what is critical thinking and argumentation

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8 Arguments and Critical Thinking

J. anthony blair, introduction [1].

This chapter discusses two different conceptions of argument, and then discusses the role of arguments in critical thinking. It is followed by a chapter in which David Hitchcock carefully analyses one common concept of an argument.

1. Two meanings of ‘argument’

The word ‘argument’ is used in a great many ways. Any thorough understanding of arguments requires understanding ‘argument’ in each of its senses or uses. These may be divided into two large groupings: arguments had or engaged in , and arguments made or used . I begin with the former.

1.1 A n ‘a rgument’ as something two parties have with each othe r, something they get into, the kind of ‘argument’ one has in mind in de scribing two people as “arguing all the time ”

For many people outside academia or the practice of law, an argument is a quarrel . It is usually a verbal quarrel, but it doesn’t have to use words. If dishes are flying or people are glaring at each other in angry silence, it can still be an argument. What makes a quarrel an argument is that it involves a communication between two or more parties (however dysfunctional the communication may be) in which the parties disagree and in which that disagreement and reasons, actual or alleged, motivating it are expressed—usually in words or other communicative gestures.

Quarrels are emotional. The participants experience and express emotions, although that feature is not exclusive to arguments that are quarrels. People can and do argue emotionally, and (or) when inspired by strong emotions, when they are not quarrelling. Heated arguments are not necessarily quarrels; but quarrels tend to be heated.

What makes quarrels emotional in some cases is that at least one party experiences the disagreement as representing some sort of personal attack, and so experiences his or her ego or sense of self-worth as being threatened. Fear is a reaction to a perceived threat, and anger is a way of coping with fear and also with embarrassment and shame. In other cases, the argument about the ostensible disagreement is a reminder of or a pretext for airing another, deeper grievance. Jealousy and resentment fuel quarrels. Traces of ego-involvement often surface even in what are supposed to be more civilized argumentative exchanges, such as scholarly disputes. Quarrels tend not to be efficient ways of resolving the disagreements that gives rise to them because the subject of a disagreement changes as the emotional attacks escalate or because the quarrel was often not really about that ostensible disagreement in the first place.

In teaching that ‘argument’ has different senses, it is misleading to leave the impression (as many textbooks do) that quarrels are the only species of argument of this genus. In fact they are just one instance of a large class of arguments in this sense of extended, expressed, disagreements between or among two or more parties.

A dispute is an argument in this sense that need not be a quarrel. It is a disagreement between usually two parties about the legality, or morality, or the propriety on some other basis, of a particular act or policy. It can be engaged in a civil way by the disputants or their proxies (e.g., their spokespersons or their lawyers). Sometimes only the disputing parties settle their difference; sometimes a third party such as a mediator, arbitrator or judge is called in to impose a settlement.

A debate is another argument of this general kind. Debates are more or less formalized or regimented verbal exchanges between parties who might disagree, but in any case who take up opposing sides on an issue. Procedural rules that govern turn-taking, time available for each turn, and topics that may be addressed are agreed to when political opponents debate one another. Strict and precise rules of order govern who may speak, who must be addressed, sometimes time limits for interventions, in parliamentary or congressional debates in political decision-making bodies, or in formal intercollegiate competitive debates. Usually the “opponent” directly addressed in the debate is not the party that each speaker is trying to influence, so although the expressed goal is to “win” the debate, winning does not entail getting the opponent to concede. Instead, it calls for convincing an on-looking party or audience—the judge of the debate or the jury in a courtroom or the television audience or the press or the electorate as a whole—of the superior merits of one’s case for the opinion being argued for in the debate.

To be distinguished from a debate and a dispute by such factors as scale is a controversy . Think of such issues as the abortion controversy, the climate change controversy, the same-sex marriage controversy, the LGBT rights controversy, the animal rights controversy. The participants are many—often millions. The issues are complex and there are many disputes about details involved, including sometimes even formal debates between representatives of different sides. Typically there is a range of positions, and there might be several different sides each with positions that vary one from another. A controversy typically occurs over an extended period of time, often years and sometime decades long. But an entire controversy can be called an argument, as in, “the argument over climate change.” Controversies tend to be unregulated, unlike debates but like quarrels, although they need not be particularly angry even when they are emotional. Like quarrels, and unlike debates, the conditions under which controversies occur, including any constraints on them, are shaped by the participants.

Somewhere among quarrels, debates and controversies lie the theoretical arguments that theorists in academic disciplines engage in, in academic journals and scholarly monographs. In such arguments theorists take positions, sometimes siding with others and sometimes standing alone, and they argue back and forth about which theoretical position is the correct one. In a related type of argument, just two people argue back and forth about what is the correct position on some issue (including meta-level arguments about what is the correct way to frame the issue in the first place).

The stakes don’t have to be theories and the participants don’t have to be academics. Friends argue about which team will win the championship, where the best fishing spot is located, or what titles to select for the book club. Family members argue about how to spend their income, what school to send the children to, or whether a child is old enough to go on a date without a chaperone. Co-workers argue about the best way to do a job, whether to change service providers, whether to introduce a new product line, and so on. These arguments are usually amicable, whether or not they settle the question in dispute.

All of these kinds of “argument” in this sense of the term—quarrels, friendly disputes, arguments at work, professional arguments about theoretical positions, formal or informal debates, and various kinds of controversy—share several features.

• They involve communications between or among two or more people. Something initiates the communication, and either something ends it or there are ways for participants to join and to exit the conversation. They entail turn-taking (less or more regimented), each side addressing the other side and in turn construing and assessing what the other has to say in reply and formulating and communicating a response to the replies of the other side. And, obviously, they involve the expression, usually verbal, of theses and of reasons for them or against alternatives and criticisms.
• They have a telos or aim, although there seems to be no single end in mind for all of them or even for each of them. In a quarrel the goal might be to have one’s point of view prevail, to get one’s way, but it might instead (or in addition) be to humiliate the other person or to save one’s own self-respect. Some quarrels—think of the ongoing bickering between some long-married spouses—seem to be a way for two people to communicate, merely to acknowledge one another. In a debate, each side seeks to “win,” which can mean different things in different contexts ( cf. a collegiate debate vs. a debate between candidates in an election vs. a parliamentary debate). Some arguments seemed designed to convince the other to give up his position or accept the interlocutor’s position, or to get the other to act in some way or to adopt some policy. Some have the more modest goal of getting a new issue recognized for future deliberation and debate. Still others are clearly aimed not at changing anyone’s mind but at reinforcing or entrenching a point of view already held (as is usually the case with religious sermons or with political speeches to the party faithful). Some are intended to establish or to demonstrate the truth or reasonableness of some position or recommendation and (perhaps) also to get others to “see” that the truth has been established. Some seem designed to maintain disagreement, as when representatives of competing political parties argue with one another.
• All these various kinds of argument are more or less extended, both in the sense that they occur over time, sometimes long stretches of time, and also in the sense that they typically involved many steps: extensive and complex support for a point of view and critique of its alternatives.
• In nearly every case, the participants give reasons for the claims they make and they expect the other participants in the argument to give reasons for their claims. This is even a feature of quarrels, at least at the outset, although such arguments can deteriorate into name-calling and worse. (Notice that even the “yes you did; no I didn’t;…; did; didn’t” sequence of the Monty Python “Having an argument” skit breaks down and a reason is sought.)

The kinds of argument listed so far are all versions of having an argument (see Daniel J. O’Keefe, 1977, 1982). Some might think that this is not the sense of ‘argument’ that is pertinent to critical thinking instruction, but such arguments are the habitat of the kinds of argument that critical thinkers need to be able to identify, analyze and evaluate.

1.2 An argument a s something a person makes (or constructs, invents, borrows) consisting of purported reasons alleged to suggest, or support or prove a point and that is used for some purpose such as to persuade someone of some claim, to justify someone in maintaining the position claimed, or to test a claim .

When people have arguments—when they engage in one or another of the activities of arguing described above—one of the things they routinely do is present or allege or offer reasons in support of the claims that they advance, defend, challenge, dispute, question, or consider. That is, in having “arguments,” we typically make and use “arguments.” The latter obviously have to be arguments in different sense from the former. They are often called “reason-claim” complexes. If arguments that someone has had constitute a type of communication or communicative activity, arguments that someone has made or used are actual or potential contributions to such activities. Reason-claim complexes are typically made and used when engaged in an argument in the first sense, trying to convince someone of your point of view during a disagreement or dispute with them. Here is a list of some of the many definitions found in textbooks of ‘argument’ in this second sense.

“… here [the word ‘argument’] … is used in the … logical sense of giving reasons for or against some claim.” Understanding Arguments, Robert Fogelin and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, 6th ed., p. 1. “Thus an argument is a discourse that contains at least two statements, one of which is asserted to be a reason for the other.” Monroe Beardsley, Practical Logic, p. 9. “An argument is a set of claims a person puts forward in an attempt to show that some further claim is rationally acceptable.” Trudy Govier. A Practical Study of Arguments, 5th ed., p. 3. An argument is “a set of clams some of which are presented as reasons for accepting some further claim.” Alec Fisher, Critical Thinking, An Introduction, p. 235. Argument: “A conclusion about an issue that is supported by reasons.” Sherry Diestler, Becoming a Critical Thinker, 4th ed., p. 403. “ Argument: An attempt to support a conclusion by giving reasons for it.” Robert Ennis, Critical Thinking, p. 396. “Argument – A form of thinking in which certain statements (reasons) are offered in support of another statement (conclusion).” John Chaffee, Thinking Critically, p. 415 “When we use the word argument in this book we mean a message which attempts to establish a statement as true or worthy of belief on the basis of other statements.” James B. Freeman, Thinking Logically, p. 20 “Argument. A sequence of propositions intended to establish the truth of one of the propositions.” Richard Feldman, Reason and Argument, p. 447. “Arguments consist of conclusions and reasons for them, called ‘premises’.” Wayne Grennan, Argument Evaluation, p. 5. Argument: “A set of claims, one of which, the conclusion is supported by [i.e., is supposed to provide a reason for] one or more of the other claims. Reason in the Balance, Sharon Bailin & Mark Battersby, p. 41.

These are not all compatible, and most of them define ‘argument’ using other terms—‘reasons’, ‘claims’, ‘propositions’, ‘statements’, ‘premises’ and ‘conclusions’—that are in no less need of definition than it is. In the next chapter, David Hitchcock offers a careful analysis of this concept of an argument.

Some define argument in this second sense as a kind of communication; others conceive it as a kind of set of propositions that can serve communicative functions, but others as well (such as inquiry). Either way, the communicative character, or function, of arguments has been the subject of much of the research in the past several decades. Most recently what some have called “multi-modal” argument has attracted attention, focusing on the various ways arguments can be communicated, especially visually or in a mix of verbal and visual modes of communication. Some have contended that smells and sounds can play roles in argument communication as well. This area of research interest would seem to have relevance for the analysis of arguments on the web.

1.3 Argumentation

‘Argumentation’ is another slippery term. It is used in several different senses.

Sometimes it is used to mean the communicative activity in which arguments are exchanged: “During their argumentation they took turns advancing their own arguments and criticizing one another’s arguments.” Sometimes ‘argumentation’ denotes the body of arguments used in an argumentative exchange: “The evening’s argumentation was of high quality.” And occasionally you will find it used to refer to the reasons or premises supporting a conclusion, as in: “The argumentation provided weak support for the thesis.” ‘Argumentation theory’ is the term often used to denote theory about the nature of arguments and their uses, including their uses in communications involving exchanges of arguments.

2 The relation between critical thinking and argument

2 .1 arguments are both tools of critical thinking and objects of critical thinking.

In … [one] sense, thought denotes belief resting upon some basis, that is, real or supposed knowledge going beyond what is directly present. … Some beliefs are accepted when their grounds have not themselves been considered …. … such thoughts may mean a supposition accepted without reference to its real grounds. These may be adequate, they may not; but their value with reference to the support they afford the belief has not been considered. Such thoughts grow up unconsciously and without reference to the attainment of correct belief. They are picked up—we know not how. From obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate themselves into acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our mental furniture. Tradition, instruction, imitation—all of which depend upon authority in some form, or appeal to our advantage, or fall in with strong passions—are responsible for them. Such thoughts are prejudices, that is, prejudgments, not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence. (John Dewey, How We Think , pp. 4-5, emphasis added.)

People—all of us—routinely adopt beliefs and attitudes that are prejudices in Dewey’s sense of being prejudgments, “not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence.” One goal of critical thinking education is to provide our students with the means to be able, when it really matters, to “properly survey” the grounds for beliefs and attitudes.

Arguments supply one such means. The grounds for beliefs and attitudes are often expressed, or expressible, as arguments for them. And the “proper survey” of these arguments is to test them by subjecting them to the critical scrutiny of counter-arguments.

Arguments also come into play when the issue is not what to believe about a contentious issue, but in order just to understand the competing positions. Not only are we not entitled to reject a claim to our belief if we cannot counter the arguments that support it; we are not in possession of an understanding of that claim if we cannot formulate the arguments that support it to the satisfaction of its proponents.

Furthermore, arguments can be used to investigate a candidate for belief by those trying “to make up their own minds” about it. The investigator tries to find and express the most compelling arguments for and against the candidate. Which arguments count as “most compelling” are the ones that survive vigorous attempts, using arguments, to refute or undermine them. These survivors are then compared against one another, the pros weighed against the cons. More arguments come into play in assessing the attributed weights.

In these ways, a facility with arguments serves a critical thinker well. Such a facility includes skill in recognizing, interpreting and evaluating arguments, as well as in formulating them. That includes skill in laying out complex arguments, in recognizing argument strengths and weaknesses, and in making a case for one’s critique. It includes the ability to distinguish the more relevant evidence from the less, and to discriminate between minor, fixable flaws and major, serious problems, in arguments. Thus the critical thinker is at once adept at using arguments in various ways and at the same time sensitive in judging arguments’ merits, applying the appropriate criteria.

Moreover, arguments in the sense of “reasons-claim” complexes surround us in our daily lives. Our “familiars”, as Gilbert (2014) has dubbed them—our family members, the friends we see regularly, shopkeepers and others whose services we patronize daily, our co-workers—engage us constantly in argumentative discussions in which they invoke arguments to try to get us to do things, to agree, to judge, to believe. The public sphere—the worlds of politics, commerce, entertainment, leisure activities, social media (see Jackson’s chapter)—is another domain in which arguments can be found, although (arguably) mere assertion predominates there. In the various roles we play as we go through life—child, parent, spouse or partner, student, worker, patient, subordinate or supervisor, citizen (voter, jurist, community member), observer or participant, etc.—we are invited with arguments to agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, seek or avoid. We see others arguing with one another and are invited to judge the merits of the cases they make. Some of these arguments are cogent and their conclusions merit our assent, but others are not and we should not be influenced by them. Yet others are suggestive and deserve further thought.

We can simply ignore many of these arguments, but others confront us and force us to decide whether or not to accept them. Often it is unclear whether someone has argued or done something else: just vented, perhaps, or explained rather than argued, or merely expressed an opinion without arguing for it, or was confused. So we initially might have to decide whether there is an argument that we need to deal with. When it is an argument, often in order to make up our minds about it we need first to get clear about exactly what the argument consists of. So even before we evaluate this argument we have to identify and analyze it. (These operations are discussed in Chapter 12.)

In the end we have to decide for ourselves whether the argument makes its case or falls short. Does the conclusion really follow from the premises? Is there enough evidence to justify the conclusion? Is it the right kind of evidence? Are there well-known objections or arguments against the conclusion that haven’t been acknowledged and need to be answered satisfactorily? Can they be answered? And are the premises themselves believable or otherwise acceptable? Are there other arguments, as good or better, that support the claim?

Critical thinking can (and should!) come into all of these decisions we need to make in the identification, the analysis and the assessment of arguments.

2 .2  Critical thinking about things other than arguments

Many critical thinking textbooks focus exclusively on the analysis and evaluation of arguments. While the centrality of arguments to the art of critical thinking is unquestionable, a strong case can be made that critical thinking has other objectives in addition to appreciating arguments. In their analysis of the concept of critical thinking, Fisher and Scriven suggest the following definition:

Critical thinking is skilled and active interpretation and evaluation of o b servations and communications , information and argumentation. (1997, p. 21, emphasis added)

We agree with the gist of this claim, but notice what Fisher and Scriven propose as the objects to which critical thinking applies. Not just argumentation, but as well observations, communications and information. About observations, they note that:

What one sees (hears, etc.) are usually things and happenings, and one often has to interpret what one sees, sometimes calling on critical thinking skills to do so, most obviously in cases where the context involves weak lighting, strong emotions, possible drug effects, or putatively magical or parapsychological phenomena. Only after the application of critical thinking—and sometimes not even then—does one know what one “really saw”. … When the filter of critical thinking has been applied to the observations, and only then, one can start reasoning towards further conclusions using these observations as premises. ( Ibid ., p, 37)

An example is the recent large number of convictions in the U.S.A. that originally relied on eyewitness testimony but that have been overturned on the basis of DNA evidence. [2] ,  [3]

The DNA evidence proved that the accused was not the culprit, so the moral certainty of the eyewitness had to have been mistaken. The observation of the eyewitness was flawed. He or she did not think critically about whether the conditions need ed to make a reliable o b servation were present (e.g., were strong emotions like fear involved? was the lighting good? has he or she ordinarily a good memory for faces? was there time to observe carefully? were there distractions present?). Neither, probably, did the lawyers on either side, or else they immorally suppressed what should have been their doubts. As a consequence, innocent people languished in jail for years and guilty parties went free.

Communications are another object for critical thought. When in reply to Harry’s question, “How are you doing?” Morgan says, in a clipped and dull voice and a strained expression on her face, “I’m fine”, Harry needs to be aware that “How are you doing?” often functions as equivalent to a simple greeting, like “Hi” and so the response “Fine” could similarly be functioning as a polite return of the greeting, like “Hi back to you”, and not as an accurate report of the speaker’s condition. Harry needs to notice and interpret other aspects of Morgan’s communication—her lethargic tone of voice and her anxious facial expression—and to recognize the incompatibility between those signals and the interpretation of her response as an accurate depiction of Morgan’s state of well-being. He needs to employ critical interpretive skills to realize that Morgan has communicated that she is not fine at all, but for some reason isn’t offering to talk about it.

If President Trump did in fact say to his then F.B.I. director James Comey, about the F.B.I. investigation of former National Security Advisor Michaell Flynn “I hope you can let this go”, was it legitimate for Comey to interpret the President’s comment as a directive? And was Comey’s response, which was simply to ignore President Trump’s alleged comment, an appropriate response? What was going on? It takes critical thinking to try to sort out these issues. Taking the President’s alleged comment literally, it just expresses his attitude towards the FBI investigation of Flynn. But communications from the President in a tête-à-tête in the White House with the Director of the FBI are not occasions for just sharing attitudes. This was not an occasion on which they could step out of their political roles and chat person-to-person. The President can legitimately be presumed to be communicating his wishes as to what his FBI Director should do, and such expressions of wishes are, in this context, to be normally understood as directives. On the other hand, for the President to direct that an ongoing investigation by the FBI be stopped, or that it come up with a pre-determined finding, is illegal: it’s obstruction of justice. So Comey seemed faced with at least two possible interpretations of what he took the President to be saying: either an out-of-place expression of his attitude towards the outcome of the Flynn investigation or an illegal directive. Which was the President’s intention? However, there are other possibilities.

Was President Trump a political tyro whose lack of political experience might have left him ignorant of the fact that the FBI Director has to keep investigations free of political interference? Or might Trump have thought that the Presidency conveys the authority to influence the outcome of criminal investigations? Or might President Trump have been testing Mr. Comey to see if he could be manipulated? And Mr. Comey could have responded differently. He could have said, “I wish we could let this go too, Mr. President, but there are questions about General Flynn’s conduct that have to be investigated, and as you know, we cannot interfere with an ongoing FBI investigation”. Such a response would have forced the President to take back what he allegedly said, withdrawing any suggestion that his comment was a directive, or else to make it plain that he was indeed directing Comey to obstruct justice. In the event, apparently Mr. Comey did not take this way out, which would at once have displayed loyalty to the President (by protecting him from explicitly obstructing justice) and also have affirmed the independence of the FBI from interference from the White House. Perhaps he thought that the President clearly had directed him to obstruct justice, and judged that giving him an opportunity explicitly to withdraw that directive amounted to overlooking that illegal act, which would be a violation of his responsibilities as Director of the FBI. If so, however, simply not responding to the President’s comment, the path Comey apparently chose, also amounted to turning a blind eye to what he judged to be President Trump’s illegal directive.

As these two examples illustrate, the interpretation of communications, and the appropriate response to them can require critical thinking: recognizing different functions of communication, and being sensitive to the implications of different contexts of communication; being sensitive to the roles communicators occupy and to the rights, obligations, and limits attached to such roles.

As Fisher and Scriven acknowledge, “defining information is itself a difficult task.” They make a useful start by distinguishing information from raw data (“the numbers or bare descriptions obtained from measurements or observations”, op . cit., p. 41). No critical thinking is required for the latter; just the pains necessary to record raw data accurately, In many cases, though, the interpretation of raw data, the meaning or significance that they are said to have, can require critical thinking.

One might go beyond Fisher and Scriven’s list of other things besides arguments to which critical thinking can be applied. A thoughtful appreciation of novels or movies, plays or poetry, paintings or sculptures requires skilled interpretation, imagining alternatives, thoughtful selection of appropriate criteria of evaluation and then the selection and application of appropriate standards, and more. A good interior designer must consider the effects and interactions of space and light and color and fabrics and furniture design, and coordinate these with clients’ lifestyles, habits and preferences. Advanced practical skills in various sciences come into play. A coach of a sports team must think about each individual team member’s skills and deficiencies, personality and life situation; about plays and strategies, opponents’ skills sets; approaches to games; and much more. Conventional approaches need to be reviewed as to their applicability to the current situation. Alternative possibilities need to be creatively imagined and critically assessed. And all of this is time-sensitive, sometimes calling for split-second decisions. The thinking involved in carrying out the tasks of composing a review of some work of literature or art or of coaching a sports team can be routine and conventional, or it can be imaginative, invoking different perspectives and challenging standard criteria.

The list could go on. The present point is that, while argument is central to critical thinking, critical thinking about and using arguments is not all there is to critical thinking. [4]

Bailin, Sharon & Battersby, Mark. (2010). Reason in the Balance , An I n quiry Approach to Critical Thinking , 1 st ed. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.

Beardsley, Monroe C. (1950). Practical L ogic . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Chaffee, John. 1985. Thinking Critically . Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Dewey, John. (1910, 1991). How We Think . Lexington, MAD.C. Heath; Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Diestler, Sherry. (2005). Becoming a Critical Thinker , 4 th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Ennis, Robert H. (1996). Critical Thinking . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Feldman, Richard. (1993). Reason and Argument , 2 nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Fisher, Alex.(2001). Critical Thinking, An Introduction . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fisher, Alec & Scriven, Michael. (1997). Critical Thinking, Its Definition and Assessment . Point

Reyes, CA: EdgePress; Norwich, UK: Center for Research in Critical Thinking.

Fogelin, Robert & Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. (2001). Understanding A r guments , An Introduction to Informal Logic , 6 th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Freeman, James B. (1988.) Thinking Logically , Basic Concepts of Reaso n ing . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Grennan, Wayne . (1984). Argument Evaluation . Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Govier, Trudy. (2001). A Practical Study of Argument , 5 th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

O’Keefe, Daniel J. (1977). Two concepts of argument. Journal of the Amer i can Forensic Association , 13 , 121-128.

O‘Keefe, Daniel J. (1982). The concepts of argument and arguing. In J. R. Cox & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Advances in Argumentation Theory and R e search , pp. 3-23. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

• © J. Anthony Blair ↵
• According to the Innocence Project, “Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in more than 70% of convictions [in the U.S.A.] overturned through DNA testing nationwide.” (https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidentification/, viewed August 2017). ↵
• I owe the general organization and many of the specific ideas of this chapter to a series of lectures by Jean Goodwin at the Summer Institute on Argumentation sponsored by the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric at the University of Windsor. ↵

Studies in Critical Thinking Copyright © by J. Anthony Blair is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, what is critical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making what is critical thinking.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: What is Critical Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is critical thinking, what is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot. You've probably heard it used often throughout the years whether it was in school, at work, or in everyday conversation. But when you stop to think about it, what exactly is critical thinking and how do you do it ?

Watch the video below to learn more about critical thinking.

Simply put, critical thinking is the act of deliberately analyzing information so that you can make better judgements and decisions . It involves using things like logic, reasoning, and creativity, to draw conclusions and generally understand things better.

This may sound like a pretty broad definition, and that's because critical thinking is a broad skill that can be applied to so many different situations. You can use it to prepare for a job interview, manage your time better, make decisions about purchasing things, and so much more.

The process

As humans, we are constantly thinking . It's something we can't turn off. But not all of it is critical thinking. No one thinks critically 100% of the time... that would be pretty exhausting! Instead, it's an intentional process , something that we consciously use when we're presented with difficult problems or important decisions.

Improving your critical thinking

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones like What do I currently know? and How do I know this? These can help to give you a better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more complex issues.  

Real-world applications

Let's take a look at how we can use critical thinking to evaluate online information . Say a friend of yours posts a news article on social media and you're drawn to its headline. If you were to use your everyday automatic thinking, you might accept it as fact and move on. But if you were thinking critically, you would first analyze the available information and ask some questions :

• What's the source of this article?
• Is the headline potentially misleading?
• What are my friend's general beliefs?
• Do their beliefs inform why they might have shared this?

After analyzing all of this information, you can draw a conclusion about whether or not you think the article is trustworthy.

Critical thinking has a wide range of real-world applications . It can help you to make better decisions, become more hireable, and generally better understand the world around you.

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Argument and Argumentation

Argument is a central concept for philosophy. Philosophers rely heavily on arguments to justify claims, and these practices have been motivating reflections on what arguments and argumentation are for millennia. Moreover, argumentative practices are also pervasive elsewhere; they permeate scientific inquiry, legal procedures, education, and political institutions. The study of argumentation is an inter-disciplinary field of inquiry, involving philosophers, language theorists, legal scholars, cognitive scientists, computer scientists, and political scientists, among many others. This entry provides an overview of the literature on argumentation drawing primarily on philosophical sources, but also engaging extensively with relevant sources from other disciplines.

1. Terminological Clarifications

2.1 deduction, 2.2 induction, 2.3 abduction, 2.4 analogy, 2.5 fallacies, 3.1 adversarial and cooperative argumentation, 3.2 argumentation as an epistemic practice, 3.3 consensus-oriented argumentation, 3.4 argumentation and conflict management, 3.5 conclusion, 4.1 argumentation theory, 4.2 artificial intelligence and computer science, 4.3 cognitive science and psychology, 4.4 language and communication, 4.5 argumentation in specific social practices, 5.1 argumentative injustice and virtuous argumentation, 5.2 emotions and argumentation, 5.3 cross-cultural perspectives on argumentation, 5.4 argumentation and the internet, 6. conclusion, references for the main text, references for the historical supplement, other internet resources, related entries.

An argument can be defined as a complex symbolic structure where some parts, known as the premises, offer support to another part, the conclusion. Alternatively, an argument can be viewed as a complex speech act consisting of one or more acts of premising (which assert propositions in favor of the conclusion), an act of concluding, and a stated or implicit marker (“hence”, “therefore”) that indicates that the conclusion follows from the premises (Hitchcock 2007). [ 1 ] The relation of support between premises and conclusion can be cashed out in different ways: the premises may guarantee the truth of the conclusion, or make its truth more probable; the premises may imply the conclusion; the premises may make the conclusion more acceptable (or assertible).

For theoretical purposes, arguments may be considered as freestanding entities, abstracted from their contexts of use in actual human activities. But depending on one’s explanatory goals, there is also much to be gained from considering arguments as they in fact occur in human communicative practices. The term generally used for instances of exchange of arguments is argumentation . In what follows, the convention of using “argument” to refer to structures of premises and conclusion, and “argumentation” to refer to human practices and activities where arguments occur as communicative actions will be adopted.

