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Improving Argumentative Skills in Education: Three Online Discussion Tools

  • Jan Albert van Laar

How can we foster sound argumentation and valid criticism in education? How to help students to avoid fallacies, resist polarization, respond wisely to misleading information, and how to make them produce arguments that are genuinely responsive to the position of those they address? I sketch a dialogical account of the nature of sound argument and criticism. Then, I discuss two types of argumentative dialogue: persuasion dialogue and negotiation dialogue. Finally, I explain how software applications provide an opportunity for students to analyse, evaluate and produce arguments, and to critically think about the design of discussion procedures. I also discuss a third software application that enables teachers and advanced students to themselves design online discussion procedures, so as to experiment with them and to advance their understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of various design choices. This paper support the idea that students’ argumentative skills will be enhanced by letting them engage in the online discussion procedures presented.

  • Keywords:
  • Argumentation Theory,
  • debate,
  • education,
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Jan Albert van Laar

University of Groningen, Netherlands - ORCID: 0000-0001-8243-6921

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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Pages: 87-98
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2021 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2021 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Improving Argumentative Skills in Education: Three Online Discussion Tools

Authors

Jan Albert van Laar

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-329-1.09

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Competing, cooperating, deciding: towards a model of deliberative debate

Editors

Adelino Cattani, Bruno Mastroianni

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

168

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-329-1

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-328-4

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-329-1

Series Title

Communication and Philosophical Cultures. Researches and Instruments

Series ISSN

2975-1152

Series E-ISSN

2975-1233

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