk. Findings Students maintain dialogic argumentation around Interdisciplinary Social Dilemmas, but guidance is necessary for integrating knowledge from different disciplines. When the teacher is attentive to student’s unarticulated references to disciplinary ideas, she may subtly guide the emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. Often, the teacher misses those opportunities and declaims the integration of knowledge in a non-dialogic talk. Contribution Dialogic Education is crucial for the success of interdisciplinary programs in schools, but the actual emergence of interdisciplinary processes depends on the handling of organizational and institutional constraints, on huge design efforts, and on subtle guidance.

Real Presence Amid the Shallows: Eucharist and Friendship in a Digital Age

This article contends that Christ’s eucharistic offer of friendship, and the habits of attentiveness such real presence demands, must shape the church’s mission in a digital milieu that tends to shallow attention and relationships. It makes this argument in dialogue principally with the theology of Bernard Lonergan and the pontificate of Pope Francis, while aided by the cultural commentary of Nicholas Carr, Sherry Turkle, and Marshall McLuhan. First, I consider how Lonergan’s focus on human knowing and choosing anticipates the recent turn in the Catholic magisterium under Pope Francis that considers the formative effects of digital communication technologies. Second, I show how Lonergan’s account of bias helps explain the shallowing effects of these technologies, for both cognition and community. Third, inspired by Lonergan and Pope Francis, I propose how practices of friendship—informed by Christ’s own friendship extended through Eucharistic presence—can foster habits of real presence able to counter the shallows of our digital age.

Exploring the Teacher’s Role in Discourse and Social Regulation of Learning: Insights from Collaborative Sessions in High-School Physics Classrooms

Science educators incorporate collaborative engagement in model-based argumentation to meet curricular goals and build students’ capacity for scientific epistemic and social practices. During collaboration, groups encounter various challenges (e.g., lack of task understanding) and engage in social regulation to overcome them. However, little is known about whether and how various contextual factors (e.g., teacher presence, classroom climate, or academic discipline) can influence the nature of students’ collaboration and social regulation. The purpose of our qualitative case study was to examine how one such contextual factor, teacher presence, related to high school students’ discourse interactions and social regulation of learning during a collaborative model-based scientific argumentation task. In one classroom, the teacher was continuously present during groups’ discussions. In the other classroom, the teacher was intermittently present. We found that groups with a continuously present teacher had high on-task engagement that was teacher-led, with the students relying on the teacher for regulation. Groups with intermittent teacher presence had more off-task interactions but also engaged in more dialogic argumentation discourse with each other, initiating and enacting more modes of social regulation of learning than the other groups. These findings suggest that teachers must thoughtfully manage their presence and absence to instruct, model, scaffold, and fade their support for both scientific argumentation and the social regulation skills necessary to productively enact that argumentation, intentionally varying emphasis on one or the other. These findings highlight the importance of future research on teacher presence and other contextual factors that can affect how students collaborate and learn.

Platon’un Phaidon Diyaloğunda Uyum Argümanı ve Elemeci Materyalist Zihin Felsefesi

The subject of this paper is to examine ‘the harmony argument’, which is considered as a materialist understanding of soul in Plato's Phaedo (86a-94e), and to evaluate the 'eliminative materialism', which is a materialist philosophy of mind in the contemporary period. To do this, first of all, the main points of the harmony argument will be examined. The harmony argument is provided by Simmias in the dialogue. The harmony argument is advanced by Simmias in the dialogue. According to him, the harmony in the sound of a tuned lyre is something invisible and immaterial, just like the soul, while the strings of the lyre are corporeal, composite. However, when the corporeal string disappears, the harmony also disappears. Why not consider the same for the soul and the body? When we look at the contemporary philosophy of mind, it can be said that especially materialist philosophies of mind are in demand and that they reduce the mind to the brain, just as harmony is reduced to string in the example of the lyre above. Eliminative materialism, which is discussed in this paper, is at the far end of this issue and states that the mind is completely the brain and that the mind can be eliminated. If we consider the argument of harmony with the claims of eliminative materialism, according to them, there is nothing but sound and string, and movements in sound and string are called harmony in an unscientific way. Since there is no such thing as harmony, this concept will disappear as science progresses about the lyre and its strings. Philosophy of mind is a very current and important sub-field of philosophy as a field of study, considering topics such as artificial intelligence in the contemporary period. It can be thought that the philosophy of religion, in which subjects such as metaphysics and spirit are studied, can point to important places in this field, especially when it is considered that science is handled with a materialist way today. This paper, it is aimed to compare the harmony argument in the Phaidon dialogue, which is one of the most basic texts on the subject that the soul is a substance separate from matter, with the elective materialism, which is one of the contemporary theories, and to present the answers that can be given to materialism in this regard. While doing this, the text of the dialogue was analyzed and examined in a comparative way with contemporary thoughts. As a result, it was seen that three important issues arise in Socrates' answer to the harmony argument. According to Socrates (i) the soul exists before the body, and harmony emerges after the lyre and strings. (ii) The soul is active on the body, it can oppose the body. But harmony is not active on lyre and strings, it can only follow them. (iii) Spirit is simple, there is no such thing as being more or less spirit. But the harmony may be less or more. Considering these claims of Socrates, it has been seen that the second view, which we can call the problem of free will, is an important objection for eliminative materialism. It has hardly dealt with the other two issues above. However, it was concluded that while denying the subjective experiences of human beings, eliminative materialism did not fully base it, and it was criticized on this subject in the philosophy of mind.

Interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation among out‐of‐field and in‐field physics teachers

AbstractOut‐of‐field teaching is a global educational challenge. In particular, many teachers whose academic background and main teaching experience is in biology are called to teach middle school physics and have limited opportunities for productive professional development. Based on previous studies, we expect these teachers to hold different epistemic cognitions from the in‐field teachers. The present study builds on this epistemic diversity and offers dialogic argumentation as a means to promote mutual learning among physics teachers from different disciplinary backgrounds. We describe guidelines for designing interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation activities that aim to encourage teachers to express their disciplinary perspectives in the context of inquiry‐based physics and to facilitate a deliberative discourse among them. We demonstrate in a case study the ways in which the discourse of a group of in‐field and out‐of‐field teachers unfolds under the proposed design guidelines. Using the Actor‐Network methodology and an analysis of power relations, we uncover a complex interplay between the social and the epistemic in the discourse: when interactions become more dialogic and power relations more equalized, the out‐of‐field teachers take an active role in the discussion, foregrounding their epistemic practices and enhancing the epistemic practices of the group, including the in‐field teacher.

When Science Is Taught This Way, Students Become Critical Friends: Setting the Stage for Student Teachers

Effective science education draws on many different ways of teaching science. The literature on science education documents some potential benefits of argumentation instruction as a powerful tool for learning science and maintaining wonder and curiosity in the classroom. Unlike expository teaching, which relies on a teacher-driven pedagogy in which students accept the teacher’s authority over any content to be justified a priori, argumentation teaching allows students to focus on the importance of high-quality evidence for epistemic knowledge, reasoning, and justification. Using a quasi-experimental design, two study groups of undergraduate student teachers were exposed to two different learning conditions, the Exp-group with dialogic argumentation instruction (DAI) and the Ctrl-group with expository instruction. Each group received the same science content twice a week for 12 weeks (2 h per lesson). Pre- and posttests were administered to collect data. One-way MANCOVA with the pretest results as covariates showed that the instructional approaches (Wilk’s Λ = 0.765, p < 0.001) had a significant effect on the tested variables after the intervention. A pairwise comparison of performance indices between the two study groups revealed that the exp-group was better able to evaluate alternative solutions and defend arguments for collaborative consensus on unstructured scientific problems. This suggests that dialogic argumentation instruction can be used to help students improve their scientific reasoning, thinking, and argumentation skills, which are required to solve problems involving scientific phenomena.

How Do Students' Method of Solving Proofs Change When Working in Groups?

This study aimed to describe the shift in students’ mathematical arguments from working on a proof individually to working on it in a group. This descriptive-exploratory study used a qualitative approach. Nine undergraduate students from a private university in Jombang, Indonesia, in the 5th semester were the subjects of the study. They were selected because they had already learned the concepts of math logic, argumentation, the theory of numbers, and analysis. Hence, they were ready to construct arguments in dialogue and non-dialogue forms. A task of argumentation and an interview were used to collect data. The study had several stages. First, the students solved the given argumentation task individually. Second, they had to make small groups of 3 members and discuss the same task. The result found that four of them had a complementary shift in their arguments, while the other five students had a reconstructive shift in their views. The complementary change happened because they reconsidered their initial thoughts, complementing their previous thinking structure. On the other hand, the reconstructive shift occurred due to group discussion (i.e., dialogue), which made them reconstruct or even entirely change their previous thoughts. Furthermore, they initially used inductive reasoning and then shifted their reasoning to a deductive one.&#x0D; Keywords: Mathematical Argumentation, Proving, Reconstruct, Complementary shift, Reconstructive shift

Advancing group epistemic practices in the resolution of interdisciplinary societal dilemmas

