SCHOOLS, TEACHING, AND SUPERVISION

Schools, Teaching, and Supervision

Schools, Teaching and Supervision

Introduction

Skill with argument, often labeled persuasive discourse, has long been a central goal of education (Chambliss, 1995). Understanding and producing arguments is important because a variety of commonly encountered texts such as editorials, books, and magazine articles rely on argument structure. Furthermore, the skill of constructing an argument is crucial to academic success because it plays a role in tasks such as literary analysis, historical debates and scientific arguments (Anderson, Chinn, Waggoner, Kim, 1998).

Even though argument has long been recognized as important to academic and civic life, evidence of students' success with argumentative writing is sparse. The results from the 2002 writing subtest of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which includes persuasion, revealed that only about one fifth of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level. When the results are analyzed in greater detail, urban and low-income students as well as African American and Hispanic students were found to post writing scores lower than their peers. Students' struggles with the NAEP signal that there is a need for stronger writing instruction that addresses the needs of urban, middle school students (Anderson, Nyguyen-Jahiel et al. 2001).

One promising intervention designed to strengthen the argumentative writing of people in middle school used heuristics to teach students argument structure. Students who used the heuristics were found to write stronger arguments with better voice. Although Yeh's heuristics appear promising, there is little additional evidence for the efficacy of these specific tools. Furthermore, there is relatively little writing research focusing on high-poverty, urban students, at the middle school level (Bakeman, Gottman, 1986). However, there are instructional methods that have been effective with other students and show promise with middle school students in urban schools.

Discussion and Analysis

Self-Regulated Strategy Development

One approach, Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), has been shown to improve the quality of students' argumentative writing. Initially designed for students with learning disabilities, SRSD has been found to be effective for a range of students, including those in middle schools and for low-income students in urban, elementary schools. In a meta-analysis, the impact of SRSD was substantial; the average effect size was 1.15 at posttest and 1.32 at the maintenance point (Ball, 2006).

The theoretical foundation for SRSD draws on the cognitive, motivational, social, and self-regulatory factors known to influence writing. The use of cognitive writing strategies in SRSD draws on the cognitive processes common to proficient writers. SRSD addresses motivational aspects of writing through instruction in self-regulation methods, including goal-setting procedures and self-statements. Social interaction plays a role in SRSD in that strategy mastery occurs in a supportive environment under the guidance of a skillful teacher. In addition, SRSD instruction has been shown to increase students' writing knowledge, particularly in terms of how to plan and what constitutes good writing.



Collaborative Reasoning

A second instructional method, collaborative reasoning (CR), has also been demonstrated to raise the quality of students' argumentative discourse. Most studies evaluating CR have focused on oral argumentation, but there is also evidence ...