Argumentation can be defined as the communicative activity of producing and exchanging reasons in order to support claims or defend/challenge positions, especially in situations of doubt or disagreement (Lewiński & Mohammed 2016). It is arguably best conceived as a kind of dialogue , even if one can also “argue” with oneself, in long speeches or in writing (in articles or books) for an intended but silent audience, or in groups rather than in dyads (Lewiński & Aakhus 2014). But argumentation is a special kind of dialogue: indeed, most of the dialogues we engage in are not instances of argumentation, for example when asking someone if they know what time it is, or when someone shares details about their vacation. Argumentation only occurs when, upon making a claim, someone receives a request for further support for the claim in the form of reasons, or estimates herself that further justification is required (Jackson & Jacobs 1980; Jackson, 2019). In such cases, dialogues of “giving and asking for reasons” ensue (Brandom, 1994; Bermejo Luque 2011). Since most of what we know we learn from others, argumentation seems to be an important mechanism to filter the information we receive, instead of accepting what others tell us uncritically (Sperber, Clément, et al. 2010).

The study of arguments and argumentation is also closely connected to the study of reasoning , understood as the process of reaching conclusions on the basis of careful, reflective consideration of the available information, i.e., by an examination of reasons . According to a widespread view, reasoning and argumentation are related (as both concern reasons) but fundamentally different phenomena: reasoning would belong to the mental realm of thinking—an individual inferring new information from the available information by means of careful consideration of reasons—whereas argumentation would belong to the public realm of the exchange of reasons, expressed in language or other symbolic media and intended for an audience. However, a number of authors have argued for a different view, namely that reasoning and argumentation are in fact two sides of the same coin, and that what is known as reasoning is by and large the internalization of practices of argumentation (MacKenzie 1989; Mercier & Sperber 2017; Mercier 2018). For the purposes of this entry, we can assume a close connection between reasoning and argumentation so that relevant research on reasoning can be suitably included in the discussions to come.

2. Types of Arguments

Arguments come in many kinds. In some of them, the truth of the premises is supposed to guarantee the truth of the conclusion, and these are known as deductive arguments. In others, the truth of the premises should make the truth of the conclusion more likely while not ensuring complete certainty; two well-known classes of such arguments are inductive and abductive arguments (a distinction introduced by Peirce, see entry on C.S. Peirce ). Unlike deduction, induction and abduction are thought to be ampliative: the conclusion goes beyond what is (logically) contained in the premises. Moreover, a type of argument that features prominently across different philosophical traditions, and yet does not fit neatly into any of the categories so far discussed, are analogical arguments. In this section, these four kinds of arguments are presented. The section closes with a discussion of fallacious arguments, that is, arguments that seem legitimate and “good”, but in fact are not. [ 2 ]

Valid deductive arguments are those where the truth of the premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion: the conclusion cannot but be true if the premises are true. Arguments having this property are said to be deductively valid . A valid argument whose premises are also true is said to be sound . Examples of valid deductive arguments are the familiar syllogisms, such as:

All humans are living beings. All living beings are mortal. Therefore, all humans are mortal.

In a deductively valid argument, the conclusion will be true in all situations where the premises are true, with no exceptions. A slightly more technical gloss of this idea goes as follows: in all possible worlds where the premises hold, the conclusion will also hold. This means that, if I know the premises of a deductively valid argument to be true of a given situation, then I can conclude with absolute certainty that the conclusion is also true of that situation. An important property typically associated with deductive arguments (but with exceptions, such as in relevant logic), and which differentiates them from inductive and abductive arguments, is the property of monotonicity : if premises A and B deductively imply conclusion C , then the addition of any arbitrary premise D will not invalidate the argument. In other words, if the argument “ A and B ; therefore C ” is deductively valid, then the argument “ A , B and D ; therefore C ” is equally deductively valid.

Deductive arguments are the objects of study of familiar logical systems such as (classical) propositional and predicate logic, as well as of subclassical systems such as intuitionistic and relevant logics (although in relevant logic the property of monotonicity does not hold, as it may lead to violations of criteria of relevance between premises and conclusion—see entry on relevance logic ). In each of these systems, the relation of logical consequence in question satisfies the property of necessary truth-preservation (see entry on logical consequence ). This is not surprising, as these systems were originally designed to capture arguments of a very specific kind, namely mathematical arguments (proofs), in the pioneering work of Frege, Russell, Hilbert, Gentzen, and others. Following a paradigm established in ancient Greek mathematics and famously captured in Euclid’s Elements , argumentative steps in mathematical proofs (in this tradition at least) must have the property of necessary truth preservation (Netz 1999). This paradigm remained influential for millennia, and still codifies what can be described as the “classical” conception of mathematical proof (Dutilh Novaes 2020a), even if practices of proof are ultimately also quite diverse. (In fact, there is much more to argumentation in mathematics than just deductive argumentation [Aberdein & Dove 2013].)

However, a number of philosophers have argued that deductive validity and necessary truth preservation in fact come apart. Some have reached this conclusion motivated by the familiar logical paradoxes such as the Liar or Curry’s paradox (Beall 2009; Field 2008; see entries on the Liar paradox and on Curry’s paradox ). Others have defended the idea that there are such things as contingent logical truths (Kaplan 1989; Nelson & Zalta 2012), which thus challenge the idea of necessary truth preservation. It has also been suggested that what is preserved in the transition from premises to conclusions in deductive arguments is in fact warrant or assertibility rather than truth (Restall 2004). Yet others, such as proponents of preservationist approaches to paraconsistent logic, posit that what is preserved by the deductive consequence relation is the coherence, or incoherence, of a set of premises (Schotch, Brown, & Jennings 2009; see entry on paraconsistent logic ). Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the view that deductive validity is to be understood primarily in terms of necessary truth preservation is still the received view.

Relatedly, there are a number of pressing philosophical issues pertaining to the justification of deduction, such as the exact nature of the necessity involved in deduction (metaphysical, logical, linguistic, epistemic; Shapiro 2005), and the possibility of offering a non-circular foundation for deduction (Dummett 1978). Furthermore, it is often remarked that the fact that a deductive argument is not ampliative may entail that it cannot be informative, which in turn would mean that its usefulness is quite limited; this problem has been described as “the scandal of deduction” (Sequoiah-Grayson 2008).

Be that as it may, deductive arguments have occupied a special place in philosophy and the sciences, ever since Aristotle presented the first fully-fledged theory of deductive argumentation and reasoning in the Prior Analytics (and the corresponding theory of scientific demonstration in the Posterior Analytics ; see Historical Supplement ). The fascination for deductive arguments is understandable, given their allure of certainty and indubitability. The more geometrico (a phrase introduced by Spinoza to describe the argumentative structure of his Ethics as following “a geometrical style”—see entry on Spinoza ) has been influential in many fields other than mathematics. However, the focus on deductive arguments at the expense of other types of arguments has arguably skewed investigations on argument and argumentation too much in one specific direction (see (Bermejo-Luque 2020) for a critique of deductivism in the study of argumentation).

In recent decades, the view that everyday reasoning and argumentation by and large do not follow the canons of deductive argumentation has been gaining traction. In psychology of reasoning, Oaksford and Chater were the first to argue already in the 1980s that human reasoning “in the wild” is essentially probabilistic, following the basic canons of Bayesian probabilities (Oaksford & Chater 2018; Elqayam 2018; see section 5.3 below). Computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers have also developed a strong interest in non-monotonic reasoning and argumentation (Reiter 1980), recognizing that, outside specific scientific contexts, human reasoning tends to be deeply defeasible (Pollock 1987; see entries on non-monotonic logic and defeasible reasoning ). Thus seen, deductive argumentation might be considered as the exception rather than the rule in human argumentative practices taken as a whole (Dutilh Novaes 2020a). But there are others, especially philosophers, who still maintain that the use of deductive reasoning and argumentation is widespread and extends beyond niches of specialists (Shapiro 2014; Williamson 2018).

Inductive arguments are arguments where observations about past instances and regularities lead to conclusions about future instances and general principles. For example, the observation that the sun has risen in the east every single day until now leads to the conclusion that it will rise in the east tomorrow, and to the general principle “the sun always rises in the east”. Generally speaking, inductive arguments are based on statistical frequencies, which then lead to generalizations beyond the sample of cases initially under consideration: from the observed to the unobserved. In a good, i.e., cogent , inductive argument, the truth of the premises provides some degree of support for the truth of the conclusion. In contrast with a deductively valid argument, in an inductive argument the degree of support will never be maximal, as there is always the possibility of the conclusion being false given the truth of the premises. A gloss in terms of possible worlds might be that, while in a deductively valid argument the conclusion will hold in all possible worlds where the premises hold, in a good inductive argument the conclusion will hold in a significant proportion of the possible worlds where the premises hold. The proportion of such worlds may give a measure of the strength of support of the premises for the conclusion (see entry on inductive logic ).

Inductive arguments have been recognized and used in science and elsewhere for millennia. The concept of induction ( epagoge in Greek) was understood by Aristotle as a progression from particulars to a universal, and figured prominently both in his conception of the scientific method and in dialectical practices (see entry on Aristotle’s logic, section 3.1 ). However, a deductivist conception of the scientific method remained overall more influential in Aristotelian traditions, inspired by the theory of scientific demonstration of the Posterior Analytics . It is only with the so-called “scientific revolution” of the early modern period that experiments and observation of individual cases became one of the pillars of scientific methodology, a transition that is strongly associated with the figure of Francis Bacon (1561–1626; see entry on Francis Bacon ).

Inductive inferences/arguments are ubiquitous both in science and in everyday life, and for the most part quite reliable. The functioning of the world around us seems to display a fair amount of statistical regularity, and this is referred to as the “Uniformity Principle” in the literature on the problem of induction (to be discussed shortly). Moreover, it has been argued that generalizing from previously observed frequencies is the most basic principle of human cognition (Clark 2016).

However, it has long been recognized that inductive inferences/arguments are not unproblematic. Hume famously offered the first influential formulation of what became known as “the problem of induction” in his Treatise of Human Nature (see entries on David Hume and on the problem of induction ; Howson 2000). Hume raises the question of what grounds the correctness of inductive inferences/arguments, and posits that there must be an argument establishing the validity of the Uniformity Principle for inductive inferences to be truly justified. He goes on to argue that this argument cannot be deductive, as it is not inconceivable that the course of nature may change. But it cannot be probable either, as probable arguments already presuppose the validity of the Uniformity Principle; circularity would ensue. Since these are the only two options, he concludes that the Uniformity Principle cannot be established by rational argument, and hence that induction cannot be justified.

A more recent influential critique of inductive arguments is the one offered in (Harman 1965). Harman argues that either enumerative induction is not always warranted, or it is always warranted but constitutes an uninteresting special case of the more general category of inference to the best explanation (see next section). The upshot is that, for Harman, induction should not be considered a warranted form of inference in its own right.

Given the centrality of induction for scientific practice, there have been numerous attempts to respond to the critics of induction, with various degrees of success. Among those, an influential recent response to the problem of induction is Norton’s material theory of induction (Norton 2003). But the problem has not prevented scientists and laypeople alike from continuing to use induction widely. More recently, the use of statistical frequencies for social categories to draw conclusions about specific individuals has become a matter of contention, both at the individual level (see entry on implicit bias ) and at the institutional level (e.g., the use of predictive algorithms for law enforcement [Jorgensen Bolinger 2021]). These debates can be seen as reoccurrences of Hume’s problem of induction, now in the domain of social rather than of natural phenomena.

An abductive argument is one where, from the observation of a few relevant facts, a conclusion is drawn as to what could possibly explain the occurrence of these facts (see entry on abduction ). Abduction is widely thought to be ubiquitous both in science and in everyday life, as well as in other specific domains such as the law, medical diagnosis, and explainable artificial intelligence (Josephson & Josephson 1994). Indeed, a good example of abduction is the closing argument by a prosecutor in a court of law who, after summarizing the available evidence, concludes that the most plausible explanation for it is that the defendant must have committed the crime they are accused of.

Like induction, and unlike deduction, abduction is not necessarily truth-preserving: in the example above, it is still possible that the defendant is not guilty after all, and that some other, unexpected phenomena caused the evidence to emerge. But abduction is significantly different from induction in that it does not only concern the generalization of prior observation for prediction (though it may also involve statistical data): rather, abduction is often backward-looking in that it seeks to explain something that has already happened. The key notion is that of bringing together apparently independent phenomena or events as explanatorily and/or causally connected to each other, something that is absent from a purely inductive argument that only appeals to observed frequencies. Cognitively, abduction taps into the well-known human tendency to seek (causal) explanations for phenomena (Keil 2006).

As noted, deduction and induction have been recognized as important classes of arguments for millennia; the concept of abduction is by comparison a latecomer. It is important to notice though that explanatory arguments as such are not latecomers; indeed, Aristotle’s very conception of scientific demonstration is based on the concept of explaining causes (see entry on Aristotle ). What is recent is the conceptualization of abduction as a special class of arguments, and the term itself. The term was introduced by Peirce as a third class of inferences distinct from deduction and induction: for Peirce, abduction is understood as the process of forming explanatory hypotheses, thus leading to new ideas and concepts (whereas for him deduction and induction could not lead to new ideas or theories; see the entry on Peirce ). Thus seen, abduction pertains to contexts of discovery , in which case it is not clear that it corresponds to instances of arguments, properly speaking. In its modern meaning, however, abduction pertains to contexts of justification , and thus to speak of abductive arguments becomes appropriate. An abductive argument is now typically understood as an inference to the best explanation (Lipton 1971 [2003]), although some authors contend that there are good reasons to distinguish the two concepts (Campos 2011).

While the main ideas behind abduction may seem simple enough, cashing out more precisely how exactly abduction works is a complex matter (see entry on abduction ). Moreover, it is not clear that abductive arguments are always or even generally reliable and cogent. Humans seem to have a tendency to overshoot in their quest for causal explanations, and often look for simplicity where there is none to be found (Lombrozo 2007; but see Sober 2015 on the significance of parsimony in scientific reasoning). There are also a number of philosophical worries pertaining to the justification of abduction, especially in scientific contexts; one influential critique of abduction/inference to the best explanation is the one articulated by van Fraassen (Fraassen 1989). A frequent concern pertains to the connection between explanatory superiority and truth: are we entitled to conclude that the conclusion of an abductive argument is true solely on the basis of it being a good (or even the best) explanation for the phenomena in question? It seems that no amount of philosophical a priori theorizing will provide justification for the leap from explanatory superiority to truth. Instead, defenders of abduction tend to offer empirical arguments showing that abduction tends to be a reliable rule of inference. In this sense, abduction and induction are comparable: they are widely used, grounded in very basic human cognitive tendencies, but they give rise to a number of difficult philosophical problems.

Arguments by analogy are based on the idea that, if two things are similar, what is true of one of them is likely to be true of the other as well (see entry on analogy and analogical reasoning ). Analogical arguments are widely used across different domains of human activity, for example in legal contexts (see entry on precedent and analogy in legal reasoning ). As an example, take an argument for the wrongness of farming non-human animals for food consumption: if an alien species farmed humans for food, that would be wrong; so, by analogy, it is wrong for us humans to farm non-human animals for food. The general idea is captured in the following schema (adapted from the entry on analogy and analogical reasoning ; S is the source domain and T the target domain of the analogy):

• S is similar to T in certain (known) respects.
• S has some further feature Q .
• Therefore, T also has the feature Q , or some feature Q * similar to Q .

The first premise establishes the analogy between two situations, objects, phenomena etc. The second premise states that the source domain has a given property. The conclusion is then that the target domain also has this property, or a suitable counterpart thereof. While informative, this schema does not differentiate between good and bad analogical arguments, and so does not offer much by way of explaining what grounds (good) analogical arguments. Indeed, contentious cases usually pertain to premise 1, and in particular to whether S and T are sufficiently similar in a way that is relevant for having or not having feature Q .

Analogical arguments are widely present in all known philosophical traditions, including three major ancient traditions: Greek, Chinese, and Indian (see Historical Supplement ). Analogies abound in ancient Greek philosophical texts, for example in Plato’s dialogues. In the Gorgias , for instance, the knack of rhetoric is compared to pastry-baking—seductive but ultimately unhealthy—whereas philosophy would correspond to medicine—potentially painful and unpleasant but good for the soul/body (Irani 2017). Aristotle discussed analogy extensively in the Prior Analytics and in the Topics (see section 3.2 of the entry on analogy and analogical reasoning ). In ancient Chinese philosophy, analogy occupies a very prominent position; indeed, it is perhaps the main form of argumentation for Chinese thinkers. Mohist thinkers were particularly interested in analogical arguments (see entries on logic and language in early Chinese philosophy , Mohism and the Mohist canons ). In the Latin medieval tradition too analogy received sustained attention, in particular in the domains of logic, theology and metaphysics (see entry on medieval theories of analogy ).

Analogical arguments continue to occupy a central position in philosophical discussions, and a number of the most prominent philosophical arguments of the last decades are analogical arguments, e.g., Jarvis Thomson’s violinist argument purportedly showing the permissibility of abortion (Thomson 1971), and Searle’s Chinese Room argument purportedly showing that computers cannot display real understanding (see entry on the Chinese Room argument ). (Notice that these two arguments are often described as thought experiments [see entry on thought experiments ], but thought experiments are often based on analogical principles when seeking to make a point that transcends the thought experiment as such.) The Achilles’ heel of analogical arguments can be illustrated by these two examples: both arguments have been criticized on the grounds that the purported similarity between the source and the target domains is not sufficient to extrapolate the property of the source domain (the permissibility of disconnecting from the violinist; the absence of understanding in the Chinese room) to the target domain (abortion; digital computers and artificial intelligence).

In sum, while analogical arguments in general perhaps confer a lesser degree of conviction than the other three kinds of arguments discussed, they are widely used both in professional circles and in everyday life. They have rightly attracted a fair amount of attention from scholars in different disciplines, and remain an important object of study (see entry on analogy and analogical reasoning ).

One of the most extensively studied types of arguments throughout the centuries are, perhaps surprisingly, arguments that appear legitimate but are not, known as fallacious arguments . From early on, the investigation of such arguments occupied a prominent position in Aristotelian logical traditions, inspired in particular by his book Sophistical Refutations (see Historical Supplement ). The thought is that, to argue well, it is not sufficient to be able to produce and recognize good arguments; it is equally (or perhaps even more) important to be able to recognize bad arguments by others, and to avoid producing bad arguments oneself. This is particularly true of the tricky cases, namely arguments that appear legitimate but are not, i.e., fallacies.

Some well-know types of fallacies include (see entry on fallacies for a more extensive discussion):

• The fallacy of equivocation, which occurs when an arguer exploits the ambiguity of a term or phrase which has occurred at least twice in an argument to draw an unwarranted conclusion.
• The fallacy of begging the question, when one of the premises and the conclusion of an argument are the same proposition, but differently formulated.
• The fallacy of appeal to authority, when a claim is supported by reference to an authority instead of offering reasons to support it.
• The ad hominem fallacy, which involves bringing negative aspects of an arguer, or their situation, to argue against the view they are advancing.
• The fallacy of faulty analogy, when an analogy is used as an argument but there is not sufficient relevant similarity between the source domain and the target domain (as discussed above).

Beyond their (presumed?) usefulness in teaching argumentative skills, the literature on fallacies raises a number of important philosophical discussions, such as: What determines when an argument is fallacious or rather a legitimate argument? (See section 4.3 below on Bayesian accounts of fallacies) What causes certain arguments to be fallacious? Is the focus on fallacies a useful approach to arguments at all? (Massey 1981) Despite the occasional criticism, the concept of fallacies remains central in the study of arguments and argumentation.

3. Types of Argumentation

Just as there are different types of arguments, there are different types of argumentative situations, depending on the communicative goals of the persons involved and background conditions. Argumentation may occur when people are trying to reach consensus in a situation of dissent, but it may also occur when scientists discuss their findings with each other (to name but two examples). Specific rules of argumentative engagement may vary depending on these different types of argumentation.

A related point extensively discussed in the recent literature pertains to the function(s) of argumentation. [ 3 ] What’s the point of arguing? While it is often recognized that argumentation may have multiple functions, different authors tend to emphasize specific functions for argumentation at the expense of others. This section offers an overview of discussions on types of argumentation and its functions, demonstrating that argumentation is a multifaceted phenomenon that has different applications in different circumstances.

A question that has received much attention in the literature of the past decades pertains to whether the activity of argumentation is primarily adversarial or primarily cooperative. This question in fact corresponds to two sub-questions: the descriptive question of whether instances of argumentation are on the whole primarily adversarial or cooperative; and the normative question of whether argumentation should be (primarily) adversarial or cooperative. A number of authors have answered “adversarial” to the descriptive question and “cooperative” to the normative question, thus identifying a discrepancy between practices and normative ideals that must be remedied (or so they claim; Cohen 1995).

A case in point: recently, a number of far-right Internet personalities have advocated the idea that argumentation can be used to overpower one’s opponents, as described in the book The Art of the Argument: Western Civilization’s Last Stand (2017) by the white supremacist S. Molyneux. Such aggressive practices reflect a vision of argumentation as a kind of competition or battle, where the goal is to “score points” and “beat the opponent”. Authors who have criticized (overly) adversarial practices of argumentation include (Moulton 1983; Gilbert 1994; Rooney 2012; Hundleby 2013; Bailin & Battersby 2016). Many (but not all) of these authors formulated their criticism specifically from a feminist perspective (see entry on feminist perspectives on argumentation ).

Feminist critiques of adversarial argumentation challenge ideals of argumentation as a form of competition, where masculine-coded values of aggression and violence prevail (Kidd 2020). For these authors, such ideals encourage argumentative performances where excessive use of forcefulness is on display. Instances of aggressive argumentation in turn have a number of problematic consequences: epistemic consequences—the pursuit of truth is not best served by adversarial argumentation—as well as moral/ethical/political consequences—these practices exclude a number of people from participating in argumentative encounters, namely those for whom displays of aggression do not constitute socially acceptable behavior (women and other socially disadvantaged groups in particular). These authors defend alternative conceptions of argumentation as a cooperative, nurturing activity (Gilbert 1994; Bailin & Battersby 2016), which are traditionally feminine-coded values. Crucially, they view adversarial conceptions of argumentation as optional , maintaining that the alternatives are equally legitimate and that cooperative conceptions should be adopted and cultivated.

By contrast, others have argued that adversariality, when suitably understood, can be seen as an integral and in fact desirable component of argumentation (Govier 1999; Aikin 2011; Casey 2020; but notice that these authors each develop different accounts of adversariality in argumentation). Such authors answer “adversarial” both to the descriptive and to the normative questions stated above. One overall theme is the need to draw a distinction between (excessive) aggressiveness and adversariality as such. Govier, for example, distinguishes between ancillary (negative) adversariality and minimal adversariality (Govier 1999). The thought is that, while the feminist critique of excessive aggression in argumentation is well taken, adversariality conceived and practiced in different ways need not have the detrimental consequences of more extreme versions of belligerent argumentation. Moreover, for these authors, adversariality in argumentation is simply not optional: it is an intrinsic feature of argumentative practices, but these practices also require a background of cooperation and agreement regarding, e.g., the accepted rules of inference.

But ultimately, the presumed opposition between adversarial and cooperative conceptions of argumentation may well be merely apparent. It may be argued for example that actual argumentative encounters ought to be adversarial or cooperative to different degrees, as different types of argumentation are required for different situations (Dutilh Novaes forthcoming). Indeed, perhaps we should not look for a one-fits-all model of how argumentation ought to be conducted across different contexts and situation, given the diversity of uses of argumentation.

We speak of argumentation as an epistemic practice when we take its primary purpose to be that of improving our beliefs and increasing knowledge, or of fostering understanding. To engage in argumentation can be a way to acquire more accurate beliefs: by examining critically reasons for and against a given position, we would be able to weed out weaker, poorly justified beliefs (likely to be false) and end up with stronger, suitably justified beliefs (likely to be true). From this perspective, the goal of engaging in argumentation is to learn , i.e., to improve one’s epistemic position (as opposed to argumentation “to win” (Fisher & Keil 2016)). Indeed, argumentation is often said to be truth-conducive (Betz 2013).

The idea that argumentation can be an epistemically beneficial process is as old as philosophy itself. In every major historical philosophical tradition, argumentation is viewed as an essential component of philosophical reflection precisely because it may be used to aim at the truth (indeed this is the core of Plato’s critique of the Sophists and their excessive focus on persuasion at the expense of truth (Irani 2017; see Historical Supplement ). Recent proponents of an epistemological approach to argumentation include (Goldman 2004; Lumer 2005; Biro & Siegel 2006). Alvin Goldman captures this general idea in the following terms:

Norms of good argumentation are substantially dedicated to the promotion of truthful speech and the exposure of falsehood, whether intentional or unintentional. […] Norms of good argumentation are part of a practice to encourage the exchange of truths through sincere, non-negligent, and mutually corrective speech. (Goldman 1994: 30)

Of course, it is at least in theory possible to engage in argumentation with oneself along these lines, solitarily weighing the pros and cons of a position. But a number of philosophers, most notably John Stuart Mill, maintain that interpersonal argumentative situations, involving people who truly disagree with each other, work best to realize the epistemic potential of argumentation to improve our beliefs (a point he developed in On Liberty (1859; see entry on John Stuart Mill ). When our ideas are challenged by engagement with those who disagree with us, we are forced to consider our own beliefs more thoroughly and critically. The result is that the remaining beliefs, those that have survived critical challenge, will be better grounded than those we held before such encounters. Dissenters thus force us to stay epistemically alert instead of becoming too comfortable with existing, entrenched beliefs. On this conception, arguers cooperate with each other precisely by being adversarial, i.e., by adopting a critical stance towards the positions one disagrees with.

The view that argumentation aims at epistemic improvement is in many senses appealing, but it is doubtful that it reflects the actual outcomes of argumentation in many real-life situations. Indeed, it seems that, more often than not, we are not Millians when arguing: we do not tend to engage with dissenting opinions with an open mind. Indeed, there is quite some evidence suggesting that arguments are in fact not a very efficient means to change minds in most real-life situations (Gordon-Smith 2019). People typically do not like to change their minds about firmly entrenched beliefs, and so when confronted with arguments or evidence that contradict these beliefs, they tend to either look away or to discredit the source of the argument as unreliable (Dutilh Novaes 2020c)—a phenomenon also known as “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998).

In particular, arguments that threaten our core beliefs and our sense of belonging to a group (e.g., political beliefs) typically trigger all kinds of motivated reasoning (Taber & Lodge 2006; Kahan 2017) whereby one outright rejects those arguments without properly engaging with their content. Relatedly, when choosing among a vast supply of options, people tend to gravitate towards content and sources that confirm their existing opinions, thus giving rise to so-called “echo chambers” and “epistemic bubbles” (Nguyen 2020). Furthermore, some arguments can be deceptively convincing in that they look valid but are not (Tindale 2007; see entry on fallacies ). Because most of us are arguably not very good at spotting fallacious arguments, especially if they are arguments that lend support to the beliefs we already hold, engaging in argumentation may in fact decrease the accuracy of our beliefs by persuading us of false conclusions with incorrect arguments (Fantl 2018).

In sum, despite the optimism of Mill and many others, it seems that engaging in argumentation will not automatically improve our beliefs (even if this may occur in some circumstances). [ 4 ] However, it may still be argued that an epistemological approach to argumentation can serve the purpose of providing a normative ideal for argumentative practices, even if it is not always a descriptively accurate account of these practices in the messy real world. Moreover, at least some concrete instances of argumentation, in particular argumentation in science (see section 4.5 below) seem to offer successful examples of epistemic-oriented argumentative practices.