The present paper inquires whether a meticulous program designed to resolve Interdisciplinary Societal Dilemmas through dialogic argumentation advances epistemic practices. To delineate how epistemic practices are manifested in classroom discussions, we adopted the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which explores the interactions and agencies of human and non-human actors. ANT analyses uncover the power these actors exert on each other and help recognize the networks that these actors create or dissolve. They also delineate how epistemic practices emerge and are shaped in these networks. We identified four epistemic practices in the discussions: (1) taking a reasoned position, (2) integrating knowledge from different disciplines, (3) weighing pros and cons before taking a complex position, and (4) role-playing in a democratic game. We show that the type of discourse developed in the program was mostly dialogic argumentation. In addition, we demonstrate how teachers often inhibit these advancements. Indeed, in the case of integrating knowledge from different disciplines, teachers’ role is central, but the emerged actors’ network is often non-dialogic. Moreover, we show how non-human actors shape the interactions in networks as well as the formation of knowledge and agency. We conclude that: (a) the design of activities for resolving interdisciplinary societal dilemmas provides many opportunities for advancing epistemic practices, (b) these practices are mostly advanced through dialogic argumentation, but (c) more efforts should be invested in affording interdisciplinary argumentation.

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.

Understanding, Evaluating, and Promoting the Development of Argumentative Competence: An Interview With Dr. Deanna Kuhn From Teachers College, Columbia University

Purpose The purpose of this study is to promote the understanding of the nature, development, and evaluation of argumentative competence so that teachers can feel more confident about incorporating argumentative activities into their teaching practices and assess and cultivate students’ argumentative competencies more effectively. Design/Approach/Methods The authors invited Dr. Deanna Kuhn to elaborate on her research findings and theoretical underpinnings regarding her 30 years of research that combined educational, psychological, and philosophical perspectives to conduct argumentation studies. Findings She asserted that argument should be studied not only as an individual skill but also as a social and cultural practice. She promoted the dialogic argumentation approach as a pathway for developing argumentative competence. She also emphasized that an integrated framework that links the cognitive, metacognitive, epistemological, and affective aspects of argumentative competence holds great promise to advance not only the theoretical study of argumentation but also the related empirical research, classroom practices, and evaluation reforms. Originality/Value Dr. Kuhn clarified key issues regarding the nature and development of argumentative competencies and elaborated on the values and implementations of the dialogic argumentation approach across cultures. She suggested that future researchers should study argumentation within a more integrative framework.

‘Are they walking their talk?’: alignment of teachers’ professed beliefs and enacted practices for teaching through dialogic argumentation

ABSTRACT This exploratory multiple-case study investigated the belief systems (professed and enacted) of four secondary school biology teachers towards teaching through dialogic argumentation. The constant comparison method was used to iteratively assess the qualitative data, which included classroom observations, field notes, transcripts of the formal and informal interviews and teachers’ reflections, and classroom video and audio recordings. Three themes emerged to represent the teachers’ belief systems for teaching through dialogic argumentation: 1) using ‘inter-language’; 2) scaffolding the negotiated consensus; and 3) ‘taking up’ and ‘referring back’ to students’ ideas. Moreover, two other interesting results were revealed. First, the study corroborates previous results which state that teachers’ intentions or predispositions in addition to their eagerness and willingness to use reform-based strategies pushed them towards successful implementation of their strategies for teaching through dialogic argumentation. Second, the strategies they implemented somehow revealed how they view dialogic argumentation as an approach to the co-construction of knowledge in science teaching and learning. The study offers implications for future professional development in terms of improving other aspects, such as teachers’ understanding of the advantages of reform-based strategies and constant mentoring which may also influence their intentions to achieve the curriculum goals.

A Study on the Changes in the Argument Statement Strategy According to the Media and Audience Transition －Focusing on the ‘Rebuttal’ in both the Discussion Scripts and the Essay after a Debating among College Students

In this paper, I examined how the transition between the media and the audience affects the thesis statement. Based on the fact that different media characteristics of speech and writing embody the same content in different ways, the aspects of media transition and audience transition were examined for college students’ discussion scripts and essays after debating. The reason why the rebuttal in the discussion model was studied was that the rebuttal not only shows the dialogic argumentation well, but also reflects the media transition and audience transition at the same time when it is converted into monologic argumentation, which is writing. First, the media transition from discussion to writing showed a difference in the amount of rebuttal terms. In the essays written after debating, we can see that the phenomenon of significantly reducing the existing rebuttal and replacing it with a new and interesting argument tends to give intellectual interest more advantage in the article written, compared to the special speaking situation of discussion. Second, as a result of examining the impact of audience transition on the argumentation strategy at the level of politeness, questioning, and communication, the politeness expression in discussion was removed from the writing and the argument strength increased, while the question aspect was diverse in discussion scripts using dialogic argumentation. In addition, analysis via Hyland’s ‘academic interaction model’ confirmed that audience transition is the cause of a different selection of boosters and hedges in the discussion script and essays after debating. In conclusion, we can say that the transition between the media and the audience has a certain effect on the argument development strategy.