Another important strand in the literature on argumentation are theories that view consensus as the primary goal of argumentative processes: to eliminate or resolve a difference of (expressed) opinion. The tradition of pragma-dialectics is a prominent recent exponent of this strand (Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004). These consensus-oriented approaches are motivated by the social complexity of human life, and the attribution of a role of social coordination to argumentation. Because humans are social animals who must often cooperate with other humans to successfully accomplish certain tasks, they must have mechanisms to align their beliefs and intentions, and subsequently their actions (Tomasello 2014). The thought is that argumentation would be a particularly suitable mechanism for such alignment, as an exchange of reasons would make it more likely that differences of opinion would decrease (Norman 2016). This may happen precisely because argumentation would be a good way to track truths and avoid falsehoods, as discussed in the previous section; by being involved in the same epistemic process of exchanging reasons, the participants in an argumentative situation would all come to converge towards the truth, and thus the upshot would be that they also come to agree with each other. However, consensus-oriented views need not presuppose that argumentation is truth-conducive: the ultimate goal of such instances of argumentation is that of social coordination, and for this tracking truth is not a requirement (Patterson 2011).

In particular, the very notion of deliberative democracy is viewed as resting crucially on argumentative practices that aim for consensus (Fishkin 2016; see entry on democracy ). (For present purposes, “deliberation” and “argumentation” can be treated as roughly synonymous). In a deliberative democracy, for a decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic public deliberation—a discussion of the pros and cons of the different options—not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Moreover, in democratic deliberation, when full consensus does not emerge, the parties involved may opt for a compromise solution, e.g., a coalition-based political system.

A prominent theorist of deliberative democracy thus understood is Jürgen Habermas, whose “discourse theory of law and democracy” relies heavily on practices of political justification and argumentation taking place in what he calls “the public sphere” (Habermas 1992 [1996]; 1981 [1984]; see entry on Habermas ). He starts from the idea that politics allows for the collective organization of people’s lives, including the common rules they will live by. Political argumentation is a form of communicative practice, so general assumptions for communicative practices in general apply. However, additional assumptions apply as well (Olson 2011 [2014]). In particular, deliberating participants must accept that anyone can participate in these discursive practices (democratic deliberation should be inclusive), and that anyone can introduce and challenge claims that are made in the public sphere (democratic deliberation should be free). They must also see one another as having equal status, at least for the purposes of deliberation (democratic deliberation should be equal). In turn, critics of Habermas’s account view it as unrealistic, as it presupposes an ideal situation where all citizens are treated equally and engage in public debates in good faith (Mouffe 1999; Geuss 2019).

More generally, it seems that it is only under quite specific conditions that argumentation reliably leads to consensus (as also suggested by formal modeling of argumentative situations (Betz 2013; Olsson 2013; Mäs & Flache 2013)). Consensus-oriented argumentation seems to work well in cooperative contexts, but not so much in situations of conflict (Dutilh Novaes forthcoming). In particular, the discussing parties must already have a significant amount of background agreement—especially agreement on what counts as a legitimate argument or compelling evidence—for argumentation and deliberation to lead to consensus. Especially in situations of deep disagreement (Fogelin 1985), it seems that the potential of argumentation to lead to consensus is quite limited. Instead, in many real-life situations, argumentation often leads to the opposite result; people disagree with each other even more after engaging in argumentation (Sunstein 2002). This is the well-documented phenomenon of group polarization , which occurs when an initial position or tendency of individual members of a group becomes more extreme after group discussion (Isenberg 1986).

In fact, it may be argued that argumentation will often create or exacerbate conflict and adversariality, rather than leading to the resolution of differences of opinions. Furthermore, a focus on consensus may end up reinforcing and perpetuating existing unequal power relations in a society.

In an unjust society, what purports to be a cooperative exchange of reasons really perpetuates patterns of oppression. (Goodwin 2007: 77)

This general point has been made by a number of political thinkers (e.g., Young 2000), who have highlighted the exclusionary implications of consensus-oriented political deliberation. The upshot is that consensus may not only be an unrealistic goal for argumentation; it may not even be a desirable goal for argumentation in a number of situations (e.g., when there is great power imbalance). Despite these concerns, the view that the primary goal of argumentation is to aim for consensus remains influential in the literature.

Finally, a number of authors have attributed to argumentation the potential to manage (pre-existing) conflict. In a sense, the consensus-oriented view of argumentation just discussed is a special case of conflict management argumentation, based on the assumption that the best way to manage conflict and disagreement is to aim for consensus and thus eliminate conflict. But conflict can be managed in different ways, not all of them leading to consensus; indeed, some authors maintain that argumentation may help mitigate conflict even when the explicit aim is not that of reaching consensus. Importantly, authors who identify conflict management (or variations thereof) as a function for argumentation differ in their overall appreciation of the value of argumentation: some take it to be at best futile and at worst destructive, [ 5 ] while others attribute a more positive role to argumentation in conflict management.

To this category also belong the conceptualizations of argumentation-as-war discussed (and criticized) by a number of authors (Cohen 1995; Bailin & Battersby 2016); in such cases, conflict is not so much managed but rather enacted (and possibly exacerbated) by means of argumentation. Thus seen, the function of argumentation would not be fundamentally different from the function of organized competitive activities such as sports or even war (with suitable rules of engagement; Aikin 2011).

When conflict emerges, people have various options: they may choose not to engage and instead prefer to flee; they may go into full-blown fighting mode, which may include physical aggression; or they may opt for approaches somewhere in between the fight-or-flee extremes of the spectrum. Argumentation can be plausibly classified as an intermediary response:

[A]rgument literally is a form of pacifism—we are using words instead of swords to settle our disputes. With argument, we settle our disputes in ways that are most respectful of those who disagree—we do not buy them off, we do not threaten them, and we do not beat them into submission. Instead, we give them reasons that bear on the truth or falsity of their beliefs. However adversarial argument may be, it isn’t bombing. […] argument is a pacifistic replacement for truly violent solutions to disagreements…. (Aikin 2011: 256)

This is not to say that argumentation will always or even typically be the best approach to handle conflict and disagreement; the point is rather that argumentation at least has the potential to do so, provided that the background conditions are suitable and that provisions to mitigate escalation are in place (Aikin 2011). Versions of this view can be found in the work of proponents of agonistic conceptions of democracy and political deliberation (Wenman 2013; see entry on feminist political philosophy ). For agonist thinkers, conflict and strife are inevitable features of human lives, and so cannot be eliminated; but they can be managed. One of them is Chantal Mouffe (Mouffe 2000), for whom democratic practices, including argumentation/deliberation, can serve to contain hostility and transform it into more constructive forms of contest. However, it is far from obvious that argumentation by itself will suffice to manage conflict; typically, other kinds of intervention must be involved (Young 2000), as the risk of argumentation being used to exercise power rather than as a tool to manage conflict always looms large (van Laar & Krabbe 2019).

From these observations on different types of argumentation, a pluralistic picture emerges: argumentation, understood as the exchange of reasons to justify claims, seems to have different applications in different situations. However, it is not clear that some of the goals often attributed to argumentation such as epistemic improvement and reaching consensus can in fact be reliably achieved in many real life situations. Does this mean that argumentation is useless and futile? Not necessarily, but it may mean that engaging in argumentation will not always be the optimal response in a number of contexts.

4. Argumentation Across Fields of Inquiry and Social Practices

Argumentation is practiced and studied in many fields of inquiry; philosophers interested in argumentation have much to benefit from engaging with these bodies of research as well.

To understand the emergence of argumentation theory as a specific field of research in the twentieth century, a brief discussion of preceding events is necessary. In the nineteenth century, a number of textbooks aiming to improve everyday reasoning via public education emphasized logical and rhetorical concerns, such as those by Richard Whately (see entry on fallacies ). As noted in section 3.2 , John Stuart Mill also had a keen interest in argumentation and its role in public discourse (Mill 1859), as well as an interest in logic and reasoning (see entries on Mill and on fallacies ). But with the advent of mathematical logic in the final decades of the nineteenth century, logic and the study of ordinary, everyday argumentation came apart, as logicians such as Frege, Hilbert, Russell etc. were primarily interested in mathematical reasoning and argumentation. As a result, their logical systems are not particularly suitable to study everyday argumentation, as this is simply not what they were designed to do. [ 6 ]

Nevertheless, in the twentieth century a number of authors took inspiration from developments in formal logic and expanded the use of logical tools to the analysis of ordinary argumentation. A pioneer in this tradition is Susan Stebbing, who wrote what can be seen as the first textbook in analytic philosophy, and then went on to write a number of books aimed at a general audience addressing everyday and public discourse from a philosophical/logical perspective (see entry on Susan Stebbing ). Her 1939 book Thinking to Some Purpose , which can be considered as one of the first textbooks in critical thinking, was widely read at the time, but did not become particularly influential for the development of argumentation theory in the decades to follow.

By contrast, Stephen Toulmin’s 1958 book The Uses of Argument has been tremendously influential in a wide range of fields, including critical thinking education, rhetoric, speech communication, and computer science (perhaps even more so than in Toulmin’s own original field, philosophy). Toulmin’s aim was to criticize the assumption (widely held by Anglo-American philosophers at the time) that any significant argument can be formulated in purely formal, deductive terms, using the formal logical systems that had emerged in the preceding decades (see (Eemeren, Garssen, et al. 2014: ch. 4). While this critique was met with much hostility among fellow philosophers, it eventually gave rise to an alternative way of approaching argumentation, which is often described as “informal logic” (see entry on informal logic ). This approach seeks to engage and analyze instances of argumentation in everyday life; it recognizes that, while useful, the tools of deductive logic alone do not suffice to investigate argumentation in all its complexity and pragmatic import. In a similar vein, Charles Hamblin’s 1970 book Fallacies reinvigorated the study of fallacies in the context of argumentation by re-emphasizing (following Aristotle) the importance of a dialectical-dialogical background when reflecting on fallacies in argumentation (see entry on fallacies ).

Around the same time as Toulmin, Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca were developing an approach to argumentation that emphasized its persuasive component. To this end, they turned to classical theories of rhetoric, and adapted them to give rise to what they described as the “New Rhetoric”. Their book Traité de l’argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique was published in 1958 in French, and translated into English in 1969. Its key idea:

since argumentation aims at securing the adherence of those to whom it is addressed, it is, in its entirety, relative to the audience to be influenced. (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958 [1969: 19])

They introduced the influential distinction between universal and particular audiences: while every argument is directed at a specific individual or group, the concept of a universal audience serves as a normative ideal encapsulating shared standards of agreement on what counts as legitimate argumentation (see Eemeren, Garssen, et al. 2014: ch. 5).

The work of these pioneers provided the foundations for subsequent research in argumentation theory. One approach that became influential in the following decades is the pragma-dialectics tradition developed by Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, 2004). They also founded the journal Argumentation , one of the flagship journals in argumentation theory. Pragma-dialectics was developed to study argumentation as a discourse activity, a complex speech act that occurs as part of interactional linguistic activities with specific communicative goals (“pragma” refers to the functional perspective of goals, and “dialectic” to the interactive component). For these authors, argumentative discourse is primarily directed at the reasonable resolution of a difference of opinion. Pragma-dialectics has a descriptive as well as a normative component, thus offering tools both for the analysis of concrete instances of argumentation and for the evaluation of argumentation correctness and success (see Eemeren, Garssen, et al. 2014: ch. 10).

Another leading author in argumentation theory is Douglas Walton, who pioneered the argument schemes approach to argumentation that borrows tools from formal logic but expands them so as to treat a wider range of arguments than those covered by traditional logical systems (Walton, Reed, & Macagno 2008). Walton also formulated an influential account of argumentation in dialogue in collaboration with Erik Krabbe (Walton & Krabbe 1995). Ralph Johnson and Anthony Blair further helped to consolidate the field of argumentation theory and informal logic by founding the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric in Windsor (Ontario, Canada), and by initiating the journal Informal Logic . Their textbook Logical Self-Defense (Johnson & Blair 1977) has also been particularly influential.

The study of argumentation within computer science and artificial intelligence is a thriving field of research, with dedicated journals such as Argument and Computation and regular conference series such as COMMA (International Conference on Computational Models of Argument; see Rahwan & Simari 2009 and Eemeren, Garssen, et al. 2014: ch. 11 for overviews).

The historical roots of argumentation research in artificial intelligence can be traced back to work on non-monotonic logics (see entry on non-monotonic logics ) and defeasible reasoning (see entry on defeasible reasoning ). Since then, three main different perspectives have emerged (Eemeren, Garssen, et al. 2014: ch. 11): the theoretical systems perspective, where the focus is on theoretical and formal models of argumentation (following the tradition of philosophical and formal logic); the artificial systems perspective, where the aim is to build computer programs that model or support argumentative tasks, for instance, in online dialogue games or in expert systems; the natural systems perspective, which investigates argumentation in its natural form with the help of computational tools (e.g., argumentation mining [Peldszus & Stede 2013; Habernal & Gurevych 2017], where computational methods are used to identify argumentative structures in large corpora of texts).

An influential approach in this research tradition is that of abstract argumentation frameworks , initiated by the pioneering work of Dung (1995). Before that, argumentation in AI was studied mostly under the inspiration of concepts coming from informal logic such as argumentation schemes, context, stages of dialogues and argument moves. By contrast, the key notion in the framework proposed by Dung is that of argument attack , understood as an abstract formal relation roughly intended to capture the idea that it is possible to challenge an argument by means of another argument (assertions are understood as a special case of arguments with zero premises). Arguments can then be represented in networks of attacks and defenses: an argument A can attack an argument B , and B in turn may attack further arguments C and D (the connection with the notion of defeaters is a natural one, which Dung also addresses).

Besides abstract argumentation, three other important lines of research in AI are: the (internal) structure of arguments; argumentation in multi-agent systems; applications to specific tasks and domains (Rahwan & Siwari 2009). The structural approach investigates formally features such as argument strength/force (e.g., a conclusive argument is stronger than a defeasible argument), argument schemes (Bex, Prakken, Reed, & Walton 2003) etc. Argumentation in multi-agent systems is a thriving subfield with its own dedicated conference series (ArgMAS), based on the recognition that argumentation is a particularly suitable vehicle to facilitate interaction in the artificial environments studied by AI researchers working on multi-agent systems (see a special issue of the journal Argument & Computation [Atkinson, Cerutti, et al. 2016]). Finally, computational approaches in argumentation have also thrived with respect to specific domains and applications, such as legal argumentation (Prakken & Sartor 2015). Recently, as a reaction to the machine-learning paradigm, the idea of explainable AI has gotten traction, and the concept of argumentation is thought to play a fundamental role for explainable AI (Sklar & Azhar 2018).

Argumentation is also an important topic of investigation within cognitive science and psychology. Researchers in these fields are predominantly interested in the descriptive question of how people in fact engage in argumentation, rather than in the normative question of how they ought to do it (although some of them have also drawn normative conclusions, e.g., Hahn & Oaksford 2006; Hahn & Hornikx, 2016). Controlled experiments are one of the ways in which the descriptive question can be investigated.

Systematic research specifically on argumentation within cognitive science and psychology has significantly increased over the last 10 years. Before that, there had been extensive research on reasoning conceived as an individual, internal process, much of which had been conducted using task materials such as syllogistic arguments (Dutilh Novaes 2020b). But due to what may be described as an individualist bias in cognitive science and psychology (Mercier 2018), these researchers did not draw explicit connections between their findings and the public acts of “giving and asking for reasons”. It is only somewhat recently that argumentation began to receive sustained attention from these researchers. The investigations of Hugo Mercier and colleagues (Mercier & Sperber 2017; Mercier 2018) and of Ulrike Hahn and colleagues (Hahn & Oaksford 2007; Hornikx & Hahn 2012; Collins & Hahn 2018) have been particularly influential. (See also Paglieri, Bonelli, & Felletti 2016, an edited volume containing a representative overview of research on the psychology of argumentation.) Another interesting line of research has been the study of the development of reasoning and argumentative skills in young children (Köymen, Mammen, & Tomasello 2016; Köymen & Tomasello 2020).

Mercier and Sperber defend an interactionist account of reasoning, according to which the primary function of reasoning is for social interactions, where reasons are exchanged and receivers of reasons decide whether they find them convincing—in other words, for argumentation (Mercier & Sperber 2017). They review a wealth of evidence suggesting that reasoning is rather flawed when it comes to drawing conclusions from premises in order to expand one’s knowledge. From this they conclude, on the basis of evolutionary arguments, that the function of reasoning must be a different one, indeed one that responds to features of human sociality and the need to exercise epistemic vigilance when receiving information from others. This account has inaugurated a rich research program which they have been pursuing with colleagues for over a decade now, and which has delivered some interesting results—for example, that we seem to be better at evaluating the quality of arguments proposed by others than at formulating high-quality arguments ourselves (Mercier 2018).

In the context of the Bayesian (see entry on Bayes’ theorem ) approach to reasoning that was first developed by Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater in the 1980s (Oaksford & Chater 2018), Hahn and colleagues have extended the Bayesian framework to the investigation of argumentation. They claim that Bayesian probabilities offer an accurate descriptive model of how people evaluate the strength of arguments (Hahn & Oaksford 2007) as well as a solid perspective to address normative questions pertaining to argument strength (Hahn & Oaksford 2006; Hahn & Hornikx 2016). The Bayesian approach allows for the formulation of probabilistic measures of argument strength, showing that many so-called “fallacies” may nevertheless be good arguments in the sense that they considerably raise the probability of the conclusion. For example, deductively invalid argument schemes (such as affirming the consequent (AC) and denying the antecedent (DA)) can also provide considerable support for a conclusion, depending on the contents in question. The extent to which this is the case depends primarily on the specific informational context, captured by the prior probability distribution, not on the structure of the argument. This means that some instances of, say, AC, may offer support to a conclusion while others may fail to do so (Eva & Hartmann 2018). Thus seen, Bayesian argumentation represents a significantly different approach to argumentation from those inspired by logic (e.g., argument schemes), but they are not necessarily incompatible; they may well be complementary perspectives (see also [Zenker 2013]).

Argumentation is primarily (though not exclusively) a linguistic phenomenon. Accordingly, argumentation is extensively studied in fields dedicated to the study of language, such as rhetoric, linguistics, discourse analysis, communication, and pragmatics, among others (see Eemeren, Garssen, et al. 2014: chs 8 and 9). Researchers in these areas develop general theoretical models of argumentation and investigate concrete instances of argumentation in specific domains on the basis of linguistic corpora, discourse analysis, and other methods used in the language sciences (see the edited volume Oswald, Herman, & Jacquin [2018] for a sample of the different lines of research). Overall, research on argumentation within the language sciences tends to focus primarily on concrete occurrences of arguments in a variety of domains, adopting a largely descriptive rather than normative perspective (though some of these researchers also tackle normative considerations).

Some of these analyses approach arguments and argumentation primarily as text or self-contained speeches, while others emphasize the interpersonal, communicative nature of “face-to-face” argumentation (see Eemeren, Garssen, et al. 2014: section 8.9). One prominent approach in this tradition is due to communication scholars Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs. They have drawn on speech act theory and conversation analysis to investigate argumentation as a disagreement-relevant expansion of speech acts that, through mutually recognized reasons, allows us to manage disagreements despite the challenges they pose for communication and coordination of activities (Jackson & Jacobs 1980; Jackson 2019). Moreover, they perceive institutionalized practices of argumentation and concrete “argumentation designs”—such as for example randomized controlled trials in medicine—as interventions aimed at improving methods of disagreement management through argumentation.

Another communication scholar, Dale Hample, has further argued for the importance of approaching argumentation as an essentially interpersonal communicative activity (Hample 2006, 2018). This perspective allows for the consideration of a broader range of factors, not only the arguments themselves but also (and primarily) the people involved in those processes: their motivations, psychological processes, and emotions. It also allows for the formulation of questions pertaining to individual as well as cultural differences in argumentative styles (see section 5.3 below).

Another illuminating perspective views argumentative practices as inherently tied to broader socio-cultural contexts (Amossy 2009). The Journal of Argumentation in Context was founded in 2012 precisely to promote a contextual approach to argumentation. Once argumentation is no longer only considered in abstraction from concrete instances taking place in real-life situations, it becomes imperative to recognize that argumentation does not take place in a vacuum; typically, argumentative practices are embedded in other kinds of practices and institutions, against the background of specific socio-cultural, political structures. The method of discourse analysis is particularly suitable for a broader perspective on argumentation, as shown by the work of Ruth Amossy (2002) and Marianne Doury (2009), among others.

Argumentation is crucial in a number of specific organized social practices, in particular in politics, science, law, and education. The relevant argumentative practices are studied in each of the corresponding knowledge domains; indeed, while some general principles may govern argumentative practices across the board, some may be specific to particular applications and domains.

As already mentioned, argumentation is typically viewed as an essential component of political democratic practices, and as such it is of great interest to political scientists and political theorists (Habermas 1992 [1996]; Young 2000; Landemore 2013; Fishkin 2016; see entry on democracy ). (The term typically used in this context is “deliberation” instead of “argumentation”, but these can be viewed as roughly synonymous for our purposes.) General theories of argumentation such as pragma-dialectic and the Toulmin model can be applied to political argumentation with illuminating results (Wodak 2016; Mohammed 2016). More generally, political discourse seems to have a strong argumentative component, in particular if argumentation is understood more broadly as not only pertaining to rational discourse ( logos ) but as also including what rhetoricians refer to as pathos and ethos (Zarefsky 2014; Amossy 2018). But critics of argumentation and deliberation in political contexts also point out the limitations of the classical deliberative model (Sanders 1997; Talisse 2019).

Moreover, scientific communities seem to offer good examples of (largely) well-functioning argumentative practices. These are disciplined systems of collective epistemic activity, with tacit but widely endorsed norms for argumentative engagement for each domain (which does not mean that there are not disagreements on these very norms). The case of mathematics has already been mentioned above: practices of mathematical proof are quite naturally understood as argumentative practices (Dutilh Novaes 2020a). Furthermore, when a scientist presents a new scientific claim, it must be backed by arguments and evidence that her peers are likely to find convincing, as they follow from the application of widely agreed-upon scientific methods (Longino 1990; Weinstein 1990; Rehg 2008; see entry on the social dimensions of scientific knowledge ). Other scientists will in turn critically examine the evidence and arguments provided, and will voice objections or concerns if they find aspects of the theory to be insufficiently convincing. Thus seen, science may be viewed as a “game of giving and asking for reasons” (Zamora Bonilla 2006). Certain features of scientific argumentation seem to ensure its success: scientists see other scientists as prima facie peers, and so (typically at least) place a fair amount of trust in other scientists by default; science is based on the principle of “organized skepticism” (a term introduced by the pioneer sociologist of science Robert Merton [Merton, 1942]), which means that asking for further reasons should not be perceived as a personal attack. These are arguably aspects that distinguish argumentation in science from argumentation in other domains in virtue of these institutional factors (Mercier & Heintz 2014). But ultimately, scientists are part of society as a whole, and thus the question of how scientific and political argumentation intersect becomes particularly relevant (Kitcher 2001).

Another area where argumentation is essential is the law, which also corresponds to disciplined systems of collective activity with rules and principles for what counts as acceptable arguments and evidence. legal reasoning ).--> In litigation (in particular in adversarial justice systems), there are typically two sides disagreeing on what is lawful or just, and the basic idea is that each side will present its strongest arguments; it is the comparison between the two sets of arguments that should lead to the best judgment (Walton 2002). Legal reasoning and argumentation have been extensively studied within jurisprudence for decades, in particular since Ronald Dworkin’s (1977) and Neil MacCormick’s (1978) responses to HLA Hart’s highly influential The Concept of Law (1961). A number of other views and approaches have been developed, in particular from the perspectives of natural law theory, legal positivism, common law, and rhetoric (see Feteris 2017 for an overview). Overall, legal argumentation is characterized by extensive uses of analogies (Lamond 2014), abduction (Askeland 2020), and defeasible/non-monotonic reasoning (Bex & Verheij 2013). An interesting question is whether argumentation in law is fundamentally different from argumentation in other domains, or whether it follows the same overall canons and norms but applied to legal topics (Raz 2001).

Finally, the development of argumentative skills is arguably a fundamental aspect of (formal) education (Muller Mirza & Perret-Clermont 2009). Ideally, when presented with arguments, a learner should not simply accept what is being said at face value, but should instead reflect on the reasons offered and come to her own conclusions. Argumentation thus fosters independent, critical thinking, which is viewed as an important goal for education (Siegel 1995; see entry on critical thinking ). A number of education theorists and developmental psychologists have empirically investigated the effects of emphasizing argumentative skills in educational settings, with encouraging results (Kuhn & Crowell 2011). There has been in particular much emphasis on argumentation specifically in science education, based on the assumption that argumentation is a key component of scientific practice (as noted above); the thought is that this feature of scientific practice should be reflected in science education (Driver, Newton, & Osborne 2000; Erduran & Jiménez-Aleixandre 2007).

5. Further Topics

Argumentation is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and the literature on arguments and argumentation is massive and varied. This entry can only scratch the surface of the richness of this material, and many interesting, relevant topics must be left out for reasons of space. In this final section, a selection of topics that are likely to attract considerable interest in future research are discussed.

In recent years, the concept of epistemic injustice has received much attention among philosophers (Fricker 2007; McKinnon 2016). Epistemic injustice occurs when a person is unfairly treated qua knower on the basis of prejudices pertaining to social categories such as gender, race, class, ability etc. (see entry on feminist epistemology and philosophy of science ). One of the main categories of epistemic injustice discussed in the literature pertains to testimony and is known as testimonial injustice : this occurs when a testifier is not given a degree of credibility commensurate to their actual expertise on the relevant topic, as a result of prejudice. (Whether credibility excess is also a form of testimonial injustice is a moot point in the literature [Medina 2011].)

Since argumentation can be viewed as an important mechanism for sharing knowledge and information, i.e., as having significant epistemic import (Goldman 2004), the question arises whether there might be instances of epistemic injustice pertaining specifically to argumentation, which may be described as argumentative injustice , and which would be notably different from other recognized forms of epistemic injustice such as testimonial injustice. Bondy (Bondy 2010) presented a first articulation of the notion of argumentative injustice, modeled after Fricker’s notion of epistemic injustice and relying on a broadly epistemological conception of argumentation. However, Bondy’s analysis does not take into account some of the structural elements that have become central to the analysis of epistemic injustice since Fricker’s influential work, so it seems further discussion of epistemic injustice in argumentation is still needed. For example, in situations of disagreement, epistemic injustice can give rise to further obstacles to rational argumentation, leading to deep disagreement (Lagewaard 2021).

Moreover, as often noted by critics of adversarial approaches, argumentation can also be used as an instrument of domination and oppression used to overpower and denigrate an interlocutor (Nozick 1981), especially an interlocutor of “lower” status in the context in question (Moulton 1983; see entry on feminist approaches to argumentation ). From this perspective, it is clear that argumentation may also be used to reinforce and exacerbate injustice, inequalities and power differentials (Goodwin 2007). Given this possibility, and in response to the perennial risk of excessive aggressiveness in argumentative situations, a normative account of how argumentation ought to be conducted so as to avoid these problematic outcomes seem to be required.

One such approach is virtue argumentation theory . Drawing on virtue ethics and virtue epistemology (see entries on virtue ethics and virtue epistemology ), virtue argumentation theory seeks to theorize how to argue well in terms of the dispositions and character of arguers rather than, for example, in terms of properties of arguments considered in abstraction from arguers (Aberdein & Cohen 2016). Some of the argumentative virtues identified in the literature are: willingness to listen to others (Cohen 2019), willingness to take a novel viewpoint seriously (Kwong 2016), humility (Kidd 2016), and open-mindedness (Tanesini 2020).

By the same token, defective argumentation is conceptualized not (only) in terms of structural properties of arguments (e.g., fallacious argument patterns), but in terms of the vices displayed by arguers such as arrogance and narrow-mindedness, among others (Aberdein 2016). Virtue argumentation theory now constitutes a vibrant research program, as attested by a special issue of Topoi dedicated to the topic (see [Aberdein & Cohen 2016] for its Introduction). It allows for a reconceptualization of classical themes within argumentation theory while also promising to provide concrete recommendations on how to argue better. Whether it can fully counter the risk of epistemic injustice and oppressive uses of argumentation is however debatable, at least as long as broader structural factors related to power dynamics are not sufficiently taken into account (Kukla 2014).

On some idealized construals, argumentation is conceived as a purely rational, emotionless endeavor. But the strong connection between argumentative activities and emotional responses has also long been recognized (in particular in rhetorical analyses of argumentation), and more recently has become the object of extensive research (Walton 1992; Gilbert 2004; Hample 2006: ch. 5). Importantly, the recognition of a role for emotions in argumentation does not entail a complete rejection of the “rationality” of argumentation; rather, it is based on the rejection of a strict dichotomy between reason and emotion (see entry on emotion ), and on a more encompassing conception of argumentation as a multi-layered human activity.

Rather than dispassionate exchanges of reasons, instances of argumentation typically start against the background of existing emotional relations, and give rise to further affective responses—often, though not necessarily, negative responses of aggression and hostility. Indeed, it has been noted that, by itself, argumentation can give rise to conflict and friction where there was none to be found prior to the argumentative engagement (Aikin 2011). This occurs in particular because critical engagement and requests for reasons are at odds with default norms of credulity in most mundane dialogical interactions, thus creating a perception of antagonism. But argumentation may also give rise to positive affective responses if the focus is on coalescence and cooperation rather than on hostility (Gilbert 1997).

The descriptive claim that instances of argumentation are typically emotionally charged is not particularly controversial, though it deserves to be further investigated; the details of affective responses during instances of argumentation and how to deal with them are non-trivial (Krabbe & van Laar 2015). What is potentially more controversial is the normative claim that instances of argumentation may or should be emotionally charged, i.e., that emotions may or ought to be involved in argumentative processes, even if it may be necessary to regulate them in such situations rather than giving them free rein (González, Gómez, & Lemos 2019). The significance of emotions for persuasion has been recognized for millennia (see entry on Aristotle’s rhetoric ), but more recently it has become clear that emotions also have a fundamental role to play for choices of what to focus on and what to care about (Sinhababu 2017). This general point seems to apply to instances of argumentation as well. For example, Howes and Hundleby (Howes & Hundleby 2018) argue that, contrary to what is often thought, anger can in fact make a positive contribution to argumentative encounters. Indeed, anger may have an important epistemological role in such encounters by drawing attention to relevant premises and information that may otherwise go unnoticed. (They recognize that anger may also derail argumentation when the encounter becomes a full-on confrontation.)

In sum, the study of the role of emotions for argumentation, both descriptively and normatively speaking, has attracted the interest of a number of scholars, traditionally in connection with rhetoric and more recently also from the perspective of argumentation as interpersonal communication (Hample 2006). And yet, much work remains to be done on the significance of emotions for argumentation, in particular given that the view that argumentation should be a purely rational, dispassionate endeavor remains widely (even if tacitly) endorsed.

Once we adopt the perspective of argumentation as a communicative practice, the question of the influence of cultural factors on argumentative practices naturally arises. Is there significant variability in how people engage in argumentation depending on their sociocultural backgrounds? Or is argumentation largely the same phenomenon across different cultures? Actually, we may even ask ourselves whether argumentation in fact occurs in all human cultures, or whether it is the product of specific, contingent background conditions, thus not being a human universal. For comparison: it had long been assumed that practices of counting were present in all human cultures, even if with different degrees of complexity. But in recent decades it has been shown that some cultures do not engage systematically in practices of counting and basic arithmetic at all, such as the Pirahã in the Amazon (Gordon 2004; see entry on culture and cognitive science ). By analogy, it seems that the purported universality of argumentative practices should not be taken for granted, but rather be treated as a legitimate empirical question. (Incidentally, there is some anecdotal evidence that the Pirahã themselves engage in argumentative exchanges [Everett 2008], but to date their argumentative skills have not been investigated systematically, as is the case with their numerical skills.)

Of course, how widespread argumentative practices will be also depends on how the concept of “argumentative practices” is defined and operationalized in the first place. If it is narrowly defined as corresponding to regimented practices of reason-giving requiring clear markers and explicit criteria for what counts as premises, conclusions and relations of support between them, then argumentation may well be restricted to cultures and subcultures where such practices have been explicitly codified. By contrast, if argumentation is defined more loosely, then a wider range of communicative practices will be considered as instances of argumentation, and thus presumably more cultures will be found to engage in (what is thus viewed as) argumentation. This means that the spread of argumentative practices across cultures is not only an empirical question; it also requires significant conceptual input to be addressed.

But if (as appears to be the case) argumentation is not a strictly WEIRD phenomenon, restricted to Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan 2010), then the issue of cross-cultural variability in argumentative practices gives rise to a host of research questions, again both at the descriptive and at the normative level. Indeed, even if at the descriptive level considerable variability in argumentative practices is identified, the normative question of whether there should be universally valid canons for argumentation, or instead specific norms for specific contexts, remains pressing. At the descriptive level, a number of researchers have investigated argumentative practices in different WEIRD as well as non-WEIRD cultures, also addressing questions of cultural variability (Hornikx & Hoeken 2007; Hornikx & de Best 2011).

A foundational work in this context is Edwin Hutchins’ 1980 book Culture and Inference , a study of the Trobriand Islanders’ system of land tenure in Papua New Guinea (Hutchins 1980). While presented as a study of inference and reasoning among the Trobriand Islanders, what Hutchins in fact investigated were instances of legal argumentation in land courts by means of ethnographic observation and interviews with litigants. This led to the formulation of a set of twelve basic propositions codifying knowledge about land tenure, as well as transfer formulas governing how this knowledge can be applied to new disputes. Hutchins’ analysis showed that the Trobriand Islanders had a sophisticated argumentation system to resolve issues pertaining to land tenure, in many senses resembling argumentation and reasoning in so-called WEIRD societies in that it seemed to recognize as valid simple logical structures such as modus ponens and modus tollens .

More recently, Hugo Mercier and colleagues have been conducting studies in countries such as Japan (Mercier, Deguchi, Van der Henst, & Yama 2016) and Guatemala (Castelain, Girotto, Jamet, & Mercier 2016). While recognizing the significance and interest of cultural differences (Mercier 2013), Mercier maintains that argumentation is a human universal, as argumentative capacities and tendencies are a result of natural selection, genetically encoded in human cognition (Mercier 2011; Mercier & Sperber 2017). He takes the results of the cross-cultural studies conducted so far as confirming the universality of argumentation, even considering cultural differences (Mercier 2018).

Another scholar who has been carrying out an extensive research program on cultural differences in argumentation is communication theorist Dale Hample. With different sets of colleagues, he has conducted studies by means of surveys where participants (typically, university undergraduates) self-report on their argumentative practices in countries such as China, Japan, Turkey, Chile, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United States (among others; Hample 2018: ch. 7). His results overall show a number of similarities, which may be partially explained by the specific demographic (university students) from which participants are usually recruited. But interesting differences have also been identified, for example different levels of willingness to engage in argumentative encounters.

In a recent book (Tindale 2021), philosopher Chris Tindale adopts an anthropological perspective to investigate how argumentative practices emerge from the experiences of peoples with diverse backgrounds. He emphasizes the argumentative roles of place, orality, myth, narrative, and audience, also assessing the impacts of colonialism on the study of argumentation. Tindale reviews a wealth of anthropological and ethnographic studies on argumentative practices in different cultures, thus providing what is to date perhaps the most comprehensive study on argumentation from an anthropological perspective.

On the whole, the study of differences and commonalities in argumentative practices across cultures is an established line of research on argumentation, but arguably much work remains to be done to investigate these complex phenomena more thoroughly.

So far we have not yet considered the question of the different media through which argumentation can take place. Naturally, argumentation can unfold orally in face-to-face encounters—discussions in parliament, political debates, in a court of law—as well as in writing—in scientific articles, on the Internet, in newspaper editorials. Moreover, it can happen synchronically, with real-time exchanges of reasons, or asynchronically. While it is reasonable to expect that there will be some commonalities across these different media and environments, it is also plausible that specific features of different environments may significantly influence how argumentation is conducted: different environments present different kinds of affordances for arguers (Halpern & Gibbs 2013; Weger & Aakhus 2003; see entry on embodied cognition for the concept of affordance). Indeed, if the Internet represents a fundamentally novel cognitive ecology (Smart, Heersmink, & Clowes 2017), then it will likely give rise to different forms of argumentative engagement (Lewiński 2010). Whether these new forms will represent progress (according to some suitable metric) is however a moot point.

In the early days of the Internet in the 1990s, there was much hope that online spaces would finally realize the Habermasian ideal of a public sphere for political deliberation (Hindman 2009). The Internet was supposed to act as the great equalizer in the worldwide marketplace of ideas, finally attaining the Millian ideal of free exchange of ideas (Mill 1859). Online, everyone’s voice would have an equal chance of being heard, everyone could contribute to the conversation, and everyone could simultaneously be a journalist, news consumer, engaged citizen, advocate, and activist.

A few decades later, these hopes have not really materialized. It is probably true that most people now argue more —in social media, blogs, chat rooms, discussion boards etc.—but it is much less obvious that they argue better . Indeed, rather than enhancing democratic ideals, some have gone as far as claiming that instead, the Internet is “killing democracy” (Bartlett 2018). There is very little oversight when it comes to the spreading of propaganda and disinformation online (Benkler, Faris, & Roberts 2018), which means that citizens are often being fed faulty information and arguments. Moreover, it seems that online environments may lead to increased polarization when polemic topics are being discussed (Yardi & Boyd 2010), and to “intellectual arrogance” (Lynch 2019). Some have argued that online discussions lead to more overly emotional engagement when compared to other forms of debate (Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock 2014). But not everyone is convinced that the Internet has only made things worse when it comes to argumentation, or in any case that it cannot be suitably redesigned so as to foster rather than destroy democratic ideals and deliberation (Sunstein 2017).

Be that as it may, the Internet is here to stay, and online argumentation is a pervasive phenomenon that argumentation theorists have been studying and will continue to study for years to come. In fact, if anything, online argumentation is now more often investigated empirically than other forms of argumentation, among other reasons thanks to the development of argument mining techniques (see section 4.2 above) which greatly facilitate the study of large corpora of textual material such as those produced by online discussions. Beyond the very numerous specific case studies available in the literature, there have been also attempts to reflect on the phenomenon of online argumentation in general, for example in journal special issues dedicated to argumentation in digital media such as in Argumentation and Advocacy (Volume 47(2), 2010) and Philosophy & Technology (Volume 30(2), 2017). However, a systematic analysis of online argumentation and how it differs from other forms of argumentation remains to be produced.

Argument and argumentation are multifaceted phenomena that have attracted the interest of philosophers as well as scholars in other fields for millennia, and continue to be studied extensively in various domains. This entry presents an overview of the main strands in these discussions, while acknowledging the impossibility of fully doing justice to the enormous literature on the topic. But the literature references below should at least provide a useful starting point for the interested reader.

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abduction | analogy: medieval theories of | analogy and analogical reasoning | Aristotle | Aristotle, General Topics: logic | Aristotle, General Topics: rhetoric | Bacon, Francis | Bayes’ Theorem | bias, implicit | Chinese Philosophy: logic and language in Early Chinese Philosophy | Chinese Philosophy: Mohism | Chinese Philosophy: Mohist Canons | Chinese room argument | cognition: embodied | critical thinking | Curry’s paradox | democracy | emotion | epistemology: virtue | ethics: virtue | fallacies | feminist philosophy, interventions: epistemology and philosophy of science | feminist philosophy, interventions: political philosophy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on argumentation | Habermas, Jürgen | Hume, David | induction: problem of | legal reasoning: precedent and analogy in | liar paradox | logic: inductive | logic: informal | logic: non-monotonic | logic: paraconsistent | logic: relevance | logical consequence | Peirce, Charles Sanders | reasoning: defeasible | scientific knowledge: social dimensions of | Spinoza, Baruch | Stebbing, Susan | thought experiments

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Merel Talbi, Elias Anttila, César dos Santos, Hein Duijf, Silvia Ivani, Caglar Dede, Colin Rittberg, Marcin Lewiński, Andrew Aberdein, Malcolm Keating, Maksymillian Del Mar, and an anonymous referee for suggestions and/or comments on earlier drafts. This research was supported by H2020 European Research Council [771074-SEA].

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Article • 8 min read

Critical Thinking

Developing the right mindset and skills.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

We make hundreds of decisions every day and, whether we realize it or not, we're all critical thinkers.

We use critical thinking each time we weigh up our options, prioritize our responsibilities, or think about the likely effects of our actions. It's a crucial skill that helps us to cut out misinformation and make wise decisions. The trouble is, we're not always very good at it!

In this article, we'll explore the key skills that you need to develop your critical thinking skills, and how to adopt a critical thinking mindset, so that you can make well-informed decisions.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the discipline of rigorously and skillfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions, and beliefs. You'll need to actively question every step of your thinking process to do it well.

Collecting, analyzing and evaluating information is an important skill in life, and a highly valued asset in the workplace. People who score highly in critical thinking assessments are also rated by their managers as having good problem-solving skills, creativity, strong decision-making skills, and good overall performance. [1]

Key Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinkers possess a set of key characteristics which help them to question information and their own thinking. Focus on the following areas to develop your critical thinking skills:

Being willing and able to explore alternative approaches and experimental ideas is crucial. Can you think through "what if" scenarios, create plausible options, and test out your theories? If not, you'll tend to write off ideas and options too soon, so you may miss the best answer to your situation.

To nurture your curiosity, stay up to date with facts and trends. You'll overlook important information if you allow yourself to become "blinkered," so always be open to new information.

But don't stop there! Look for opposing views or evidence to challenge your information, and seek clarification when things are unclear. This will help you to reassess your beliefs and make a well-informed decision later. Read our article, Opening Closed Minds , for more ways to stay receptive.

Logical Thinking

You must be skilled at reasoning and extending logic to come up with plausible options or outcomes.

It's also important to emphasize logic over emotion. Emotion can be motivating but it can also lead you to take hasty and unwise action, so control your emotions and be cautious in your judgments. Know when a conclusion is "fact" and when it is not. "Could-be-true" conclusions are based on assumptions and must be tested further. Read our article, Logical Fallacies , for help with this.

Use creative problem solving to balance cold logic. By thinking outside of the box you can identify new possible outcomes by using pieces of information that you already have.

Self-Awareness

Many of the decisions we make in life are subtly informed by our values and beliefs. These influences are called cognitive biases and it can be difficult to identify them in ourselves because they're often subconscious.

Practicing self-awareness will allow you to reflect on the beliefs you have and the choices you make. You'll then be better equipped to challenge your own thinking and make improved, unbiased decisions.

One particularly useful tool for critical thinking is the Ladder of Inference . It allows you to test and validate your thinking process, rather than jumping to poorly supported conclusions.

Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset

Combine the above skills with the right mindset so that you can make better decisions and adopt more effective courses of action. You can develop your critical thinking mindset by following this process:

Gather Information

First, collect data, opinions and facts on the issue that you need to solve. Draw on what you already know, and turn to new sources of information to help inform your understanding. Consider what gaps there are in your knowledge and seek to fill them. And look for information that challenges your assumptions and beliefs.

Be sure to verify the authority and authenticity of your sources. Not everything you read is true! Use this checklist to ensure that your information is valid:

• Are your information sources trustworthy ? (For example, well-respected authors, trusted colleagues or peers, recognized industry publications, websites, blogs, etc.)
• Is the information you have gathered up to date ?
• Has the information received any direct criticism ?
• Does the information have any errors or inaccuracies ?
• Is there any evidence to support or corroborate the information you have gathered?
• Is the information you have gathered subjective or biased in any way? (For example, is it based on opinion, rather than fact? Is any of the information you have gathered designed to promote a particular service or organization?)

If any information appears to be irrelevant or invalid, don't include it in your decision making. But don't omit information just because you disagree with it, or your final decision will be flawed and bias.

Now observe the information you have gathered, and interpret it. What are the key findings and main takeaways? What does the evidence point to? Start to build one or two possible arguments based on what you have found.

You'll need to look for the details within the mass of information, so use your powers of observation to identify any patterns or similarities. You can then analyze and extend these trends to make sensible predictions about the future.

To help you to sift through the multiple ideas and theories, it can be useful to group and order items according to their characteristics. From here, you can compare and contrast the different items. And once you've determined how similar or different things are from one another, Paired Comparison Analysis can help you to analyze them.

The final step involves challenging the information and rationalizing its arguments.

Apply the laws of reason (induction, deduction, analogy) to judge an argument and determine its merits. To do this, it's essential that you can determine the significance and validity of an argument to put it in the correct perspective. Take a look at our article, Rational Thinking , for more information about how to do this.

Once you have considered all of the arguments and options rationally, you can finally make an informed decision.

Afterward, take time to reflect on what you have learned and what you found challenging. Step back from the detail of your decision or problem, and look at the bigger picture. Record what you've learned from your observations and experience.

Critical thinking involves rigorously and skilfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions and beliefs. It's a useful skill in the workplace and in life.

You'll need to be curious and creative to explore alternative possibilities, but rational to apply logic, and self-aware to identify when your beliefs could affect your decisions or actions.

You can demonstrate a high level of critical thinking by validating your information, analyzing its meaning, and finally evaluating the argument.

Critical Thinking Infographic

See Critical Thinking represented in our infographic: An Elementary Guide to Critical Thinking .

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Pursuing Truth: A Guide to Critical Thinking

Chapter 2 arguments.

The fundamental tool of the critical thinker is the argument. For a good example of what we are not talking about, consider a bit from a famous sketch by Monty Python’s Flying Circus : 3

2.1 Identifying Arguments

People often use “argument” to refer to a dispute or quarrel between people. In critical thinking, an argument is defined as

A set of statements, one of which is the conclusion and the others are the premises.

There are three important things to remember here:

• Arguments contain statements.
• They have a conclusion.
• They have at least one premise

Arguments contain statements, or declarative sentences. Statements, unlike questions or commands, have a truth value. Statements assert that the world is a particular way; questions do not. For example, if someone asked you what you did after dinner yesterday evening, you wouldn’t accuse them of lying. When the world is the way that the statement says that it is, we say that the statement is true. If the statement is not true, it is false.

One of the statements in the argument is called the conclusion. The conclusion is the statement that is intended to be proved. Consider the following argument:

Calculus II will be no harder than Calculus I. Susan did well in Calculus I. So, Susan should do well in Calculus II.

Here the conclusion is that Susan should do well in Calculus II. The other two sentences are premises. Premises are the reasons offered for believing that the conclusion is true.

2.1.1 Standard Form

Now, to make the argument easier to evaluate, we will put it into what is called “standard form.” To put an argument in standard form, write each premise on a separate, numbered line. Draw a line underneath the last premise, the write the conclusion underneath the line.

• Calculus II will be no harder than Calculus I.
• Susan did well in Calculus I.
• Susan should do well in Calculus II.

Now that we have the argument in standard form, we can talk about premise 1, premise 2, and all clearly be referring to the same thing.

2.1.2 Indicator Words

Unfortunately, when people present arguments, they rarely put them in standard form. So, we have to decide which statement is intended to be the conclusion, and which are the premises. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that the conclusion comes at the end. The conclusion is often at the beginning of the passage, but could even be in the middle. A better way to identify premises and conclusions is to look for indicator words. Indicator words are words that signal that statement following the indicator is a premise or conclusion. The example above used a common indicator word for a conclusion, ‘so.’ The other common conclusion indicator, as you can probably guess, is ‘therefore.’ This table lists the indicator words you might encounter.

Each argument will likely use only one indicator word or phrase. When the conlusion is at the end, it will generally be preceded by a conclusion indicator. Everything else, then, is a premise. When the conclusion comes at the beginning, the next sentence will usually be introduced by a premise indicator. All of the following sentences will also be premises.

For example, here’s our previous argument rewritten to use a premise indicator:

Susan should do well in Calculus II, because Calculus II will be no harder than Calculus I, and Susan did well in Calculus I.

Sometimes, an argument will contain no indicator words at all. In that case, the best thing to do is to determine which of the premises would logically follow from the others. If there is one, then it is the conclusion. Here is an example:

Spot is a mammal. All dogs are mammals, and Spot is a dog.

The first sentence logically follows from the others, so it is the conclusion. When using this method, we are forced to assume that the person giving the argument is rational and logical, which might not be true.

2.1.3 Non-Arguments

One thing that complicates our task of identifying arguments is that there are many passages that, although they look like arguments, are not arguments. The most common types are:

• Explanations
• Mere asssertions
• Conditional statements
• Loosely connected statements

Explanations can be tricky, because they often use one of our indicator words. Consider this passage:

Abraham Lincoln died because he was shot.

If this were an argument, then the conclusion would be that Abraham Lincoln died, since the other statement is introduced by a premise indicator. If this is an argument, though, it’s a strange one. Do you really think that someone would be trying to prove that Abraham Lincoln died? Surely everyone knows that he is dead. On the other hand, there might be people who don’t know how he died. This passage does not attempt to prove that something is true, but instead attempts to explain why it is true. To determine if a passage is an explanation or an argument, first find the statement that looks like the conclusion. Next, ask yourself if everyone likely already believes that statement to be true. If the answer to that question is yes, then the passage is an explanation.

Mere assertions are obviously not arguments. If a professor tells you simply that you will not get an A in her course this semester, she has not given you an argument. This is because she hasn’t given you any reasons to believe that the statement is true. If there are no premises, then there is no argument.

Conditional statements are sentences that have the form “If…, then….” A conditional statement asserts that if something is true, then something else would be true also. For example, imagine you are told, “If you have the winning lottery ticket, then you will win ten million dollars.” What is being claimed to be true, that you have the winning lottery ticket, or that you will win ten million dollars? Neither. The only thing claimed is the entire conditional. Conditionals can be premises, and they can be conclusions. They can be parts of arguments, but that cannot, on their own, be arguments themselves.

Finally, consider this passage:

I woke up this morning, then took a shower and got dressed. After breakfast, I worked on chapter 2 of the critical thinking text. I then took a break and drank some more coffee….

This might be a description of my day, but it’s not an argument. There’s nothing in the passage that plays the role of a premise or a conclusion. The passage doesn’t attempt to prove anything. Remember that arguments need a conclusion, there must be something that is the statement to be proved. Lacking that, it simply isn’t an argument, no matter how much it looks like one.

2.2 Evaluating Arguments

The first step in evaluating an argument is to determine what kind of argument it is. We initially categorize arguments as either deductive or inductive, defined roughly in terms of their goals. In deductive arguments, the truth of the premises is intended to absolutely establish the truth of the conclusion. For inductive arguments, the truth of the premises is only intended to establish the probable truth of the conclusion. We’ll focus on deductive arguments first, then examine inductive arguments in later chapters.

Once we have established that an argument is deductive, we then ask if it is valid. To say that an argument is valid is to claim that there is a very special logical relationship between the premises and the conclusion, such that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. Another way to state this is

An argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

An argument is invalid if and only if it is not valid.

Note that claiming that an argument is valid is not the same as claiming that it has a true conclusion, nor is it to claim that the argument has true premises. Claiming that an argument is valid is claiming nothing more that the premises, if they were true , would be enough to make the conclusion true. For example, is the following argument valid or not?

• If pigs fly, then an increase in the minimum wage will be approved next term.
• An increase in the minimum wage will be approved next term.

The argument is indeed valid. If the two premises were true, then the conclusion would have to be true also. What about this argument?

• All dogs are mammals
• Spot is a mammal.
• Spot is a dog.

In this case, both of the premises are true and the conclusion is true. The question to ask, though, is whether the premises absolutely guarantee that the conclusion is true. The answer here is no. The two premises could be true and the conclusion false if Spot were a cat, whale, etc.

Neither of these arguments are good. The second fails because it is invalid. The two premises don’t prove that the conclusion is true. The first argument is valid, however. So, the premises would prove that the conclusion is true, if those premises were themselves true. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, I guess, considering what would be dropping from the sky) pigs don’t fly.

These examples give us two important ways that deductive arguments can fail. The can fail because they are invalid, or because they have at least one false premise. Of course, these are not mutually exclusive, an argument can be both invalid and have a false premise.

If the argument is valid, and has all true premises, then it is a sound argument. Sound arguments always have true conclusions.

A deductively valid argument with all true premises.

Inductive arguments are never valid, since the premises only establish the probable truth of the conclusion. So, we evaluate inductive arguments according to their strength. A strong inductive argument is one in which the truth of the premises really do make the conclusion probably true. An argument is weak if the truth of the premises fail to establish the probable truth of the conclusion.

There is a significant difference between valid/invalid and strong/weak. If an argument is not valid, then it is invalid. The two categories are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. There can be no such thing as an argument being more valid than another valid argument. Validity is all or nothing. Inductive strength, however, is on a continuum. A strong inductive argument can be made stronger with the addition of another premise. More evidence can raise the probability of the conclusion. A valid argument cannot be made more valid with an additional premise. Why not? If the argument is valid, then the premises were enough to absolutely guarantee the truth of the conclusion. Adding another premise won’t give any more guarantee of truth than was already there. If it could, then the guarantee wasn’t absolute before, and the original argument wasn’t valid in the first place.

2.3 Counterexamples

One way to prove an argument to be invalid is to use a counterexample. A counterexample is a consistent story in which the premises are true and the conclusion false. Consider the argument above:

By pointing out that Spot could have been a cat, I have told a story in which the premises are true, but the conclusion is false.

Here’s another one:

• If it is raining, then the sidewalks are wet.
• The sidewalks are wet.
• It is raining.

The sprinklers might have been on. If so, then the sidewalks would be wet, even if it weren’t raining.

Counterexamples can be very useful for demonstrating invalidity. Keep in mind, though, that validity can never be proved with the counterexample method. If the argument is valid, then it will be impossible to give a counterexample to it. If you can’t come up with a counterexample, however, that does not prove the argument to be valid. It may only mean that you’re not creative enough.

• An argument is a set of statements; one is the conclusion, the rest are premises.
• The conclusion is the statement that the argument is trying to prove.
• The premises are the reasons offered for believing the conclusion to be true.
• Explanations, conditional sentences, and mere assertions are not arguments.
• Deductive reasoning attempts to absolutely guarantee the truth of the conclusion.
• Inductive reasoning attempts to show that the conclusion is probably true.
• In a valid argument, it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
• In an invalid argument, it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
• A sound argument is valid and has all true premises.
• An inductively strong argument is one in which the truth of the premises makes the the truth of the conclusion probable.
• An inductively weak argument is one in which the truth of the premises do not make the conclusion probably true.
• A counterexample is a consistent story in which the premises of an argument are true and the conclusion is false. Counterexamples can be used to prove that arguments are deductively invalid.

( Cleese and Chapman 1980 ) . ↩︎

PHIL102: Introduction to Critical Thinking and Logic

Course introduction.

• Time: 40 hours
• College Credit Recommended ($25 Proctor Fee) -->
• Free Certificate

The course touches upon a wide range of reasoning skills, from verbal argument analysis to formal logic, visual and statistical reasoning, scientific methodology, and creative thinking. Mastering these skills will help you become a more perceptive reader and listener, a more persuasive writer and presenter, and a more effective researcher and scientist.

The first unit introduces the terrain of critical thinking and covers the basics of meaning analysis, while the second unit provides a primer for analyzing arguments. All of the material in these first units will be built upon in subsequent units, which cover informal and formal logic, Venn diagrams, scientific reasoning, and strategic and creative thinking.

Course Syllabus

First, read the course syllabus. Then, enroll in the course by clicking "Enroll me". Click Unit 1 to read its introduction and learning outcomes. You will then see the learning materials and instructions on how to use them.

Unit 1: Introduction and Meaning Analysis

Critical thinking is a broad classification for a diverse array of reasoning techniques. In general, critical thinking works by breaking arguments and claims down to their basic underlying structure so we can see them clearly and determine whether they are rational. The idea is to help us do a better job of understanding and evaluating what we read, what we hear, and what we write and say.