Design practices and principles for promoting dialogic argumentation via interdisciplinarity

Past research has shown various benefits of combining the argumentative and the dialogic in cognitive development. However, it has also shown that attempts to implement dialogic argumentation in school fail to leave a sustainable impact. One reason for this situation is related to the lack of explicit knowledge about how to design and organize dialogical activities in realistic school settings. The present study addresses this lacuna while putting forward interdisciplinarity as a promising venue for promoting student dialogue and argumentation. We first elaborate on the connection between dialogic argumentation and interdisciplinarity, review the relevant literature on instructional and task design and then suggest a configuration of the design principles needed to be developed: these are content-related principles, pedagogy-related principles and organization-related principles. This is followed by an illustration of how specific design principles of these types emerged from and are reflected in task-design practices of project team of researchers in science, mathematics and philosophy education. Finally, we show that while the focus on interdisciplinarity seems to narrow the issue of the implementation of dialogue and argumentation in schools, it in fact opens it and provides instructional design principles in complex educational projects relevant to the society.

Why are certain items more difficult than others in a competency test for music–related argumentation?

This paper examines why certain items in a competency test for music-related argumentation are more difficult than others. Based on previous studies on school-related achievement tests, the authors assume that differences in item difficulty are related to different item characteristics or combinations of characteristics. In this study, the item characteristics of a test for music-related argumentation were first identified and coded. Three domains were identified as contributing to item difficulty: cognitive requirements, knowledge, and formal item features. Second, multiple linear regression analyses were conducted with the item characteristics as predictors of item difficulty, which had been estimated in a prior study. A comparison of three regression models confirmed that the model holding four predictors of the domain “cognitive requirements” best fit the study dataRadj2=0.71. The strongest predictor in the final model was “reference to musical attributes” β=0.46,β=0.51, followed by “cross-sentence argumentation” β=0.37 and “dialogical argumentation” β=0.20. These results indicate that the difficulty of an item increased most when participants had to refer to musical attributes to solve the task. The items that required the participants to provide cross-sentence or dialogical argumentation were more challenging as well. The findings regarding the relations between item characteristics and item difficulty contribute to a better understanding of music-related argumentative competence, with important implications for the music classroom.

Student conceptual and epistemic quality improvement argumenation with scaffolding on argument-driven inquiry

This study is aimed at comparing the quality of students’ argumentation based on conceptual and epistemic aspects between learnings that implement argument-driven inquiry (ADI) and argument-driven inquiry with scaffolding (ADIS) models. The data were collected through dialogic argumentation observation sheets for the students and audio-visual recordings and were analyzed qualitatively. The study invoved 67 participants in the ADI group and 81 participants in the ADIS group. The quality of student argument with the ADI model differed significantly from the ADIS model. Results show that the students in the ADIS class were are better at providing sufficient data to support claims and coherent causal explanations to explain a certain phenomenon, and at organizing accurate rhetorical references when expressing data.

Students' dialogic and justifying moves during dialogic argumentation in mathematics and physics

In this study, we focus on dialogic argumentation among students in a whole class setting in mathematics and physics in lower secondary school. By drawing on previous studies on the structure of argumentation and dialogic interactions, we suggest that transparency of student reasoning and students' engagement with each other's ideas are two key aspects in dialogic argumentation. We examine what levels might exist in these key aspects and how they can exist simultaneously. We collected data by video recording mathematics and physics lessons in lower secondary school, and created a coding scheme for students' dialogic and justifying moves. By using the coding scheme, we recognized different kinds of argumentation with respect to how dialogic student–student interaction is and how transparently student reasoning is expressed. Furthermore, we found different ways how students can provide justifications as a dialogic reaction to others' ideas.

Supporting strategic and meta-strategic development of argument skill: the role of reflection

The present work examines the role of reflection in supporting the development of argument skill. Participants who engaged in argumentation practice with additional reflective activities outperformed a control group who only engaged in the argumentation practice. The experimental group showed greater gains in developing argument skill – particularly in employing evidence to weaken an opposing position. Experimental condition participants also exhibited greater gains in content knowledge on the intervention topic compared to the control condition participants. Microgenetic analysis of dialogs during the interventions revealed a different pattern of progress across the two conditions. Experimental condition participants exhibited gradual and overall greater improvements at both strategic and meta levels ‒ meta-strategic and epistemic ‒ compared to control condition participants. Findings support the hypothesis that engagement in reflection during dialogic argumentation supports the development of metacognition, both as competence and disposition, which in turn supports performance at the strategic level. Educational implications are discussed, stressing the beneficial role of engagement in reflective activities for promoting argument skill, above and beyond practice.