In this unit, we will define the broad contours of critical thinking and learn why it is a valuable and useful object of study. We will also introduce the fundamentals of meaning analysis: the difference between literal meaning and implication, the principles of definition, how to identify when a disagreement is merely verbal, the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions, and problems with the imprecision of ordinary language.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 5 hours.

Unit 2: Argument Analysis

Arguments are the fundamental components of all rational discourse: nearly everything we read and write, like scientific reports, newspaper columns, and personal letters, as well as most of our verbal conversations, contain arguments. Picking the arguments out from the rest of our often convoluted discourse can be difficult. Once we have identified an argument, we still need to determine whether or not it is sound. Luckily, arguments obey a set of formal rules that we can use to determine whether they are good or bad.

In this unit, you will learn how to identify arguments, what makes an argument sound as opposed to unsound or merely valid, the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, and how to map arguments to reveal their structure.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 7 hours.

Unit 3: Basic Sentential Logic

This unit introduces a topic that many students find intimidating: formal logic. Although it sounds difficult and complicated, formal (or symbolic) logic is actually a fairly straightforward way of revealing the structure of reasoning. By translating arguments into symbols, you can more readily see what is right and wrong with them and learn how to formulate better arguments. Advanced courses in formal logic focus on using rules of inference to construct elaborate proofs. Using these techniques, you can solve many complicated problems simply by manipulating symbols on the page. In this course, however, you will only be looking at the most basic properties of a system of logic. In this unit, you will learn how to turn phrases in ordinary language into well-formed formulas, draw truth tables for formulas, and evaluate arguments using those truth tables.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 13 hours.

Unit 4: Venn Diagrams

In addition to using predicate logic, the limitations of sentential logic can also be overcome by using Venn diagrams to illustrate statements and arguments. Statements that include general words like "some" or "few" as well as absolute words like "every" and "all" – so-called categorical statements – lend themselves to being represented on paper as circles that may or may not overlap.

Venn diagrams are especially helpful when dealing with logical arguments called syllogisms. Syllogisms are a special type of three-step argument with two premises and a conclusion, which involve quantifying terms. In this unit, you will learn the basic principles of Venn diagrams, how to use them to represent statements, and how to use them to evaluate arguments.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 6 hours.

Unit 5: Fallacies

Now that you have studied the necessary structure of a good argument and can represent its structure visually, you might think it would be simple to pick out bad arguments. However, identifying bad arguments can be very tricky in practice. Very often, what at first appears to be ironclad reasoning turns out to contain one or more subtle errors.

Fortunately, there are many easily identifiable fallacies (mistakes of reasoning) that you can learn to recognize by their structure or content. In this unit, you will learn about the nature of fallacies, look at a couple of different ways of classifying them, and spend some time dealing with the most common fallacies in detail.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 3 hours.

Unit 6: Scientific Reasoning

Unlike the syllogistic arguments you explored in the last unit, which are a form of deductive argument, scientific reasoning is empirical. This means that it depends on observation and evidence, not logical principles. Although some principles of deductive reasoning do apply in science, such as the principle of contradiction, scientific arguments are often inductive. For this reason, science often deals with confirmation and disconfirmation.

Nonetheless, there are general guidelines about what constitutes good scientific reasoning, and scientists are trained to be critical of their inferences and those of others in the scientific community. In this unit, you will investigate some standard methods of scientific reasoning, some principles of confirmation and disconfirmation, and some techniques for identifying and reasoning about causation.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.

Unit 7: Strategic Reasoning and Creativity

While most of this course has focused on the types of reasoning necessary to critique and evaluate existing knowledge or to extend our knowledge following correct procedures and rules, an enormous branch of our reasoning practice runs in the opposite direction. Strategic reasoning, problem-solving, and creative thinking all rely on an ineffable component of novelty supplied by the thinker.

Despite their seemingly mystical nature, problem-solving and creative thinking are best approached by following tried and tested procedures that prompt our cognitive faculties to produce new ideas and solutions by extending our existing knowledge. In this unit, you will investigate problem-solving techniques, representing complex problems visually, making decisions in risky and uncertain scenarios, and creative thinking in general.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 2 hours.

Study Guide

This study guide will help you get ready for the final exam. It discusses the key topics in each unit, walks through the learning outcomes, and lists important vocabulary terms. It is not meant to replace the course materials!

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Please take a few minutes to give us feedback about this course. We appreciate your feedback, whether you completed the whole course or even just a few resources. Your feedback will help us make our courses better, and we use your feedback each time we make updates to our courses.

If you come across any urgent problems, email [email protected].

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Once you pass this final exam, you will be awarded a free Course Completion Certificate .

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1.1: What is an Argument?

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• Page ID 26800

• Matthew Van Cleave
• Lansing Community College

This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. Both logic and critical thinking centrally involve the analysis and assessment of arguments. “Argument” is a word that has multiple distinct meanings, so it is important to be clear from the start about the sense of the word that is relevant to the study of logic. In one sense of the word, an argument is a heated exchange of differing views as in the following:

Sally: Abortion is morally wrong and those who think otherwise are seeking to justify murder!

Bob: Abortion is not morally wrong and those who think so are right-wing bigots who are seeking to impose their narrow-minded views on all the rest of us!

Sally and Bob are having an argument in this exchange. That is, they are each expressing conflicting views in a heated manner. However, that is not the sense of “argument” with which logic is concerned. Logic concerns a different sense of the word “argument.” An argument, in this sense, is a reason for thinking that a statement, claim or idea is true. For example:

Sally: Abortion is morally wrong because it is wrong to take the life of an innocent human being, and a fetus is an innocent human being.

In this example Sally has given an argument against the moral permissibility of abortion. That is, she has given us a reason for thinking that abortion is morally wrong. The conclusion of the argument is the first four words, “abortion is morally wrong.” But whereas in the first example Sally was simply asserting that abortion is wrong (and then trying to put down those who support it), in this example she is offering a reason for why abortion is wrong.

We can (and should) be more precise about our definition of an argument. But before we can do that, we need to introduce some further terminology that we will use in our definition. As I’ve already noted, the conclusion of Sally’s argument is that abortion is morally wrong. But the reason for thinking the conclusion is true is what we call the premise . So we have two parts of an argument: the premise and the conclusion. Typically, a conclusion will be supported by two or more premises. Both premises and conclusions are statements. A statement is a type of sentence that can be true or false and corresponds to the grammatical category of a “declarative sentence.” For example, the sentence,

The Nile is a river in northeastern Africa

is a statement. Why? Because it makes sense to inquire whether it is true or false. (In this case, it happens to be true.) But a sentence is still a statement even if it is false. For example, the sentence,

The Yangtze is a river in Japan

is still a statement; it is just a false statement (the Yangtze River is in China). In contrast, none of the following sentences are statements:

Please help yourself to more casserole

Don’t tell your mother about the surprise

Do you like Vietnamese pho?

The reason that none of these sentences are statements is that it doesn’t make sense to ask whether those sentences are true or false (rather, they are requests or commands, and questions, respectively).

So, to reiterate: all arguments are composed of premises and conclusions, which are both types of statements. The premises of the argument provide a reason for thinking that the conclusion is true. And arguments typically involve more than one premise. A standard way of capturing the structure of an argument is by numbering the premises and conclusion. For example, recall Sally’s argument against abortion:

Abortion is morally wrong because it is wrong to take the life of an innocent human being, and a fetus is an innocent human being.

We could capture the structure of that argument like this:

1. It is morally wrong to take the life of an innocent human being 2. A fetus is an innocent human being 3. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong

By convention, the last numbered statement (also denoted by the “therefore”) is the conclusion and the earlier numbered statements are the premises. This is what we call putting an argument into standard argument form . We can now give a more precise definition of an argument. An argument is a set of statements, some of which (the premises) attempt to provide a reason for thinking that some other statement (the conclusion) is true. Although arguments are typically given in order to convince or persuade someone of the conclusion, the argument itself is independent of one’s attempt to use it to convince or persuade. For example, I have just given you this argument not in an attempt to convince you that abortion is morally wrong, but as an illustration of what an argument is. Later on in this chapter and in this book we will learn some techniques of evaluating arguments, but for now the goal is to learn to identify an argument, including its premises and conclusion(s). It is important to be able to identify arguments and understand their structure, whether or not you agree with conclusion of the argument. In the next section I will provide some techniques for being able to identify arguments.

Which of the following sentences are statements and which are not?

1. No one understands me but you. 2. Alligators are on average larger than crocodiles. 3. Is an alligator a reptile or a mammal? 4. An alligator is either a reptile or a mammal. 5. Don’t let any reptiles into the house. 6. You may kill any reptile you see in the house. 7. East Africans are not the best distance runners. 8. Obama is not a Democrat. 9. Some humans have wings. 10. Some things with wings cannot fly. 11. Was Obama born in Kenya or Hawaii? 12. Oh no! A grizzly bear! 13. Meet me in St. Louis. 14. We met in St. Louis yesterday. 15. I do not want to meet a grizzly bear in the wild.

2 Logic and the Study of Arguments

If we want to study how we ought to reason (normative) we should start by looking at the primary way that we do reason (descriptive): through the use of arguments. In order to develop a theory of good reasoning, we will start with an account of what an argument is and then proceed to talk about what constitutes a “good” argument.

I. Arguments

• Arguments are a set of statements (premises and conclusion).
• The premises provide evidence, reasons, and grounds for the conclusion.
• The conclusion is what is being argued for.
• An argument attempts to draw some logical connection between the premises and the conclusion.
• And in doing so, the argument expresses an inference: a process of reasoning from the truth of the premises to the truth of the conclusion.

Example : The world will end on August 6, 2045. I know this because my dad told me so and my dad is smart.

In this instance, the conclusion is the first sentence (“The world will end…”); the premises (however dubious) are revealed in the second sentence (“I know this because…”).

II. Statements

Conclusions and premises are articulated in the form of statements . Statements are sentences that can be determined to possess or lack truth. Some examples of true-or-false statements can be found below. (Notice that while some statements are categorically true or false, others may or may not be true depending on when they are made or who is making them.)

Examples of sentences that are statements:

• It is below 40°F outside.
• Oklahoma is north of Texas.
• The Denver Broncos will make it to the Super Bowl.
• Russell Westbrook is the best point guard in the league.
• I like broccoli.
• I shouldn’t eat French fries.
• Time travel is possible.
• If time travel is possible, then you can be your own father or mother.

However, there are many sentences that cannot so easily be determined to be true or false. For this reason, these sentences identified below are not considered statements.

• Questions: “What time is it?”
• Commands: “Do your homework.”
• Requests: “Please clean the kitchen.”
• Proposals: “Let’s go to the museum tomorrow.”

Question: Why are arguments only made up of statements?

First, we only believe statements . It doesn’t make sense to talk about believing questions, commands, requests or proposals. Contrast sentences on the left that are not statements with sentences on the right that are statements:

It would be non-sensical to say that we believe the non-statements (e.g. “I believe what time is it?”). But it makes perfect sense to say that we believe the statements (e.g. “I believe the time is 11 a.m.”). If conclusions are the statements being argued for, then they are also ideas we are being persuaded to believe. Therefore, only statements can be conclusions.

Second, only statements can provide reasons to believe.

• Q: Why should I believe that it is 11:00 a.m.? A: Because the clock says it is 11a.m.
• Q: Why should I believe that we are going to the museum tomorrow? A: Because today we are making plans to go.

Sentences that cannot be true or false cannot provide reasons to believe. So, if premises are meant to provide reasons to believe, then only statements can be premises.

III. Representing Arguments

As we concern ourselves with arguments, we will want to represent our arguments in some way, indicating which statements are the premises and which statement is the conclusion. We shall represent arguments in two ways. For both ways, we will number the premises.

In order to identify the conclusion, we will either label the conclusion with a (c) or (conclusion). Or we will mark the conclusion with the ∴ symbol

Example Argument:

There will be a war in the next year. I know this because there has been a massive buildup in weapons. And every time there is a massive buildup in weapons, there is a war. My guru said the world will end on August 6, 2045.

• There has been a massive buildup in weapons.
• Every time there has been a massive buildup in weapons, there is a war.

(c) There will be a war in the next year.

∴ There will be a war in the next year.

Of course, arguments do not come labeled as such. And so we must be able to look at a passage and identify whether the passage contains an argument and if it does, we should also be identify which statements are the premises and which statement is the conclusion. This is harder than you might think!

There is no argument here. There is no statement being argued for. There are no statements being used as reasons to believe. This is simply a report of information.

The following are also not arguments:

Advice: Be good to your friends; your friends will be good to you.

Warnings: No lifeguard on duty. Be careful.

Associated claims: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to the dark side.

When you have an argument, the passage will express some process of reasoning. There will be statements presented that serve to help the speaker building a case for the conclusion.

IV. How to L ook for A rguments [1]

How do we identify arguments in real life? There are no easy, mechanical rules, and we usually have to rely on the context in order to determine which are the premises and the conclusions. But sometimes the job can be made easier by the presence of certain premise or conclusion indicators. For example, if a person makes a statement, and then adds “this is because …,” then it is quite likely that the first statement is presented as a conclusion, supported by the statements that come afterward. Other words in English that might be used to indicate the premises to follow include:

• firstly, secondly, …
• for, as, after all
• assuming that, in view of the fact that
• follows from, as shown / indicated by
• may be inferred / deduced / derived from

Of course whether such words are used to indicate premises or not depends on the context. For example, “since” has a very different function in a statement like “I have been here since noon,” unlike “X is an even number since X is divisible by 4.” In the first instance (“since noon”) “since” means “from.” In the second instance, “since” means “because.”

Conclusions, on the other hand, are often preceded by words like:

• therefore, so, it follows that
• hence, consequently
• suggests / proves / demonstrates that
• entails, implies

Here are some examples of passages that do not contain arguments.

1. When people sweat a lot they tend to drink more water. [Just a single statement, not enough to make an argument.]

2. Once upon a time there was a prince and a princess. They lived happily together and one day they decided to have a baby. But the baby grew up to be a nasty and cruel person and they regret it very much. [A chronological description of facts composed of statements but no premise or conclusion.]

3. Can you come to the meeting tomorrow? [A question that does not contain an argument.]

Do these passages contain arguments? If so, what are their conclusions?

• Cutting the interest rate will have no effect on the stock market this time around, as people have been expecting a rate cut all along. This factor has already been reflected in the market.
• So it is raining heavily and this building might collapse. But I don’t really care.
• Virgin would then dominate the rail system. Is that something the government should worry about? Not necessarily. The industry is regulated, and one powerful company might at least offer a more coherent schedule of services than the present arrangement has produced. The reason the industry was broken up into more than 100 companies at privatization was not operational, but political: the Conservative government thought it would thus be harder to renationalize (The Economist 12/16/2000).
• Bill will pay the ransom. After all, he loves his wife and children and would do everything to save them.
• All of Russia’s problems of human rights and democracy come back to three things: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. None works as well as it should. Parliament passes laws in a hurry, and has neither the ability nor the will to call high officials to account. State officials abuse human rights (either on their own, or on orders from on high) and work with remarkable slowness and disorganization. The courts almost completely fail in their role as the ultimate safeguard of freedom and order (The Economist 11/25/2000).
• Most mornings, Park Chang Woo arrives at a train station in central Seoul, South Korea’s capital. But he is not commuter. He is unemployed and goes there to kill time. Around him, dozens of jobless people pass their days drinking soju, a local version of vodka. For the moment, middle-aged Mr. Park would rather read a newspaper. He used to be a bricklayer for a small construction company in Pusan, a southern port city. But three years ago the country’s financial crisis cost him that job, so he came to Seoul, leaving his wife and two children behind. Still looking for work, he has little hope of going home any time soon (The Economist 11/25/2000).
• For a long time, astronomers suspected that Europa, one of Jupiter’s many moons, might harbour a watery ocean beneath its ice-covered surface. They were right. Now the technique used earlier this year to demonstrate the existence of the Europan ocean has been employed to detect an ocean on another Jovian satellite, Ganymede, according to work announced at the recent American Geo-physical Union meeting in San Francisco (The Economist 12/16/2000).
• There are no hard numbers, but the evidence from Asia’s expatriate community is unequivocal. Three years after its handover from Britain to China, Hong Kong is unlearning English. The city’s gweilos (Cantonese for “ghost men”) must go to ever greater lengths to catch the oldest taxi driver available to maximize their chances of comprehension. Hotel managers are complaining that they can no longer find enough English-speakers to act as receptionists. Departing tourists, polled at the airport, voice growing frustration at not being understood (The Economist 1/20/2001).

V. Evaluating Arguments

Q: What does it mean for an argument to be good? What are the different ways in which arguments can be good? Good arguments:

• Are persuasive.
• Have premises that provide good evidence for the conclusion.
• Contain premises that are true.
• Reach a true conclusion.
• Provide the audience good reasons for accepting the conclusion.

The focus of logic is primarily about one type of goodness: The logical relationship between premises and conclusion.

An argument is good in this sense if the premises provide good evidence for the conclusion. But what does it mean for premises to provide good evidence? We need some new concepts to capture this idea of premises providing good logical support. In order to do so, we will first need to distinguish between two types of argument.

VI. Two Types of Arguments

The two main types of arguments are called deductive and inductive arguments. We differentiate them in terms of the type of support that the premises are meant to provide for the conclusion.

Deductive Arguments are arguments in which the premises are meant to provide conclusive logical support for the conclusion.

1. All humans are mortal

2. Socrates is a human.

∴ Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

1. No student in this class will fail.

2. Mary is a student in this class.

∴ Therefore, Mary will not fail.

1. A intersects lines B and C.

2. Lines A and B form a 90-degree angle

3. Lines A and C form a 90-degree angle.

∴ B and C are parallel lines.

Inductive arguments are, by their very nature, risky arguments.

Arguments in which premises provide probable support for the conclusion.

Statistical Examples:

1. Ten percent of all customers in this restaurant order soda.

2. John is a customer.

∴ John will not order Soda..

1. Some students work on campus.

2. Bill is a student.

∴ Bill works on campus.

1. Vegas has the Carolina Panthers as a six-point favorite for the super bowl.

∴ Carolina will win the Super Bowl.

VII. Good Deductive Arguments

The First Type of Goodness: Premises play their function – they provide conclusive logical support.

Deductive and inductive arguments have different aims. Deductive argument attempt to provide conclusive support or reasons; inductive argument attempt to provide probable reasons or support. So we must evaluate these two types of arguments.

Deductive arguments attempt to be valid.

To put validity in another way: if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true.

It is very important to note that validity has nothing to do with whether or not the premises are, in fact, true and whether or not the conclusion is in fact true; it merely has to do with a certain conditional claim. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true.

Q: What does this mean?

• The validity of an argument does not depend upon the actual world. Rather, it depends upon the world described by the premises.
• First, consider the world described by the premises. In this world, is it logically possible for the conclusion to be false? That is, can you even imagine a world in which the conclusion is false?

Reflection Questions:

• If you cannot, then why not?
• If you can, then provide an example of a valid argument.

You should convince yourself that validity is not just about the actual truth or falsity of the premises and conclusion. Rather, validity only has to do with a certain logical relationship between the truth of the premise and the truth of the conclusion. So the only possible combination that is ruled out by a valid argument is a set of true premises and false conclusion.

Let’s go back to example #1. Here are the premises:

1. All humans are mortal.

If both of these premises are true, then every human that we find must be a mortal. And this means, that it must be the case that if Socrates is a human, that Socrates is mortal.

Reflection Questions about Invalid Arguments:

• Can you have an invalid argument with a true premise?
• Can you have an invalid argument with true premises and a true conclusion?

The s econd type of goodness for deductive arguments: The premises provide us the right reasons to accept the conclusion.

Soundness V ersus V alidity:

Our original argument is a sound one:

∴ Socrates is mortal.

Question: Can a sound argument have a false conclusion?

VIII. From Deductive Arguments to Inductive Arguments

Question: What happens if we mix around the premises and conclusion?

2. Socrates is mortal.

∴ Socrates is a human.

1. Socrates is mortal

∴ All humans are mortal.

Are these valid deductive arguments?

NO, but they are common inductive arguments.

Other examples :

Suppose that there are two opaque glass jars with different color marbles in them.

1. All the marbles in jar #1 are blue.

2. This marble is blue.

∴ This marble came from jar #1.

1. This marble came from jar #2.

2. This marble is red.

∴ All the marbles in jar #2 are red.

While this is a very risky argument, what if we drew 100 marbles from jar #2 and found that they were all red? Would this affect the second argument’s validity?

IX. Inductive Arguments:

The aim of an inductive argument is different from the aim of deductive argument because the type of reasons we are trying to provide are different. Therefore, the function of the premises is different in deductive and inductive arguments. And again, we can split up goodness into two types when considering inductive arguments:

• The premises provide the right logical support.
• The premises provide the right type of reason.

Logical S upport:

Remember that for inductive arguments, the premises are intended to provide probable support for the conclusion. Thus, we shall begin by discussing a fairly rough, coarse-grained way of talking about probable support by introducing the notions of strong and weak inductive arguments.

A strong inductive argument:

• The vast majority of Europeans speak at least two languages.
• Sam is a European.

∴ Sam speaks two languages.

Weak inductive argument:

• This quarter is a fair coin.

∴ Therefore, the next coin flip will land heads.

• At least one dog in this town has rabies.
• Fido is a dog that lives in this town.

∴ Fido has rabies.

The R ight T ype of R easons. As we noted above, the right type of reasons are true statements. So what happens when we get an inductive argument that is good in the first sense (right type of logical support) and good in the second sense (the right type of reasons)? Corresponding to the notion of soundness for deductive arguments, we call inductive arguments that are good in both senses cogent arguments.

• With which of the following types of premises and conclusions can you have a strong inductive argument?
• With which of the following types of premises and conclusions can you have a cogent inductive argument?

X. Steps for Evaluating Arguments:

• Read a passage and assess whether or not it contains an argument.
• If it does contain an argument, then identify the conclusion and premises.
• If yes, then assess it for soundness.
• If not, then treat it as an inductive argument (step 3).
• If the inductive argument is strong, then is it cogent?

XI. Evaluating Real – World Arguments

An important part of evaluating arguments is not to represent the arguments of others in a deliberately weak way.

For example, suppose that I state the following:

All humans are mortal, so Socrates is mortal.

Is this valid? Not as it stands. But clearly, I believe that Socrates is a human being. Or I thought that was assumed in the conversation. That premise was clearly an implicit one.

So one of the things we can do in the evaluation of argument is to take an argument as it is stated, and represent it in a way such that it is a valid deductive argument or a strong inductive one. In doing so, we are making explicit what one would have to assume to provide a good argument (in the sense that the premises provide good – conclusive or probable – reason to accept the conclusion).

The teacher’s policy on extra credit was unfair because Sally was the only person to have a chance at receiving extra credit.

• Sally was the only person to have a chance at receiving extra credit.
• The teacher’s policy on extra credit is fair only if everyone gets a chance to receive extra credit.

Therefore, the teacher’s policy on extra credit was unfair.

Valid argument

Sally didn’t train very hard so she didn’t win the race.

• Sally didn’t train very hard.
• If you don’t train hard, you won’t win the race.

Therefore, Sally didn’t win the race.

Strong (not valid):

• If you won the race, you trained hard.
• Those who don’t train hard are likely not to win.

Therefore, Sally didn’t win.

Ordinary workers receive worker’s compensation benefits if they suffer an on-the-job injury. However, universities have no obligations to pay similar compensation to student athletes if they are hurt while playing sports. So, universities are not doing what they should.

• Ordinary workers receive worker’s compensation benefits if they suffer an on-the-job injury that prevents them working.
• Student athletes are just like ordinary workers except that their job is to play sports.
• So if student athletes are injured while playing sports, they should also be provided worker’s compensation benefits.
• Universities have no obligations to provide injured student athletes compensation.

Therefore, universities are not doing what they should.

Deductively valid argument

If Obama couldn’t implement a single-payer healthcare system in his first term as president, then the next president will not be able to implement a single-payer healthcare system.

• Obama couldn’t implement a single-payer healthcare system.
• In Obama’s first term as president, both the House and Senate were under Democratic control.
• The next president will either be dealing with the Republican-controlled house and senate or at best, a split legislature.
• Obama’s first term as president will be much easier than the next president’s term in terms of passing legislation.

Therefore, the next president will not be able to implement a single-payer healthcare system.

Strong inductive argument

Sam is weaker than John. Sam is slower than John. So Sam’s time on the obstacle will be slower than John’s.

• Sam is weaker than John.
• Sam is slower than John.
• A person’s strength and speed inversely correlate with their time on the obstacle course.

Therefore, Sam’s time will be slower than John’s.

XII. Diagramming Arguments

All the arguments we’ve dealt with – except for the last two – have been fairly simple in that the premises always provided direct support for the conclusion. But in many arguments, such as the last one, there are often arguments within arguments.

Obama example :

• The next president will either be dealing with the Republican controlled house and senate or at best, a split legislature.

∴ The next president will not be able to implement a single-payer healthcare system.

It’s clear that premises #2 and #3 are used in support of #4. And #1 in combination with #4 provides support for the conclusion.

When we diagram arguments, the aim is to represent the logical relationships between premises and conclusion. More specifically, we want to identify what each premise supports and how.

This represents that 2+3 together provide support for 4

This represents that 4+1 together provide support for 5

When we say that 2+3 together or 4+1 together support some statement, we mean that the logical support of these statements are dependent upon each other. Without the other, these statements would not provide evidence for the conclusion. In order to identify when statements are dependent upon one another, we simply underline the set that are logically dependent upon one another for their evidential support. Every argument has a single conclusion, which the premises support; therefore, every argument diagram should point to the conclusion (c).

Sam Example:

• Sam is less flexible than John.
• A person’s strength and flexibility inversely correlate with their time on the obstacle course.

∴ Therefore, Sam’s time will be slower than John’s.

In some cases, different sets of premises provide evidence for the conclusion independently of one another. In the argument above, there are two logically independent arguments for the conclusion that Sam’s time will be slower than John’s. That Sam is weaker than John and that being weaker correlates with a slower time provide evidence for the conclusion that Sam will be slower than John. Completely independent of this argument is the fact that Sam is less flexible and that being less flexible corresponds with a slower time. The diagram above represent these logical relations by showing that #1 and #3 dependently provide support for #4. Independent of that argument, #2 and #3 also dependently provide support for #4. Therefore, there are two logically independent sets of premises that provide support for the conclusion.

Try diagramming the following argument for yourself. The structure of the argument has been provided below:

• All humans are mortal
• Socrates is human
• So Socrates is mortal.
• If you feed a mortal person poison, he will die.

∴ Therefore, Socrates has been fed poison, so he will die.

• This section is taken from http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/ and is in use under creative commons license. Some modifications have been made to the original content. ↵

Critical Thinking Copyright © 2019 by Brian Kim is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Developing Students’ Critical Thinking Skills and Argumentation Abilities Through Augmented Reality–Based Argumentation Activities in Science Classes

• Published: 22 August 2022
• Volume 32 , pages 1165–1195, ( 2023 )

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• Tuba Demircioglu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3567-1739 1 ,
• Memet Karakus   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6099-5420 2 &
• Sedat Ucar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4158-1038 1  

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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and adapting the classes urgently to distance learning, directing students’ interest in the course content became challenging. The solution to this challenge emerges through creative pedagogies that integrate the instructional methods with new technologies like augmented reality (AR). Although the use of AR in science education is increasing, the integration of AR into science classes is still naive. The lack of the ability to identify misinformation in the COVID-19 pandemic process has revealed the importance of developing students’ critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the change in critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities through augmented reality–based argumentation activities in teaching astronomy content. The participants were 79 seventh grade students from a private school. In this case study, the examination of the verbal arguments of students showed that all groups engaged in the argumentation and produced quality arguments. The critical thinking skills of the students developed until the middle of the intervention, and the frequency of using critical thinking skills varied after the middle of the intervention. The findings highlight the role of AR-based argumentation activities in students’ critical thinking skills and argumentation in science education.

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1 Introduction

With rapidly developing technology, the number of children using mobile handheld devices has increased drastically (Rideout et al., 2010 ; Squire, 2006 ). Technologies and digital enhancements that use the internet have become a part of the daily life of school-age children (Kennedy et al., 2008 ), and education evolves in line with the changing technology. Rapidly changing innovation technologies have changed the characteristics of learners in the fields of knowledge, skills, and expertise that are valuable for society, and circumstances for teachers and students have changed over time (Yuen et al., 2011 ). Almost every school subject incorporates technological devices into the pedagogy to different extents, but science teachers are the most eager to use technological devices in science classes because of the nature of the content they are expected to teach.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an important impact on educational systems worldwide. Due to the fast-spreading of that disease, the educators had to adapt their classes urgently to technology and distance learning (Dietrich et al., 2020 ), and schools have had to put more effort into adapting new technologies to teaching. Z generation was born into a time of information technology, but they did not choose distance courses that were not created for them so they are not motivated during the classes (Dietrich et al., 2020 ). Directing students’ interest in the course content is challenging, while their interest has changed by this technological development. The solution to this challenge emerges through creative pedagogies that integrate the instructional methods with new striking technology. Augmented reality has demonstrated high potential as part of many teaching methods.

2 Literature Review

2.1 augmented reality, education, and science education.

AR applications have important potential for many areas where rapid transfer of information is important. This is especially effective for education. Science education is among the disciplines where rapid information transfer is important. Taylor ( 1987 , p. 1) stated that “the transfer of scientific and technological information to children and to the general public is as important as the search for information.” With the rapid change in science and technology and outdating of knowledge, learning needs rapid changes in transfer of information (Ploman, 1987 ). Technology provides new and innovative methods for science education and could be an effective media in promoting students’ learning (Virata & Castro, 2019 ). AR technology could be a promising teaching tool for science teaching in which AR technology is especially applicable (Arici et al., 2019 ).

Research shows that AR has great potential and benefits for learning and teaching (Yuen et al., 2011 ). The AR applications used in teaching and learning present many objects, practices, and experiments that students cannot obtain from the first-hand experience into many different dimensions because of the impossibilities in the real world, and it is an approach that can be applied to many science contents that are unreachable, unobtrusive, and unable to travel (Cai et al., 2013 ; Huang et al., 2019 ; Pellas et al., 2019 ). For example, physically unreachable phenomena such as solar systems, moon phases, and magnetic fields become accessible for learners through AR (Fleck & Simon, 2013 ; Kerawalla et al., 2006 ; Shelton & Hedley, 2002 ; Sin & Zaman, 2010 ; Yen et al., 2013 ). Through AR, learners can obtain instant access to location-specific information provided by a wide range of sources (Yuen et al., 2011 ). Location-based information, when used in particular contextual learning activities, is essential for assisting students’ outdoor learning. This interaction develops comprehension, understanding, imagination, and retention, which are the learning and cognitive skills of learners (Chiang et al., 2014 ). For example, an AR-based mobile learning system was used in the study conducted by Chiang et al. ( 2014 ) on aquatic animals and plants. The location module can identify the students’ GPS location, direct them to discover the target ecological regions, and provide the appropriate learning tasks or additional resources. When students explore various characteristics of learning objects, the camera and image editing modules can take the image from the real environment and make comment on the image of the observed things.

Research reveals that the use of AR technology as part of teaching a subject has the features of being constructivist, problem solving-based, student-centered, authentic, participative, creative, personalized, meaningful, challenging, collaborative, interactive, entertaining, cognitively rich, contextual, and motivational (Dunleavy et al., 2009 ). Despite its advantages and although the use of AR in science education is increasing, the integration of AR into science classes is still naive, and teachers still do not consider themselves as ready for use of AR in their class (Oleksiuk & Oleksiuk, 2020 ; Romano et al., 2020 ) and choose not to use AR technology (Alalwan et al., 2020 ; Garzón et al., 2019 ), because most of them do not have the abilities and motivation to design AR learning practices (Garzón et al., 2019 ; Romano et al., 2020 ). It is thought that the current study will contribute to the use of AR in science lessons and how science teachers will include AR technology in their lessons.

2.2 Argumentation, Critical Thinking, and Augmented Reality

New trends in information technologies have contributed to the development of new skills in which people have to struggle with a range of information and evaluate this information. An important point of these skills is the ability to argue with evidence (Jiménez -Aleixandre & Erduran, 2007 ) in which young people create appropriate results from the information and evidence given to them to criticize the claims of others in the direction of the evidence and to distinguish an idea from evidence-based situations (OECD, 2003 , p. 132).

Learning with technologies could produce information and misinformation simultaneously (Chai et al., 2015 ). Misinformation has spread very quickly in public in COVID-19 pandemic, so the lack of the ability to interpret and evaluate the validity and credibility of them arose again (Saribas & Çetinkaya, 2021 ). This process revealed the importance of developing students’ critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities (Erduran, 2020 ) to make decisions and adequate judgments when they encountered contradicting information (Chai et al., 2015 ).

Thinking about different subjects, evaluating the validity of scientific claims, and interpreting and evaluating evidence are important elements of science courses and play important roles in the construction of scientific knowledge (Driver et al., 2000 ). The use of scientific knowledge in everyday life ensures that critical thinking skills come to the forefront. Ennis ( 2011 , p. 1) defined critical thinking as “Critical thinking is reasonable and reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe”. Jiménez-Aleixandre and Puig ( 2012 ) found this definition very broad, and they proposed a comprehensive definition of critical thinking that combines the components of social emancipation and evidence evaluation. It contains the competence to form autonomous ideas as well as the ability to participate in and reflect on the world around us. Figure  1 summarizes this comprehensive definition.

Argumentation levels by groups

Critical thinking skills that include the ability to evaluate arguments and counterarguments in a variety of contexts are very important, and effective argumentation is the focal point of criticism and the informed decision (Nussbaum, 2008 ). Argumentation is defined as the process of making claims about a scientific subject, supporting them with data, using warrants, and criticizing, refuting, and evaluating an idea (Toulmin, 1990 ). Argumentation as an instructional method is an important research area in science education and has received enduring interest from science educators for more than a decade (Erduran et al., 2015 ). Researchers concluded that learners mostly made only claims in the argumentation process and had difficulty producing well-justified and high-quality arguments (Demircioglu & Ucar, 2014 ; Demircioglu & Ucar, 2015 ; Cavagnetto et al., 2010 ; Erdogan et al., 2017 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ; Novak & Treagust, 2017 ). To improve the quality of arguments, students should be given supportive elements to produce more consistent arguments during argumentation. One of these supportive elements is the visual representations of the phenomena.

Visual representations could make it easier to see the structure of the arguments of learners (Akpınar et al., 2014 ) and improve students’ awareness. For example, the number of words and comments used by students or meaningful links in conversations increases with visually enriched arguments (Erkens & Janssen, 2006 ). Sandoval & Millwood ( 2005 ) stated that students should be able to evaluate different kinds of evidence such as digital data and graphic photography to defend their claims. Appropriate data can directly support a claim and allow an argument to be accepted or rejected by students (Lin & Mintzes, 2010 ). Enriched visual representations provide students with detailed and meaningful information about the subject (Clark et al., 2007 ). Students collect evidence for argumentation by observing enriched representations (Clark et al., 2007 ), and these representations help to construct higher-quality arguments (Buckingham Shum et al., 1997 ; Jermann & Dillenbourg, 2003 ). Visualization techniques enable students to observe how objects behave and interact and provide an easy-to-understand presentation of scientific facts that are difficult to understand with textual or oral explanations (Cadmus, 1990 ). In short, technological opportunities to create visually enriched representations increase students’ access to rich data to support their arguments.

Among the many technological opportunities to promote argumentation, AR seems to be the most promising application for instructing school subjects. AR applications are concerned with the combination of computer-generated data (virtual reality) and the real world, where computer graphics are projected onto real-time video images (Dias, 2009 ). In addition, augmented reality provides users with the ability to see a real-world environment enriched with 3D images and to interact in real time by combining virtual objects with the real environment in 3D and showing the spatial relations (Kerawalla et al., 2006 ). AR applications are thus important tools for students’ arguments with the help of detailed and meaningful information and enriched representations. Research studies using AR technology revealed that all students in the study engaged in argumentation and produced arguments (Jan, 2009 ; Squire & Jan, 2007 ).

Many studies focusing on using AR in science education have been published in recent decades. Research studies related to AR in science education have focused on the use of game-based AR in science education (Atwood-Blaine & Huffman, 2017 ; Bressler & Bodzin, 2013 ; Dunleavy et al., 2009 ; López-Faican & Jaen, 2020 ; Squire, 2006 ), academic achievement (Hsiao et al., 2016 ; Faridi et al., 2020 ; Hwang et al., 2016 ; Lu et al., 2020 ; Sahin & Yilmaz, 2020 ;, Yildirim & Seckin-Kapucu, 2020 ), understanding science content and its conceptual understanding (Cai et al., 2021 ; Chang et al., 2013 ; Chen & Liu, 2020 ; Ibáñez et al., 2014 ), attitude (Sahin & Yilmaz, 2020 0; Hwang et al., 2016 ), self-efficacy (Cai et al., 2021 ), motivation (Bressler & Bodzin, 2013 ; Chen & Liu, 2020 ; Kirikkaya & Başgül, 2019 ; Lu et al., 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2014 ), and critical thinking skills (Faridi et al., 2020 ; Syawaludin et al., 2019 ). The general trend in these research studies based on the content of “learning/academic achievement,” “understanding science content and its conceptual understanding,” “motivation,” “attitude,” and methodologically quantitative studies was mostly used in articles in science education. Therefore, qualitative and quantitative data to be obtained from studies investigating the use of augmented reality technology in education and focusing on cognitive issues, interaction, and collaborative activities are needed (Arici et al., 2019 ; Cheng & Tsai, 2013 ).

Instructional strategies using AR technology ensure interactions between students and additionally between students and teachers (Hanid et al., 2020 ). Both the technological features of AR and learning strategies should be regarded by the teachers, the curriculum, and AR technology developers to acquire the complete advantage of AR in student learning (Garzón & Acevedo, 2019 ; Garzón et al., 2020 ). Researchers investigated the learning outcomes with AR-integrated learning strategies such as collaborative learning (Baran et al., 2020 ; Chen & Liu, 2020 ; Ke & Carafano, 2016 ), socioscientific reasoning (Chang et al., 2020 ), student-centered hands-on learning activities (Chen & Liu, 2020 ), inquiry-based learning (Radu & Schneider, 2019 ), concept-map learning system (Chen et al., 2019 ), problem-based learning (Fidan & Tuncel, 2019 ), and argumentation (Jan, 2009 ; Squire & Jan, 2007 ) in science learning.

The only two existing studies using both AR and argumentation (Jan, 2009 ; Squire & Jan, 2007 ) focus on environmental education and use location-based augmented reality games through mobile devices to engage students in scientific argumentation. Studies combining AR and argumentation in astronomy education have not been found in the literature. In the current study, AR was integrated with argumentation in teaching astronomy content.

Studies have revealed that many topics in astronomy are very difficult to learn and that students have incorrect and naive concepts (Yu & Sahami, 2007 ). Many topics include three-dimensional (3D) spatial relationships between astronomical objects (Aktamış & Arıcı, 2013 ; Yu & Sahami, 2007 ). However, most of the traditional teaching materials used in astronomy education are two-dimensional (Aktamış & Arıcı, 2013 ). Teaching astronomy through photographs and 2D animations is not sufficient to understand the difficult and complex concepts of astronomy (Chen et al., 2007 ). Static visualization tools such as texts, photographs, and 3D models do not change over time and do not have continuous movement, while dynamic visualization tools such as videos or animations show continuous movement and change over time (Schnotz & Lowe, 2008 ). However, animation is the presentation of images on a computer screen (Rieber & Kini, 1991 ), not in the real world, and the users do not have a chance to manipulate the images (Setozaki et al., 2017 ). As a solution to this shortcoming, using 3D technology in science classes, especially AR technology for abstract concepts, has become a necessity (Sahin & Yilmaz, 2020 ). By facilitating interaction with real and virtual environment and supporting object manipulation, AR is possible to enhance educational benefits (Billinghurst, 2002 ). The students are not passive participants while using AR technology. For example, the animated 3D sun and Earth models are moved on a handheld platform that adjusts its orientation in accordance with the student’s point of view in Shelton’s study ( 2002 ). They found that the ability of students to manage “how” and “when” they are allowed to manipulate virtual 3D objects has a direct impact on learning complex spatial phenomena. Experimental results show that compared with traditional video teaching, AR multimedia video teaching method significantly improves students’ learning (Chen et al., 2022 ).

This study, which integrates argumentation with new striking technology “AR” in astronomy education, clarifies the relationship between them and examines variables such as critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities that are essential in the era we live, making this research important.

2.3 Research Questions

The purpose of this study was to identify the change in critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities through augmented reality–based argumentation activities in teaching astronomy content. The following research questions guided this study:

RQ1: How do the critical thinking skills of students who participated in both augmented reality and argumentation activities on astronomy change during the study?

RQ2: How do the argumentation abilities of students who participated in both augmented reality and argumentation activities on astronomy change during the study?

In this case study, we investigated the change of critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities of middle school students. Before the main intervention, a pilot study was conducted to observe the effectiveness of the prepared lesson plans in practice and to identify the problems in the implementation process. The pilot study was recorded with a camera. The camera recordings were watched by the researcher, and the difficulties in the implementation process were identified. In the main intervention, preventions were taken to overcome these difficulties. Table 1 illustrates that the problems encountered during the pilot study and the preventions taken to eliminate these problems.

During the main intervention, qualitative data were collected through observations and audio recordings to determine the change in the critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities of students who participated in both augmented reality and argumentation activities on astronomy.

3.1 Context and Participants

The participants consisted of 79 7th middle school students aged between 12 and 13 from a private school in Southern Turkey. The participants were determined as students in a private school where tablet computers are available for each student and the school willing to participate in the study. Twenty-six students, including 17 females and 9 males, participated in the study. The students’ parents signed the consent forms (whether participating or refusing participation in the study). The researcher informed them about the purpose of the study, instructional process, and ethical principles that directed the study. The teachers and school principals were informed that the preliminary and detailed conclusions of the study will be shared with them. The first researcher conducted the lessons in all groups because when the study was conducted, the use of augmented reality technology in education was very new. Also, the science teachers had inadequate knowledge and experience about augmented reality applications. Before the study, the researcher attended the classes with the teacher and made observations to help students become accustomed to the presence of the researcher in the classroom. This prolonged engagement increased the reliability of the implementation of instructions and data collection (Guba & Lincoln, 1989 ).

3.2 Instructional Activities

The 3-week, 19-h intervention process, which was based on the prepared lesson plan, was conducted. The students participated in the learning process that included both augmented reality and argumentation activities about astronomy.

3.2.1 Augmented Reality Activities

Free applications such as Star Chart, Sky View Free, Aurasma, Junaio, Augment, and i Solar System were used with students’ tablet computers in augmented reality instructions. Tablet computers were provided by the school administration from their stock. Videos, simulations, and 3D visuals generated by applications were used as “overlays.” In addition, pictures, photographs, colored areas in the worksheets, and students’ textbooks were used as “trigger images.” Students had the opportunity to interact with and manipulate these videos, simulations, and 3D visuals while using the applications. With applications such as Sky View Free and Star Chart, students were provided with the resources to make sky observations.

A detailed description of the activities used in augmented reality is given in Appendix Table 8 .

3.2.2 Argumentation Activities

Before the instruction, the students were divided into six groups by the teacher, paying attention to heterogeneity in terms of gender and academic achievement. After small group discussions, the students participated in whole-class discussions. Competing theories cartoons, tables of statements, constructing an argument, and argument-driven inquiry (ADI) frameworks were used to support argumentation in the learning process. Argument-driven inquiry consists of eight steps including the following: identification of the task, the generation and analysis of data, the production of a tentative argument, an argumentation session, an investigation report, a double-blind peer review, revision of the report, and explicit and reflective discussion (Sampson & Gleim, 2009 ; Sampson et al., 2011 ).

A detailed description of the activities used in argumentation is given in Appendix Table 9 .

4 Data Collection

The data were collected through unstructured and participant observations (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994 ; Patton, 2002 ). The instructional intervention was recorded with a video camera, and the students’ argumentation processes were also recorded with a voice recorder.

Since all students spoke at the same time during group discussions, the observation records were insufficient to understand the student talks. To determine what each student in the group said during the argumentation process, a voice recorder was placed in the middle of the group table, and a voice recording was taken throughout the lesson. A total of 2653.99 min of voice recordings were taken in the six groups.

4.1 Data Analysis

The analysis of the data was conducted with inductive and deductive approaches. Before coding, the data were arranged. The critical thinking data were organized by day. The argumentation skills were organized by day and also on the basis of the groups. After generating codes during the inductive analysis of the development of critical thinking skills, a deductive approach was adopted (Patton, 2002 ). The critical thinking skills dimensions discussed by Ennis ( 2011 ) and Ennis ( 1991 ) were used to determine the relationship between codes. Ennis ( 2011 ) prepared an outline to distinguish critical thinking dispositions and skills by synthesizing of many years of studies. These critical skills that contain abilities that ideal critical thinkers have were used to generate codes from students’ talks. This skills and abilities were given in Appendix Table 10 . Then “clarification skills, decision making-supporting skills, inference skills, advanced clarification skills, and other/strategy and techniques skills” discussed by Ennis ( 1991 ) and Ennis ( 2011 ) were used to determine the categories. The change in the argumentation abilities of the students was analyzed descriptively based on the Toulmin argument model (Toulmin, 1990 ) using the data obtained from the students’ voice recordings. The argument structures of each group during verbal argumentation were determined by dividing them into components according to the Toulmin model (Toulmin, 1990 ). The first three items (data, claim, and warrant) in the Toulmin model form the basis of an argument, and the other three items (rebuttal, backing, and qualifier) are subsidiary elements of the argument (Toulmin, 1990 ).

Some quotations regarding the analysis of the arguments according to the items are given in Appendix Table 11 .

Arguments from the whole group were put into stages based on the argumentation-level model developed by Erduran et al. ( 2004 ) to examine the changes in each lesson and to make comparisons between the small groups of students. By considering the argument model developed by Toulmin, Erduran et al. ( 2004 ) created a five-level framework for the assessment of the quality of argumentation supposing that the quality of the arguments including rebuttals was high. The framework is given in Table 2 .

4.2 Validity and Reliability

To confirm the accuracy and validity of the analysis, method triangulation, triangulation of data sources, and analyst triangulation were used (Patton, 2002 ).

For analyst triangulation, the qualitative findings were also analyzed independently by a researcher studying in the field of critical thinking and argumentation, and then these evaluations made by the researchers were compared.

Video and audio recordings of intervention and documents from the activities were used for the triangulation of data sources. In addition, the data were described in detail without interpretation. Additionally, within the reliability and validity efforts, direct quotations were given in the findings. In this sense, for students, codes such as S1, S2, and S3 were used, and the source of data, group number, and relevant date of the conversation were included at the end of the quotations.

In addition, experts studying in the field of critical thinking and argumentation were asked to verify all data and findings. After the process of reflection and discussion with experts, the codes, subcategories, and categories were revised.

For reliability, some of the data randomly selected from the written transcripts of the students’ audio recordings were also coded by a second encoder, and the interrater agreement between the two coders, determined by Cohen’s kappa (Cohen, 1960 ), was κ = 0.86, which is considered high reliability.

5.1 Development of Critical Thinking Ability

The development of critical thinking skills was given separately for the trend drastically changed on the day when the first skills were used by the students. All six dimensions of critical thinking skills were included in students’ dialogs or when there was a decrease in the number of categories of critical thinking skills.

The codes, subcategories, and categories of critical thinking skills that occurred on the first day (dated 11.05) are given in Table 3 .

Clarification skills, inference skills, other/strategy and technical skills, advanced clarification skills, and decision-making/supporting skills occurred on the first day. The students mostly used decision-making/supporting skills ( f  = 55). Under the decision-making/supporting skills category, students mostly explained observation data ( f  = 37). S7, S1, and S20 stated the data they presented about their observations with the Star Chart and Sky View applications as follows:

S7: Venus is such a yellowish reddish colour.

S1: What was the colour? Red and big. The moon’s color is white.

S20: Not white here.

S20: It’s not white here. (Audio Recordings (AuR), Group 2 / 11.05).

Additionally, S19 mentioned the observation data with the words “I searched Saturn. It is bright. It does not vibrate. It is yellow and it’s large.” (AuR, Group 2 / 11.05).

Decision-making/supporting skills were followed by inference ( f  = 17), clarification ( f  = 13), advanced clarification ( f  = 5), and skills and other/strategy technical skills ( f  = 1).

In Table 4 , the categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the fifth day (dated 18.05) are presented.

It was observed for the first time on the fifth day that all six dimensions of critical thinking skills were included in students’ dialogs. These are, according to the frequency of use, inference ( f  = 152), decision-making/support ( f  = 116), clarification ( f  = 43), advanced clarification ( f  = 8), other/strategy and technique ( f  = 3), and suppositional thinking and integrational ( f  = 2) skills.

On this date, judging the credibility of the source from decision-making/supporting skills ( f  = 1) was the skill used for the first time.

Unlike other days, for the first time, a student tried to prove his thoughts with an analogy in advanced clarification skills. An exemplary dialogue to this finding is as follows:

S19: Even the Moon remains constant, we will see different faces of the moon because the Earth revolves around its axis.

S6: I also say that it turns at the same speed. So, for example, when this house turns like this while we return in the same way, we always see the same face. (AuR, 18.05, Group 2).

Here, S6 tried to explain to his friend that they always see the same face of the moon by comparing how they see the same face of the house.

In Table 5 , the categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the sixth day (dated 21.05) are included.

There is a decrease in the number of categories of critical thinking skills. It was determined that the students used mostly inference skills in three categories ( f  = 38). Additionally, students used decision-making/support ( f  = 34) and clarification ( f  = 9) skills. In inference skills, it is seen that students often make claims ( f  = 33) and rarely infer from the available data ( f  = 4).

Among the decision-making/support skills, students mostly used the skill to give reasons ( f  = 28). S24 accepted herself as Uranus during the activity, and she gave reason to make Saturn as an enemy like that: “No, Saturn would be my enemy too. Its ring is more distinctive, it can be seen from the Earth, its ring is more beautiful than me.” (AuR, 21.05, Group 3/).

The categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the ninth day (dated 28.05) are presented in Table 6 .

In the course of the day dated 28.05, six categories of critical thinking skills were observed: clarification, inference, other/strategy and technique, advanced clarification, decision-making/support, suppositional thinking and integration skills. Furthermore, the subcategories under these categories are also very diverse.

There are 10 subcategories under clarification skills ( f  = 57), which are the most commonly used skills. The frequency of using these skills is as follows: asking his friend about his opinion ( f  = 15), asking questions to clarify the situation ( f  = 12), explaining his statement ( f  = 10), summarizing the solutions of other groups ( f  = 7), asking for a detailed explanation ( f  = 4), summarizing the idea ( f  = 3), explaining the solution proposal ( f  = 2), asking for a reason ( f  = 2), focusing on the question ( f  = 1), and asking what the tools used in experiment do ( f  = 1) skills. Explaining the solution proposal, asking what the tools used in the experiment do, and focusing on the question are the first skills used by the students.

When the qualitative findings regarding the critical thinking skills of the students were examined as a whole, it was determined that there was an improvement in the students’ critical thinking skills dimensions in the lessons held in the first 5 days (between 11.05 and 18.05). There was a decrease in the number of critical thinking skills dimensions in the middle of the intervention (21.05). However, after this date, there was an increase again in the number of critical thinking skills dimensions; and on the last day of the intervention, all the critical thinking skills dimensions were used by the students. In addition, it was determined that the skills found under these dimensions showed great variety at this date. Only in the middle (18.05) and on the last day (28.05) of the intervention did students use the skills in the six dimensions of critical thinking.

It was determined that students used mostly decision-making/support, inference, and clarification skills. According to the days, it was determined that the students mostly used inference skills (12.05, 15.05, 18.05, and 21.05) among these skills.

5.2 The Argumentation Abilities of the Students

5.2.1 argument structures in students’ verbal argumentation activities.

Instead of the argument structures of all groups, only an example of one group is presented because of including both basic and subsidiary items in the Toulmin argument model. In Table 7 , the argument structures in the verbal argumentation activities of the fourth group of students are presented due to the use of the “rebuttal” item.

When the argument structures in the verbal argumentation process of the six groups were examined, it was found that all groups engaged in the argumentation and produced arguments. In the activities, students mostly made claims. This was followed by data and warrant items. In the “the phases of the moon” activity, it was determined that only the second and fourth groups used rebuttal and the other groups did not.

The number of rebuttals used by the groups is lower in “the planets-table of statements” activity than in other activities. The rebuttals used are also weak. The use of rebuttals differs in the “who is right?” and “urgent solution to space pollution” activities. The number of rebuttal students used in these activities is higher than that in the other activities. The quality rebuttals are also higher.

When the structure of the warrants is examined, there are more unscientific warrants in the “urgent solution to space pollution” and “who is right” activities, while the correct scientific and partially correct scientific warrants were more frequently used in the “the phases of the moon” and “the planets table of statements” activities.

When the models related to the argument structures are examined in general, it was found that there is a decrease in the type of items used and the number of uses in the “the phases of the moon” and “the planets-table of statements” activities rather than the “urgent solution to space pollution” and “who is right” activities.

When the results were analyzed in terms of groups, it was determined that the argument structures of the second and fourth groups showed more variety than those of the other groups.

5.2.2 The Change of Argumentation Levels

The argumentation levels achieved by six groups created in the “who is right,” “ the planets-table of statements,” “phases of the moon,” and “urgent solution to space pollution” activities are shown in Fig.  2 .

A characterization of the components of critical thinking (Jiménez-Aleixandre & Puig, 2012 , p. 6)

In the first verbal argumentation activity, “who is right?,” the arguments achieved by the five of the six groups were at level 5. Additionally, the arguments achieved by one group, which was group 6, were at level 4.

In the second verbal argumentation activity “table of statements,” a decrease was determined at the levels of the argumentation of the other groups except group 1 and group 3. In the “the phases of the moon” activity, there was a decrease at the level of argumentation achieved by the other groups except for group 2 and group 4. In the last argumentation activity, “urgent solution to space pollution,” it was found that the arguments of all groups were at level 5.

6 Conclusions and Discussion

The critical thinking skills of the students developed until the middle of the intervention, and the frequency of using critical thinking skills varied after the middle of the intervention. When the activities in the lessons were examined, on the days when critical thinking skills were frequently used, activities including argumentation methods were performed. Based on this situation, it could be revealed that the frequency of using critical thinking skills by students varies according to the use of the argumentation method.

Argumentation is defined as the process of making claims about a scientific subject, supporting them with data, providing reasons for proof, and criticizing, rebutting, and evaluating an idea (Toulmin, 1990 ). According to the definition of argumentation, these processes are also in the subdimensions of critical thinking skills. The ability to provide reasons for critical thinking skills in decision-making/supporting skills is the equivalent of providing reasons for proof in the argumentation process using warrants in the Toulmin argument model. Different types of claims under inference skills are related to making claims in the argumentation process, and rejecting a judgment is related to rebutting an idea in the argumentation process. In this context, the argumentation method is thought to contribute to the development of critical thinking skills within AR.

Another qualitative finding reached in the study is that the skills most used in the subdimensions differ according to the days. This can be explained by the different types of activities performed in each lesson. For example, on the day when the ability to explain observation data was used the most, students observed the sky, constellations, and galaxies with the Star Chart or Sky View applications or observed the planets with the i-Solar System application, and they presented the data they obtained during these observations.

Regarding the verbal argumentation structure of the groups, the findings imply that all groups engaged in argumentation and produced arguments. This finding presented evidence with qualitative data to further verify Squire & Jan’s ( 2007 ) research conducted with primary, middle, and high school students to investigate the potential of a location-based AR game in environmental science concluding that all groups engaged in argumentation. Similarly, Jan ( 2009 ) investigated the experience of three middle school students and their argumentative discourse on environmental education using a location-based AR game, and it was found that all students participated in argumentation and produced arguments.

Another finding in the current study was that students mostly made claims in the activities. This situation can be interpreted as students being strong in expressing their opinions. Similar findings are found in the literature (Author, 20xxa; Cavagnetto et al., 2010 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ; Novak & Treagust, 2017 ). In addition, it was concluded that the students failed to use warrants and data, they could not support their claims with the data, and they did not use “rebuttal” in these studies. However, in this study in which both augmented reality applications and argumentation methods were used, students mostly made contradictory claims and used data and warrants in their arguments. This situation can be interpreted as students being strong in defending their opinions. Additionally, although it was stated in many of the studies that students’ argumentation levels were generally at level 1 or level 2 (Erdogan et al., 2017 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ; Venville & Dawson, 2010 ; Zohar & Nemet, 2002 ), it was found that most of the students’ arguments were at level 4 and level 5 in the current study. Arguments are considered to be high quality in line with the existence of rebuttals, and discussions involving rebuttals are characterized as having a high level of argumentation (Aufschnaiter et al., 2008 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ). Students used rebuttals in their arguments, and their arguments were at high levels, which indicates that students could produce quality arguments. The reason for these findings to differ from those of other studies may be due to the augmented reality technology used in the current study. Enriched representations make it easier to see the structure of arguments (Akpınar et al., 2014 ), helping students to improve their awareness, increase the number of words they use and comments they make (Erkens & Janssen, 2006 ), and provide important information about the subject (Clark et al., 2007 ). By observing enriched representations, students collect evidence for argumentation (Clark & Sampson, 2008 ) and explore different points of view to support their claim (Oestermeier & Hesse, 2000 ). AR technology, which includes enriched representations, may have increased the accessibility of rich data to support students’ arguments; and using these data has helped them to support their arguments and enabled them to discover different perspectives. For example, S4 explained that the statement in the table is incorrect because she observed Uranus, Jupiter, and Neptune having rings around them in the application “I-solar system” as Uranus. She used the data obtained in the AR application to support her claim.

When the models related to the argument structures are examined in general, it was concluded that the type of items, the number of items, and the rebuttals used in scientific activities were less than those in the activities involving socioscientific issues. The rebuttals used were also weak. There are also findings in the literature that producing arguments on scientific issues is more difficult than producing arguments on socioscientific issues (Osborne et al., 2004 ).

When the structure of the warrants in the students’ arguments was examined, it was seen that there are more nonscientific warrants in socioscientific activities, and the scientific and partially scientific warrants are more in the activities that contain scientific subjects. This shows that students were unable to combine what they have learned in science with socioscientific issues. Albe ( 2008 ) and Kolsto ( 2001 ) stated that scientific knowledge is very low in students’ arguments on socioscientific issues. Similarly, the results of the studies conducted in the related literature support this view (Demircioglu & Ucar, 2014 ; Sadler & Donnelly, 2006 ; Wu & Tsai, 2007 ).

When the argument structures in the activities are analyzed by groups, the argument structures of the two groups vary more than the other groups, and the argumentation levels of these groups are at level 4 and level 5. This might be because some students have different prior knowledge about subjects. Different studies have also indicated that content knowledge plays an important role in the quality of students’ arguments (Acar, 2008 ; Aufschnaiter et al., 2008 ; Clark & Sampson, 2008 ; Cross et al., 2008 ; Sampson & Clark, 2011 ). In many studies, it has been emphasized that the most important thing affecting the choice and process of knowledge is previous information (Stark et al., 2009 ). To better understand how previous information affects argumentation quality in astronomy education, investigating the relationship between middle school students’ content knowledge and argumentation quality could be a direction of future research.

7 Limitations and Future Research

There are some limitations in this study. First, this study was implemented in a private school. Therefore, the results are true for these students. Future research is necessary to be performed with the students in public schools. Second, the researcher conducted the lessons because the science teacher had no ability to design AR learning practices. Teachers and students creating their own AR experiences is an important way to bring the learning outcomes of AR available to a wider audience (Romano et al., 2020 ). Further research can be conducted in which the science teacher of the class is the instructor. Another limitation of the study is that the instruction with AR-based argumentation was time-consuming, and the time allocated for the “Solar System and Beyond” unit in the curriculum was not sufficient for the implementation, because students tried to understand to use AR applications, and they needed time to reflect on the activities despite prior training on AR before the instructional process. This situation may cause cognitive overload (Alalwan et al., 2020 ). The adoption and implementation of educational technologies are more difficult and time-consuming than other methods (Parker & Heywood, 1998 ). A longer period is needed to prepare student-centered and technology-supported activities.

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This study is a part of Tuba Demircioğlu’s dissertation supported by the Cukurova University Scientific Research Projects (grant number: SDK20153929).

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Demircioglu, T., Karakus, M. & Ucar, S. Developing Students’ Critical Thinking Skills and Argumentation Abilities Through Augmented Reality–Based Argumentation Activities in Science Classes. Sci & Educ 32 , 1165–1195 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-022-00369-5

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Arguing Using Critical Thinking

(2 reviews)

Jim Marteney, Los Angeles Valley College

Copyright Year: 2020

Publisher: Academic Senate for California Community Colleges

Language: English

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Reviewed by Steve Gimbel, Professor, Gettysburg College on 9/29/22

There are separate sections on how to formulate an argument, how to evaluate an argument, the burdens adopted by those engaging in critical discourse, rhetorical strategies for effectively convincing an interlocutor, and errors in reasoning. In... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

There are separate sections on how to formulate an argument, how to evaluate an argument, the burdens adopted by those engaging in critical discourse, rhetorical strategies for effectively convincing an interlocutor, and errors in reasoning. In terms of the breadth of topics one generally wants covered in a critical thinking class, the book does a fine job at hitting them all.

Content Accuracy rating: 2

It is an admirable attempt to develop a post-modern, post-truth approach to critical discourse. "Truth is a word best avoided entirely in argumentation," the book tells students, "except when placed in quotes or with careful qualification." Invoking Wittgenstein and Sapir-Whorf in the introductory sections, the book seeks to develop a relational, psychological, rhetorical approach instead of one focused on informal logic. In doing so, it entirely removes the point of argumentation -- rational belief. Some things are true -- smoking DOES cause cancer, human activity is causing global warming, the Founders of the U.S. did want a separation between Church and State. These are true. There is a series of TED talks cited for inspirational rhetorical value, but in a world in which conspiracy theories are endangering democracy, we need to understand that replacing truth with the truthiness that emerges from this sort of post-modernism is playing directly into those who are undermining our discourse. It exacerbates the problem, it does not solve it.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

Since the book hinges less on logic and more on social science, there are elements that will be altered over time. Sapir-Whorf, as mentioned above, has not taken seriously by linguists for decades, yet is used as a foundation. The book seeks to speak to students using, in places, contemporary references that will become dated over time, but these are easily updated.

Clarity rating: 1

There are some very good sections in the book. The distinction it draws between matters of fact, value, and policy is very well done. As is the catalogue it gives of different sorts of evidence. The clarity with which it sets out the difference in burdens between the pro and anti sides of a debate is wonderful.

In terms of accessibility, the book is written engagingly in a way that first year students should not be lost. It intentionally uses a new set of technical terms modeled on standard usage -- claim, evidence, issues, contentions, cases,... and does well to define them in accessible (at times loosey-goosey) ways.

However, there are problems for those trying to teach critical thinking as informal logic. You will not find the words "conclusion" or "premise" anywhere in the book. This is clearly intentional as it seeks to eliminate the idea of arguments as providing good reason to believe something is true. Again, truth is not to be discussed. Instead, it sort of tries to use a sort of sliding scale, but it is never at all clear what the scale is actually measuring. The book uses the term validity (much more on that below), but that term is used in a stunningly ambiguous way.

Consistency rating: 2

The central notion in the book is validity. This is not unexpected as that is a standard term in logic. As logicians use the word, an argument is valid if and only, assuming the truth of the premises for the sake of argument, the conclusion is at least likely true, that is, the truth of the conclusion is imp;lied by the truth of the premises. Validity is a matter relating to the internal structure of an argument, connecting the posited truth of the premises to the consequential necessary or probable truth of the conclusion. Yet the book says something quite different, "Critical thinkers need to remember that there is no necessary or inherent connection between Truth and validity." Ummmmm? Validity is DEFINED in terms of a relation between premises and conclusion and how that relation determines or does not determine truth. There could not be a MORE inherent connection between truth and validity.

It is clear that by "capital T Truth," the book is looking to encourage students not to be absolutists, to be able to question deeply held convictions and this is, indeed, a necessary function of any critical thinking class, but with its post-truth orientation, the book uses the term "validity" as a replacement for it in several completely different and inconsistent ways. At times, it is uses validity as a replacement for the truth concept. In this way, sentences are more or less valid, that is, truer or less true. This is the "sliding bead" model that is repeatedly alluded to throughout the text.

At other times, however, the usual meaning of validity is used, where it is not sentences, but arguments that can be valid or invalid according to whether or not the conclusion (claim) is properly connected to the premises (evidence). There is a loose, hand-waving section on what this sense of validity means. In most texts, this is the HEART of critical thinking. How to tell valid from invalid arguments.

At yet other times, there is a third use of the term validity. A viewpoint is more or less valid based upon the support it receives from arguments in favor of it. Unlike the traditional sense of validity, this is not a particular argument that is evaluated as successful in terms of its inner-structure, and it is not the likely truth or falsity of the conclusion of a particular argument, but a more general sense of the degree to which a perspective has arguments to bolster it.

This sort of slipperiness in the central notion of the entire course is problematic. The point of good reasoning is clarity and rigor. But that is exactly what this book tries to eliminate.

Modularity rating: 3

There are parts of this text that are fantastic and which I could absolutely see wanting to use in my critical thinking class. However, because of the intentional avoidance of standard logical terminology and the unusual reinterpretations of the standard terms it does use, it would be difficult to use sections of this book in conjunctions with sections of other critical thinking texts.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

If one were to use this text as the centerpiece of a course on critical thinking, there is a clear and logical flow to the way the pieces build on themselves. There is motivation up front, tools in the middle, applications and concerns about misusing the tools in the end. The structural is well-thought out and well-executed. The one complaint in terms of organization is that it is two-thirds the way through the text before certain central notions are defined.

Interface rating: 5

It is a clean and effective design with images that brighten up the text without distracting. Easy to read and aesthetically well-laid out. There are a couple of line breaks that add a couple of blank lines where they don't need to be here and there, but that is nitpicky stuff. Overall, it looks great.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

It is a clean and effective design with images that brighten up the text without distracting. Easy to read and aesthetically well-laid out. There are a couple of line breaks that add a couple of blank lines where they don't need to be here and there, but that is nitpicky stuff. Overall, it reads and looks great.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

The text is not culturally insensitive, indeed, the problem with it is exactly the opposite. It is clear that part of the goal of this text is to change how we think about critical thinking, moving from a logical model in which we strive for truth, to a rhetorical model in which we engage in open dialogue across varied perspectives. This is a noble goal. However, in trying to create discourse communities where voices that are often underrepresented or silenced have a place, the book does away with the point of that discourse. We want multiple perspectives because they provide insights that lead to truths we may have otherwise missed. They are correctives that undermine problematic presuppositions we did not even realize we were making that leads us away from truth. They allow us to see other ways of valuing things that we would not have values under our initial set of meanings. Eliminating the centrality of truth as a goal in discourse does not create room for other voices, it eliminates the point of needing those other voices. Indeed, the unintentional consequence of this approach to critical thinking is the devaluing of rationality, of truth, of scientific findings. We need to take action to reverse climate change. This can only be done if we have a robust notion of truth and its importance.

Logic is an activity you learn by doing. The lack of exercises or active engagement projects in the text is something that would place a load on the instructor to develop if this were to be an effective book in use.

Reviewed by Marion Hernandez, Adjunct Instructor English Department/DCE, Bunker Hill Community College on 12/27/20, updated 1/6/21

The book does name, identify and define key terms of argument and the basis for effective argument. read more

The book does name, identify and define key terms of argument and the basis for effective argument.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

This text has no grammatical errors and is unbiased in the definitions and the various contexts in which arguments occur.

Relevance and longevity do not really apply to the subject and context of this text. The book is very general and the time and place do not play a role.

Clarity rating: 2

The definitions and graphs/charts (only 2 or 3 have been added) are very basic, almost to the point of being counter productive. The Inductive and deductive chart has no value in the design or in the side notes accompanying the graph. No enough detail or design features were added to this one graph.

Consistency is not a feature to discuss because every chapter has a different main idea from types of arguments to resolving arguments to types of behavior commonly seen during arguments. There is no sequencing of material from beginning to end in term of moving from basic through intermediate and advanced level of thinking.

The book clearly defines the title of each section, but again, all taken together, no advancement in theory is developed throughout.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 2

The chapters do not appear in any type of order. The book moves from arguing to argument and behaviors commonly found during arguments. The last chapters talk about reasoning skills such as inductive and deductive thinking.

Interface rating: 1

The graphic and pictures do nothing to promote thinking or understanding and are therefore superfluous.

Grammatical Errors rating: 2

This critique here is not so much grammar but but point of view. The book really reads like a self help book or guide for a very basic reader. But the point of view shifts from 'you" as is what "you" should do to the the third person "they". This is very poor writing and leads to the next point which is its lack of value as a high school or college text. It is difficult to understand what student and in what circumstances would benefit or be inspired to read it.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

There is no politically incorrect content.

As briefly mentioned, the causal, offhand, self help nature of this book is not designed in any way to be used as a text. Because each chapter is separate with no sequencing, it would be impossible to develop any in depth assignments, No exercises are added so nothing would materialize in the way of theory, practice, analysis or discussion.

Table of Contents

• 1: Standing Up For Your Point Of View
• 2: Communicating An Argument
• 5: Building Your Case With Issues, Analysis And Contentions
• 6: Evidence
• 7: Reasoning
• 8: Validity Or Truth
• 9: Changing Beliefs, Attitudes and Behavior
• 10: Decision Making - Judging an Argument
• 11: Discovering, Examining and Improving Our Reality
• 12: The Foundations of Critical Thinking

Ancillary Material

About the book.

There is a quote that has been passed down many years and is most recently accounted to P.T. Barnum, “There is a sucker born every minute.” Are you that sucker? If you were, would you like to be “reborn?” The goal of this book is to help you through that “birthing” process. Critical thinking and standing up for your ideas and making decisions are important in both your personal and professional life. How good are we at making the decision to marry? According to the Centers for Disease Control, there is one divorce in America every 36 seconds. That is nearly 2,400 every day. And professionally, the Wall Street Journal predicts the average person will have 7 careers in their lifetime. Critical thinking skills are crucial.

Critical thinking is a series learned skills. In each chapter of this book you will find a variety of skills that will help you improve your thinking and argumentative ability. As you improve, you will grow into a more confident person being more in charge of your world and the decisions you make.

About the Contributors

Jim Marteney , Professor Emeritus (Communication Studies) at Los Angeles Valley College

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Critical thinking arguments for beginners

Critical thinking is one of the most valuable sets of life skills you can ever have and it’s never too late to learn them. People who can think critically are better at problem solving of all kinds, whether at school or work, in ordinary daily life, and even in crises. You can practice critical thinking by working through typical arguments from premises to conclusions.

Thinking critically isn’t about following a single path to an inevitable conclusion. It’s about developing a set of powerful and versatile mental processing tools in your head and being able to apply these meaningfully to the world around you.

You need no special qualifications to become a strong critical thinker, and can’t pick it up simply from reading books about critical thinking. The only way to hone critical thinking skills is to practice critical thinking.

If you’re ready to learn more about critical thinking arguments for beginners then read on…

What is critical thinking?

Let’s first illustrate the answer to this question by taking a look at how we can think critically about potential misinformation online.

Your friend on a social media site has shared a photograph of election ballot slips apparently being tipped into a river by a postal truck driver, reportedly a supporter of a political party who will benefit from lower postal voter turnout.

Your friend is a supporter of another party and expresses outrage at the alleged law-breaking, election influencing, and reduced chances for her own party candidate. Many other friends pile in with sympathetic and equally outraged comments, or new allegations.

The temptation might be strong to accept the narrative caption which accompanies the picture, echo your friends’ emotional responses, and share the photo further. However, as a critical thinker, you should step back and ask some crucial questions first:

• Is the photo obviously manipulated? Sophisticated image alterations can now be made which won’t be spotted by the majority of non-experts. Could this be an image of a simple truck crash with ballot papers photoshopped in?
• Does your friend fact-check stories, pictures, memes etc.. before posting them online? If she has a history of posting stories which turned out to be false, it reduces her credibility in presenting the current story.
• I s there anything in the photograph which supports or undermines the claims made? If you can see that the van has a foreign registration plate, the ballot papers aren’t in English, or the date on the clock is actually several years ago, it is clear that the true story is somewhat different to the one being told.

Let’s say that your initial suspicions after asking yourself these questions are enough that you do a quick web search for the story.

Your search reveals that credible sources have already uncovered the photo as having been manipulated and spread by an online political group. It was originally a local news story about a crashed postal truck in another country five years earlier and has no relationship whatsoever to the current election in your country…

Your critical thinking helped you to avoid falling into group-think along with your friends and saved you from spreading more misinformation online. These real life type examples are are an excellent way to grasp the relevance and value of critical thinking arguments for beginners.

Now for a little of the theory. Critical thinking is a description that brings together a range of useful intellectual skills and their synergies. While there is no definitive list, there are some common key competences necessary for critical thinking:

• Conducting analysis. Being able to understand the issue in question; distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information; identify commonalities, differences and connections.
• Making inferences. Using inductive or deductive reasoning to draw out meanings; identifying assumptions; abstracting ideas; applying analogies and recognizing cause and effect relationships in order to develop theories or potential conclusions.
• Evaluating evidence. Making a judgement about whether a theory or statement is credible or correct; adjusting views and theories in the light of new data or perspectives; grasping the significance of events and information.
• Making robust decisions. Reaching sound conclusions by applying critical thinking skills to the available evidence.

To apply critical thinking in real life, you also need to possess the right attitude to problem solving, as well as the critical thinking skills themselves.

This means being automatically inclined to think critically in the face of a difficult question or problem. Being fair, open-minded, curious and free from ideology or group-think will all help to create a mindset in which critical thinking can thrive.

What are critical thinking arguments?

Let’s now look at some of the basic building blocks underpinning critical thinking arguments for beginners.

In critical thinking and logic, ‘argument’ has a particular meaning. It refers to a set of statements, consisting of one conclusion and one or more premises. The conclusion is the statement that the argument is intended to prove. The premises are the reasons offered for believing that the conclusion is true.

A critical thinking argument could use a deductive reasoning approach, an inductive reasoning approach, or both.

Deductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning attempts to absolutely guarantee a conclusion’s truth through logic. If a deductive argument’s premises are true, it should be impossible for its conclusion to be false. For example:

• All humans are mortal. (Premise)
• Socrates is a human. (Premise)
• Therefore, Socrates is mortal.  (Conclusion)

Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning attempts to show that the conclusion is probably true, with each premise making the case for the conclusion stronger or weaker. For example:

• Three independent witnesses saw Max climb in through the window of the house. (Premise)
• Max’s fingerprints are on the window frame and several stolen items. (Premise)
• Max confessed to the burglary. (Premise)
• Therefore, Max committed the burglary. (Conclusion)

Do note that in either case, straight assertions, explanations or conditional sentences are not arguments.

How do I assess a critical thinking argument?

You can evaluate whether an argument is valid or invalid, sound or unsound, strong or weak .

If an argument is said to be ‘valid’, it means that it is impossible for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true. If an argument is ‘invalid’, it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

An argument is ‘sound’ if it is both valid and contains only true premises. If either of these conditions isn’t met then the argument is ‘unsound’.

A deductively ‘strong’ argument is both valid and it is reasonable for the person in question to believe the premises are true. In a deductively weak argument , the person considering the premises may have good reason to doubt them.

When an argument is inductively strong, the truth of the premises makes the the truth of the conclusion probable. In contrast, in an inductively ‘weak’ argument, the truth of the premises do not make the truth of the conclusion probable.

Counterexamples

A ‘counterexample’ is a consistent story which shows that an argument can have true premises but a false conclusion, rendering it invalid.

NB A valid argument is not necessarily true, and a weak argument is not necessarily false.

All of these fundamentals can be applied both to simple practice arguments and then to more complex problems of the type you might encounter in real life.

For example:

• All unicorns are Swedish (Premise)
• My new pet is a unicorn (Premise)
• Therefore,  my new pet is Swedish (Conclusion)

The premises here are both false – unicorns do not exist, and I therefore cannot own one as a pet. However, if they were true, then the conclusion would be true. What we have here is a valid argument, but not a sound one, nor a strong one.

How can I practice critical thinking arguments for beginners?

Now that you have the basic tools and concepts for putting together a critical thinking argument, you can look  out for real life examples to practice with.

News stories

Look at the headlines covering stories in TV,  online or paper news. Do you agree that the facts of the story are credible and constitute premises strong enough to justify the headline drawn from them?

Social media

Critically examine stories and claims shared by friends and contacts online. Ask yourself whether the evidence presented is credible and justifies the claims being made.

Corporate statements

Evaluate claims made by big corporations in public statements and annual reports alongside their actions and impacts. For example, if a major oil company claims that it is working to combat climate change, how strong, valid and sound are their arguments?

Conclusion…

Whatever your starting point, we hope this article has set you on the road to becoming a critical thinker, and that these developing skills might open new doors at school, at work or in other areas of life. The world needs more critical thinking at all levels and your contribution might one day be valuable.

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Developing Students’ Critical Thinking Skills and Argumentation Abilities Through Augmented Reality–Based Argumentation Activities in Science Classes

Tuba demircioglu.

1 Faculty of Education, Department of Mathematics and Science Education/Elementary Science Education, Cukurova University, 01330 Saricam-Adana, Turkey

Memet Karakus

2 Department of Educational Sciences, Cukurova University, Adana, Turkey

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and adapting the classes urgently to distance learning, directing students’ interest in the course content became challenging. The solution to this challenge emerges through creative pedagogies that integrate the instructional methods with new technologies like augmented reality (AR). Although the use of AR in science education is increasing, the integration of AR into science classes is still naive. The lack of the ability to identify misinformation in the COVID-19 pandemic process has revealed the importance of developing students’ critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the change in critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities through augmented reality–based argumentation activities in teaching astronomy content. The participants were 79 seventh grade students from a private school. In this case study, the examination of the verbal arguments of students showed that all groups engaged in the argumentation and produced quality arguments. The critical thinking skills of the students developed until the middle of the intervention, and the frequency of using critical thinking skills varied after the middle of the intervention. The findings highlight the role of AR-based argumentation activities in students’ critical thinking skills and argumentation in science education.

Introduction

With rapidly developing technology, the number of children using mobile handheld devices has increased drastically (Rideout et al., 2010 ; Squire, 2006 ). Technologies and digital enhancements that use the internet have become a part of the daily life of school-age children (Kennedy et al., 2008 ), and education evolves in line with the changing technology. Rapidly changing innovation technologies have changed the characteristics of learners in the fields of knowledge, skills, and expertise that are valuable for society, and circumstances for teachers and students have changed over time (Yuen et al., 2011 ). Almost every school subject incorporates technological devices into the pedagogy to different extents, but science teachers are the most eager to use technological devices in science classes because of the nature of the content they are expected to teach.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an important impact on educational systems worldwide. Due to the fast-spreading of that disease, the educators had to adapt their classes urgently to technology and distance learning (Dietrich et al., 2020 ), and schools have had to put more effort into adapting new technologies to teaching. Z generation was born into a time of information technology, but they did not choose distance courses that were not created for them so they are not motivated during the classes (Dietrich et al., 2020 ). Directing students’ interest in the course content is challenging, while their interest has changed by this technological development. The solution to this challenge emerges through creative pedagogies that integrate the instructional methods with new striking technology. Augmented reality has demonstrated high potential as part of many teaching methods.

Literature Review

Augmented reality, education, and science education.

AR applications have important potential for many areas where rapid transfer of information is important. This is especially effective for education. Science education is among the disciplines where rapid information transfer is important. Taylor ( 1987 , p. 1) stated that “the transfer of scientific and technological information to children and to the general public is as important as the search for information.” With the rapid change in science and technology and outdating of knowledge, learning needs rapid changes in transfer of information (Ploman, 1987 ). Technology provides new and innovative methods for science education and could be an effective media in promoting students’ learning (Virata & Castro, 2019 ). AR technology could be a promising teaching tool for science teaching in which AR technology is especially applicable (Arici et al., 2019 ).

Research shows that AR has great potential and benefits for learning and teaching (Yuen et al., 2011 ). The AR applications used in teaching and learning present many objects, practices, and experiments that students cannot obtain from the first-hand experience into many different dimensions because of the impossibilities in the real world, and it is an approach that can be applied to many science contents that are unreachable, unobtrusive, and unable to travel (Cai et al., 2013 ; Huang et al., 2019 ; Pellas et al., 2019 ). For example, physically unreachable phenomena such as solar systems, moon phases, and magnetic fields become accessible for learners through AR (Fleck & Simon, 2013 ; Kerawalla et al., 2006 ; Shelton & Hedley, 2002 ; Sin & Zaman, 2010 ; Yen et al., 2013 ). Through AR, learners can obtain instant access to location-specific information provided by a wide range of sources (Yuen et al., 2011 ). Location-based information, when used in particular contextual learning activities, is essential for assisting students’ outdoor learning. This interaction develops comprehension, understanding, imagination, and retention, which are the learning and cognitive skills of learners (Chiang et al., 2014 ). For example, an AR-based mobile learning system was used in the study conducted by Chiang et al. ( 2014 ) on aquatic animals and plants. The location module can identify the students’ GPS location, direct them to discover the target ecological regions, and provide the appropriate learning tasks or additional resources. When students explore various characteristics of learning objects, the camera and image editing modules can take the image from the real environment and make comment on the image of the observed things.

Research reveals that the use of AR technology as part of teaching a subject has the features of being constructivist, problem solving-based, student-centered, authentic, participative, creative, personalized, meaningful, challenging, collaborative, interactive, entertaining, cognitively rich, contextual, and motivational (Dunleavy et al., 2009 ). Despite its advantages and although the use of AR in science education is increasing, the integration of AR into science classes is still naive, and teachers still do not consider themselves as ready for use of AR in their class (Oleksiuk & Oleksiuk, 2020 ; Romano et al., 2020 ) and choose not to use AR technology (Alalwan et al., 2020 ; Garzón et al., 2019 ), because most of them do not have the abilities and motivation to design AR learning practices (Garzón et al., 2019 ; Romano et al., 2020 ). It is thought that the current study will contribute to the use of AR in science lessons and how science teachers will include AR technology in their lessons.

Argumentation, Critical Thinking, and Augmented Reality

New trends in information technologies have contributed to the development of new skills in which people have to struggle with a range of information and evaluate this information. An important point of these skills is the ability to argue with evidence (Jiménez -Aleixandre & Erduran, 2007 ) in which young people create appropriate results from the information and evidence given to them to criticize the claims of others in the direction of the evidence and to distinguish an idea from evidence-based situations (OECD, 2003 , p. 132).

Learning with technologies could produce information and misinformation simultaneously (Chai et al., 2015 ). Misinformation has spread very quickly in public in COVID-19 pandemic, so the lack of the ability to interpret and evaluate the validity and credibility of them arose again (Saribas & Çetinkaya, 2021 ). This process revealed the importance of developing students’ critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities (Erduran, 2020 ) to make decisions and adequate judgments when they encountered contradicting information (Chai et al., 2015 ).

Thinking about different subjects, evaluating the validity of scientific claims, and interpreting and evaluating evidence are important elements of science courses and play important roles in the construction of scientific knowledge (Driver et al., 2000 ). The use of scientific knowledge in everyday life ensures that critical thinking skills come to the forefront. Ennis ( 2011 , p. 1) defined critical thinking as “Critical thinking is reasonable and reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe”. Jiménez-Aleixandre and Puig ( 2012 ) found this definition very broad, and they proposed a comprehensive definition of critical thinking that combines the components of social emancipation and evidence evaluation. It contains the competence to form autonomous ideas as well as the ability to participate in and reflect on the world around us. Figure  1 summarizes this comprehensive definition.

Argumentation levels by groups

Critical thinking skills that include the ability to evaluate arguments and counterarguments in a variety of contexts are very important, and effective argumentation is the focal point of criticism and the informed decision (Nussbaum, 2008 ). Argumentation is defined as the process of making claims about a scientific subject, supporting them with data, using warrants, and criticizing, refuting, and evaluating an idea (Toulmin, 1990 ). Argumentation as an instructional method is an important research area in science education and has received enduring interest from science educators for more than a decade (Erduran et al., 2015 ). Researchers concluded that learners mostly made only claims in the argumentation process and had difficulty producing well-justified and high-quality arguments (Demircioglu & Ucar, 2014 ; Demircioglu & Ucar, 2015 ; Cavagnetto et al., 2010 ; Erdogan et al., 2017 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ; Novak & Treagust, 2017 ). To improve the quality of arguments, students should be given supportive elements to produce more consistent arguments during argumentation. One of these supportive elements is the visual representations of the phenomena.

Visual representations could make it easier to see the structure of the arguments of learners (Akpınar et al., 2014 ) and improve students’ awareness. For example, the number of words and comments used by students or meaningful links in conversations increases with visually enriched arguments (Erkens & Janssen, 2006 ). Sandoval & Millwood ( 2005 ) stated that students should be able to evaluate different kinds of evidence such as digital data and graphic photography to defend their claims. Appropriate data can directly support a claim and allow an argument to be accepted or rejected by students (Lin & Mintzes, 2010 ). Enriched visual representations provide students with detailed and meaningful information about the subject (Clark et al., 2007 ). Students collect evidence for argumentation by observing enriched representations (Clark et al., 2007 ), and these representations help to construct higher-quality arguments (Buckingham Shum et al., 1997 ; Jermann & Dillenbourg, 2003 ). Visualization techniques enable students to observe how objects behave and interact and provide an easy-to-understand presentation of scientific facts that are difficult to understand with textual or oral explanations (Cadmus, 1990 ). In short, technological opportunities to create visually enriched representations increase students’ access to rich data to support their arguments.

Among the many technological opportunities to promote argumentation, AR seems to be the most promising application for instructing school subjects. AR applications are concerned with the combination of computer-generated data (virtual reality) and the real world, where computer graphics are projected onto real-time video images (Dias, 2009 ). In addition, augmented reality provides users with the ability to see a real-world environment enriched with 3D images and to interact in real time by combining virtual objects with the real environment in 3D and showing the spatial relations (Kerawalla et al., 2006 ). AR applications are thus important tools for students’ arguments with the help of detailed and meaningful information and enriched representations. Research studies using AR technology revealed that all students in the study engaged in argumentation and produced arguments (Jan, 2009 ; Squire & Jan, 2007 ).

Many studies focusing on using AR in science education have been published in recent decades. Research studies related to AR in science education have focused on the use of game-based AR in science education (Atwood-Blaine & Huffman, 2017 ; Bressler & Bodzin, 2013 ; Dunleavy et al., 2009 ; López-Faican & Jaen, 2020 ; Squire, 2006 ), academic achievement (Hsiao et al., 2016 ; Faridi et al., 2020 ; Hwang et al., 2016 ; Lu et al., 2020 ; Sahin & Yilmaz, 2020 ;, Yildirim & Seckin-Kapucu, 2020 ), understanding science content and its conceptual understanding (Cai et al., 2021 ; Chang et al., 2013 ; Chen & Liu, 2020 ; Ibáñez et al., 2014 ), attitude (Sahin & Yilmaz, 2020 0; Hwang et al., 2016 ), self-efficacy (Cai et al., 2021 ), motivation (Bressler & Bodzin, 2013 ; Chen & Liu, 2020 ; Kirikkaya & Başgül, 2019 ; Lu et al., 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2014 ), and critical thinking skills (Faridi et al., 2020 ; Syawaludin et al., 2019 ). The general trend in these research studies based on the content of “learning/academic achievement,” “understanding science content and its conceptual understanding,” “motivation,” “attitude,” and methodologically quantitative studies was mostly used in articles in science education. Therefore, qualitative and quantitative data to be obtained from studies investigating the use of augmented reality technology in education and focusing on cognitive issues, interaction, and collaborative activities are needed (Arici et al., 2019 ; Cheng & Tsai, 2013 ).

Instructional strategies using AR technology ensure interactions between students and additionally between students and teachers (Hanid et al., 2020 ). Both the technological features of AR and learning strategies should be regarded by the teachers, the curriculum, and AR technology developers to acquire the complete advantage of AR in student learning (Garzón & Acevedo, 2019 ; Garzón et al., 2020 ). Researchers investigated the learning outcomes with AR-integrated learning strategies such as collaborative learning (Baran et al., 2020 ; Chen & Liu, 2020 ; Ke & Carafano, 2016 ), socioscientific reasoning (Chang et al., 2020 ), student-centered hands-on learning activities (Chen & Liu, 2020 ), inquiry-based learning (Radu & Schneider, 2019 ), concept-map learning system (Chen et al., 2019 ), problem-based learning (Fidan & Tuncel, 2019 ), and argumentation (Jan, 2009 ; Squire & Jan, 2007 ) in science learning.

The only two existing studies using both AR and argumentation (Jan, 2009 ; Squire & Jan, 2007 ) focus on environmental education and use location-based augmented reality games through mobile devices to engage students in scientific argumentation. Studies combining AR and argumentation in astronomy education have not been found in the literature. In the current study, AR was integrated with argumentation in teaching astronomy content.

Studies have revealed that many topics in astronomy are very difficult to learn and that students have incorrect and naive concepts (Yu & Sahami, 2007 ). Many topics include three-dimensional (3D) spatial relationships between astronomical objects (Aktamış & Arıcı, 2013 ; Yu & Sahami, 2007 ). However, most of the traditional teaching materials used in astronomy education are two-dimensional (Aktamış & Arıcı, 2013 ). Teaching astronomy through photographs and 2D animations is not sufficient to understand the difficult and complex concepts of astronomy (Chen et al., 2007 ). Static visualization tools such as texts, photographs, and 3D models do not change over time and do not have continuous movement, while dynamic visualization tools such as videos or animations show continuous movement and change over time (Schnotz & Lowe, 2008 ). However, animation is the presentation of images on a computer screen (Rieber & Kini, 1991 ), not in the real world, and the users do not have a chance to manipulate the images (Setozaki et al., 2017 ). As a solution to this shortcoming, using 3D technology in science classes, especially AR technology for abstract concepts, has become a necessity (Sahin & Yilmaz, 2020 ). By facilitating interaction with real and virtual environment and supporting object manipulation, AR is possible to enhance educational benefits (Billinghurst, 2002 ). The students are not passive participants while using AR technology. For example, the animated 3D sun and Earth models are moved on a handheld platform that adjusts its orientation in accordance with the student’s point of view in Shelton’s study ( 2002 ). They found that the ability of students to manage “how” and “when” they are allowed to manipulate virtual 3D objects has a direct impact on learning complex spatial phenomena. Experimental results show that compared with traditional video teaching, AR multimedia video teaching method significantly improves students’ learning (Chen et al., 2022 ).

This study, which integrates argumentation with new striking technology “AR” in astronomy education, clarifies the relationship between them and examines variables such as critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities that are essential in the era we live, making this research important.

Research Questions

The purpose of this study was to identify the change in critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities through augmented reality–based argumentation activities in teaching astronomy content. The following research questions guided this study:

• RQ1: How do the critical thinking skills of students who participated in both augmented reality and argumentation activities on astronomy change during the study?
• RQ2: How do the argumentation abilities of students who participated in both augmented reality and argumentation activities on astronomy change during the study?

In this case study, we investigated the change of critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities of middle school students. Before the main intervention, a pilot study was conducted to observe the effectiveness of the prepared lesson plans in practice and to identify the problems in the implementation process. The pilot study was recorded with a camera. The camera recordings were watched by the researcher, and the difficulties in the implementation process were identified. In the main intervention, preventions were taken to overcome these difficulties. Table ​ Table1 1 illustrates that the problems encountered during the pilot study and the preventions taken to eliminate these problems.

The solutions to the problems in the pilot study

During the main intervention, qualitative data were collected through observations and audio recordings to determine the change in the critical thinking skills and argumentation abilities of students who participated in both augmented reality and argumentation activities on astronomy.

Context and Participants

The participants consisted of 79 7th middle school students aged between 12 and 13 from a private school in Southern Turkey. The participants were determined as students in a private school where tablet computers are available for each student and the school willing to participate in the study. Twenty-six students, including 17 females and 9 males, participated in the study. The students’ parents signed the consent forms (whether participating or refusing participation in the study). The researcher informed them about the purpose of the study, instructional process, and ethical principles that directed the study. The teachers and school principals were informed that the preliminary and detailed conclusions of the study will be shared with them. The first researcher conducted the lessons in all groups because when the study was conducted, the use of augmented reality technology in education was very new. Also, the science teachers had inadequate knowledge and experience about augmented reality applications. Before the study, the researcher attended the classes with the teacher and made observations to help students become accustomed to the presence of the researcher in the classroom. This prolonged engagement increased the reliability of the implementation of instructions and data collection (Guba & Lincoln, 1989 ).

Instructional Activities

The 3-week, 19-h intervention process, which was based on the prepared lesson plan, was conducted. The students participated in the learning process that included both augmented reality and argumentation activities about astronomy.

Augmented Reality Activities

Free applications such as Star Chart, Sky View Free, Aurasma, Junaio, Augment, and i Solar System were used with students’ tablet computers in augmented reality instructions. Tablet computers were provided by the school administration from their stock. Videos, simulations, and 3D visuals generated by applications were used as “overlays.” In addition, pictures, photographs, colored areas in the worksheets, and students’ textbooks were used as “trigger images.” Students had the opportunity to interact with and manipulate these videos, simulations, and 3D visuals while using the applications. With applications such as Sky View Free and Star Chart, students were provided with the resources to make sky observations.

A detailed description of the activities used in augmented reality is given in Appendix Table ​ Table8 8 .

The activities performed with augmented reality technology

Argumentation Activities

Before the instruction, the students were divided into six groups by the teacher, paying attention to heterogeneity in terms of gender and academic achievement. After small group discussions, the students participated in whole-class discussions. Competing theories cartoons, tables of statements, constructing an argument, and argument-driven inquiry (ADI) frameworks were used to support argumentation in the learning process. Argument-driven inquiry consists of eight steps including the following: identification of the task, the generation and analysis of data, the production of a tentative argument, an argumentation session, an investigation report, a double-blind peer review, revision of the report, and explicit and reflective discussion (Sampson & Gleim, 2009 ; Sampson et al., 2011 ).

A detailed description of the activities used in argumentation is given in Appendix Table ​ Table9 9 .

Activities performed with argumentation

Data Collection

The data were collected through unstructured and participant observations (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994 ; Patton, 2002 ). The instructional intervention was recorded with a video camera, and the students’ argumentation processes were also recorded with a voice recorder.

Since all students spoke at the same time during group discussions, the observation records were insufficient to understand the student talks. To determine what each student in the group said during the argumentation process, a voice recorder was placed in the middle of the group table, and a voice recording was taken throughout the lesson. A total of 2653.99 min of voice recordings were taken in the six groups.

Data Analysis

The analysis of the data was conducted with inductive and deductive approaches. Before coding, the data were arranged. The critical thinking data were organized by day. The argumentation skills were organized by day and also on the basis of the groups. After generating codes during the inductive analysis of the development of critical thinking skills, a deductive approach was adopted (Patton, 2002 ). The critical thinking skills dimensions discussed by Ennis ( 2011 ) and Ennis ( 1991 ) were used to determine the relationship between codes. Ennis ( 2011 ) prepared an outline to distinguish critical thinking dispositions and skills by synthesizing of many years of studies. These critical skills that contain abilities that ideal critical thinkers have were used to generate codes from students’ talks. This skills and abilities were given in Appendix Table ​ Table10. 10 . Then “clarification skills, decision making-supporting skills, inference skills, advanced clarification skills, and other/strategy and techniques skills” discussed by Ennis ( 1991 ) and Ennis ( 2011 ) were used to determine the categories. The change in the argumentation abilities of the students was analyzed descriptively based on the Toulmin argument model (Toulmin, 1990 ) using the data obtained from the students’ voice recordings. The argument structures of each group during verbal argumentation were determined by dividing them into components according to the Toulmin model (Toulmin, 1990 ). The first three items (data, claim, and warrant) in the Toulmin model form the basis of an argument, and the other three items (rebuttal, backing, and qualifier) are subsidiary elements of the argument (Toulmin, 1990 ).

The critical thinking skills and abilities (Ennis, 2011 , pp. 2–4)

Some quotations regarding the analysis of the arguments according to the items are given in Appendix Table ​ Table11 11 .

Quotations regarding the analysis of the arguments according to the items

Arguments from the whole group were put into stages based on the argumentation-level model developed by Erduran et al. ( 2004 ) to examine the changes in each lesson and to make comparisons between the small groups of students. By considering the argument model developed by Toulmin, Erduran et al. ( 2004 ) created a five-level framework for the assessment of the quality of argumentation supposing that the quality of the arguments including rebuttals was high. The framework is given in Table ​ Table2 2 .

The framework for the assessment of the quality of argumentation (Erduran et al., 2004 ; pp. 928)

Validity and Reliability

To confirm the accuracy and validity of the analysis, method triangulation, triangulation of data sources, and analyst triangulation were used (Patton, 2002 ).

For analyst triangulation, the qualitative findings were also analyzed independently by a researcher studying in the field of critical thinking and argumentation, and then these evaluations made by the researchers were compared.

Video and audio recordings of intervention and documents from the activities were used for the triangulation of data sources. In addition, the data were described in detail without interpretation. Additionally, within the reliability and validity efforts, direct quotations were given in the findings. In this sense, for students, codes such as S1, S2, and S3 were used, and the source of data, group number, and relevant date of the conversation were included at the end of the quotations.

In addition, experts studying in the field of critical thinking and argumentation were asked to verify all data and findings. After the process of reflection and discussion with experts, the codes, subcategories, and categories were revised.

For reliability, some of the data randomly selected from the written transcripts of the students’ audio recordings were also coded by a second encoder, and the interrater agreement between the two coders, determined by Cohen’s kappa (Cohen, 1960 ), was κ = 0.86, which is considered high reliability.

Development of Critical Thinking Ability

The development of critical thinking skills was given separately for the trend drastically changed on the day when the first skills were used by the students. All six dimensions of critical thinking skills were included in students’ dialogs or when there was a decrease in the number of categories of critical thinking skills.

The codes, subcategories, and categories of critical thinking skills that occurred on the first day (dated 11.05) are given in Table ​ Table3 3 .

The codes, subcategories, and categories of critical thinking skills that occurred on the first day

Clarification skills, inference skills, other/strategy and technical skills, advanced clarification skills, and decision-making/supporting skills occurred on the first day. The students mostly used decision-making/supporting skills ( f  = 55). Under the decision-making/supporting skills category, students mostly explained observation data ( f  = 37). S7, S1, and S20 stated the data they presented about their observations with the Star Chart and Sky View applications as follows:

S7: Venus is such a yellowish reddish colour.

S1: What was the colour? Red and big. The moon’s color is white.

S20: Not white here.

S20: It’s not white here. (Audio Recordings (AuR), Group 2 / 11.05).

Additionally, S19 mentioned the observation data with the words “I searched Saturn. It is bright. It does not vibrate. It is yellow and it’s large.” (AuR, Group 2 / 11.05).

Decision-making/supporting skills were followed by inference ( f  = 17), clarification ( f  = 13), advanced clarification ( f  = 5), and skills and other/strategy technical skills ( f  = 1).

In Table ​ Table4, 4 , the categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the fifth day (dated 18.05) are presented.

The categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the fifth day

It was observed for the first time on the fifth day that all six dimensions of critical thinking skills were included in students’ dialogs. These are, according to the frequency of use, inference ( f  = 152), decision-making/support ( f  = 116), clarification ( f  = 43), advanced clarification ( f  = 8), other/strategy and technique ( f  = 3), and suppositional thinking and integrational ( f  = 2) skills.

On this date, judging the credibility of the source from decision-making/supporting skills ( f  = 1) was the skill used for the first time.

Unlike other days, for the first time, a student tried to prove his thoughts with an analogy in advanced clarification skills. An exemplary dialogue to this finding is as follows:

S19: Even the Moon remains constant, we will see different faces of the moon because the Earth revolves around its axis.

S6: I also say that it turns at the same speed. So, for example, when this house turns like this while we return in the same way, we always see the same face. (AuR, 18.05, Group 2).

Here, S6 tried to explain to his friend that they always see the same face of the moon by comparing how they see the same face of the house.

In Table ​ Table5, 5 , the categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the sixth day (dated 21.05) are included.

The categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the sixth day

There is a decrease in the number of categories of critical thinking skills. It was determined that the students used mostly inference skills in three categories ( f  = 38). Additionally, students used decision-making/support ( f  = 34) and clarification ( f  = 9) skills. In inference skills, it is seen that students often make claims ( f  = 33) and rarely infer from the available data ( f  = 4).

Among the decision-making/support skills, students mostly used the skill to give reasons ( f  = 28). S24 accepted herself as Uranus during the activity, and she gave reason to make Saturn as an enemy like that: “No, Saturn would be my enemy too. Its ring is more distinctive, it can be seen from the Earth, its ring is more beautiful than me.” (AuR, 21.05, Group 3/).

The categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the ninth day (dated 28.05) are presented in Table ​ Table6 6 .

The categories, subcategories, and codes for critical thinking skills that occurred on the ninth day

In the course of the day dated 28.05, six categories of critical thinking skills were observed: clarification, inference, other/strategy and technique, advanced clarification, decision-making/support, suppositional thinking and integration skills. Furthermore, the subcategories under these categories are also very diverse.

There are 10 subcategories under clarification skills ( f  = 57), which are the most commonly used skills. The frequency of using these skills is as follows: asking his friend about his opinion ( f  = 15), asking questions to clarify the situation ( f  = 12), explaining his statement ( f  = 10), summarizing the solutions of other groups ( f  = 7), asking for a detailed explanation ( f  = 4), summarizing the idea ( f  = 3), explaining the solution proposal ( f  = 2), asking for a reason ( f  = 2), focusing on the question ( f  = 1), and asking what the tools used in experiment do ( f  = 1) skills. Explaining the solution proposal, asking what the tools used in the experiment do, and focusing on the question are the first skills used by the students.

When the qualitative findings regarding the critical thinking skills of the students were examined as a whole, it was determined that there was an improvement in the students’ critical thinking skills dimensions in the lessons held in the first 5 days (between 11.05 and 18.05). There was a decrease in the number of critical thinking skills dimensions in the middle of the intervention (21.05). However, after this date, there was an increase again in the number of critical thinking skills dimensions; and on the last day of the intervention, all the critical thinking skills dimensions were used by the students. In addition, it was determined that the skills found under these dimensions showed great variety at this date. Only in the middle (18.05) and on the last day (28.05) of the intervention did students use the skills in the six dimensions of critical thinking.

It was determined that students used mostly decision-making/support, inference, and clarification skills. According to the days, it was determined that the students mostly used inference skills (12.05, 15.05, 18.05, and 21.05) among these skills.

The Argumentation Abilities of the Students

Argument structures in students’ verbal argumentation activities.

Instead of the argument structures of all groups, only an example of one group is presented because of including both basic and subsidiary items in the Toulmin argument model. In Table ​ Table7, 7 , the argument structures in the verbal argumentation activities of the fourth group of students are presented due to the use of the “rebuttal” item.

The argument structures in the verbal argumentation activities of the fourth group of students

When the argument structures in the verbal argumentation process of the six groups were examined, it was found that all groups engaged in the argumentation and produced arguments. In the activities, students mostly made claims. This was followed by data and warrant items. In the “the phases of the moon” activity, it was determined that only the second and fourth groups used rebuttal and the other groups did not.

The number of rebuttals used by the groups is lower in “the planets-table of statements” activity than in other activities. The rebuttals used are also weak. The use of rebuttals differs in the “who is right?” and “urgent solution to space pollution” activities. The number of rebuttal students used in these activities is higher than that in the other activities. The quality rebuttals are also higher.

When the structure of the warrants is examined, there are more unscientific warrants in the “urgent solution to space pollution” and “who is right” activities, while the correct scientific and partially correct scientific warrants were more frequently used in the “the phases of the moon” and “the planets table of statements” activities.

When the models related to the argument structures are examined in general, it was found that there is a decrease in the type of items used and the number of uses in the “the phases of the moon” and “the planets-table of statements” activities rather than the “urgent solution to space pollution” and “who is right” activities.

When the results were analyzed in terms of groups, it was determined that the argument structures of the second and fourth groups showed more variety than those of the other groups.

The Change of Argumentation Levels

The argumentation levels achieved by six groups created in the “who is right,” “ the planets-table of statements,” “phases of the moon,” and “urgent solution to space pollution” activities are shown in Fig.  2 .

A characterization of the components of critical thinking (Jiménez-Aleixandre & Puig, 2012 , p. 6)

In the first verbal argumentation activity, “who is right?,” the arguments achieved by the five of the six groups were at level 5. Additionally, the arguments achieved by one group, which was group 6, were at level 4.

In the second verbal argumentation activity “table of statements,” a decrease was determined at the levels of the argumentation of the other groups except group 1 and group 3. In the “the phases of the moon” activity, there was a decrease at the level of argumentation achieved by the other groups except for group 2 and group 4. In the last argumentation activity, “urgent solution to space pollution,” it was found that the arguments of all groups were at level 5.

Conclusions and Discussion

The critical thinking skills of the students developed until the middle of the intervention, and the frequency of using critical thinking skills varied after the middle of the intervention. When the activities in the lessons were examined, on the days when critical thinking skills were frequently used, activities including argumentation methods were performed. Based on this situation, it could be revealed that the frequency of using critical thinking skills by students varies according to the use of the argumentation method.

Argumentation is defined as the process of making claims about a scientific subject, supporting them with data, providing reasons for proof, and criticizing, rebutting, and evaluating an idea (Toulmin, 1990 ). According to the definition of argumentation, these processes are also in the subdimensions of critical thinking skills. The ability to provide reasons for critical thinking skills in decision-making/supporting skills is the equivalent of providing reasons for proof in the argumentation process using warrants in the Toulmin argument model. Different types of claims under inference skills are related to making claims in the argumentation process, and rejecting a judgment is related to rebutting an idea in the argumentation process. In this context, the argumentation method is thought to contribute to the development of critical thinking skills within AR.

Another qualitative finding reached in the study is that the skills most used in the subdimensions differ according to the days. This can be explained by the different types of activities performed in each lesson. For example, on the day when the ability to explain observation data was used the most, students observed the sky, constellations, and galaxies with the Star Chart or Sky View applications or observed the planets with the i-Solar System application, and they presented the data they obtained during these observations.

Regarding the verbal argumentation structure of the groups, the findings imply that all groups engaged in argumentation and produced arguments. This finding presented evidence with qualitative data to further verify Squire & Jan’s ( 2007 ) research conducted with primary, middle, and high school students to investigate the potential of a location-based AR game in environmental science concluding that all groups engaged in argumentation. Similarly, Jan ( 2009 ) investigated the experience of three middle school students and their argumentative discourse on environmental education using a location-based AR game, and it was found that all students participated in argumentation and produced arguments.

Another finding in the current study was that students mostly made claims in the activities. This situation can be interpreted as students being strong in expressing their opinions. Similar findings are found in the literature (Author, 20xxa; Cavagnetto et al., 2010 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ; Novak & Treagust, 2017 ). In addition, it was concluded that the students failed to use warrants and data, they could not support their claims with the data, and they did not use “rebuttal” in these studies. However, in this study in which both augmented reality applications and argumentation methods were used, students mostly made contradictory claims and used data and warrants in their arguments. This situation can be interpreted as students being strong in defending their opinions. Additionally, although it was stated in many of the studies that students’ argumentation levels were generally at level 1 or level 2 (Erdogan et al., 2017 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ; Venville & Dawson, 2010 ; Zohar & Nemet, 2002 ), it was found that most of the students’ arguments were at level 4 and level 5 in the current study. Arguments are considered to be high quality in line with the existence of rebuttals, and discussions involving rebuttals are characterized as having a high level of argumentation (Aufschnaiter et al., 2008 ; Erduran et al., 2004 ). Students used rebuttals in their arguments, and their arguments were at high levels, which indicates that students could produce quality arguments. The reason for these findings to differ from those of other studies may be due to the augmented reality technology used in the current study. Enriched representations make it easier to see the structure of arguments (Akpınar et al., 2014 ), helping students to improve their awareness, increase the number of words they use and comments they make (Erkens & Janssen, 2006 ), and provide important information about the subject (Clark et al., 2007 ). By observing enriched representations, students collect evidence for argumentation (Clark & Sampson, 2008 ) and explore different points of view to support their claim (Oestermeier & Hesse, 2000 ). AR technology, which includes enriched representations, may have increased the accessibility of rich data to support students’ arguments; and using these data has helped them to support their arguments and enabled them to discover different perspectives. For example, S4 explained that the statement in the table is incorrect because she observed Uranus, Jupiter, and Neptune having rings around them in the application “I-solar system” as Uranus. She used the data obtained in the AR application to support her claim.

When the models related to the argument structures are examined in general, it was concluded that the type of items, the number of items, and the rebuttals used in scientific activities were less than those in the activities involving socioscientific issues. The rebuttals used were also weak. There are also findings in the literature that producing arguments on scientific issues is more difficult than producing arguments on socioscientific issues (Osborne et al., 2004 ).

When the structure of the warrants in the students’ arguments was examined, it was seen that there are more nonscientific warrants in socioscientific activities, and the scientific and partially scientific warrants are more in the activities that contain scientific subjects. This shows that students were unable to combine what they have learned in science with socioscientific issues. Albe ( 2008 ) and Kolsto ( 2001 ) stated that scientific knowledge is very low in students’ arguments on socioscientific issues. Similarly, the results of the studies conducted in the related literature support this view (Demircioglu & Ucar, 2014 ; Sadler & Donnelly, 2006 ; Wu & Tsai, 2007 ).

When the argument structures in the activities are analyzed by groups, the argument structures of the two groups vary more than the other groups, and the argumentation levels of these groups are at level 4 and level 5. This might be because some students have different prior knowledge about subjects. Different studies have also indicated that content knowledge plays an important role in the quality of students’ arguments (Acar, 2008 ; Aufschnaiter et al., 2008 ; Clark & Sampson, 2008 ; Cross et al., 2008 ; Sampson & Clark, 2011 ). In many studies, it has been emphasized that the most important thing affecting the choice and process of knowledge is previous information (Stark et al., 2009 ). To better understand how previous information affects argumentation quality in astronomy education, investigating the relationship between middle school students’ content knowledge and argumentation quality could be a direction of future research.

Limitations and Future Research

There are some limitations in this study. First, this study was implemented in a private school. Therefore, the results are true for these students. Future research is necessary to be performed with the students in public schools. Second, the researcher conducted the lessons because the science teacher had no ability to design AR learning practices. Teachers and students creating their own AR experiences is an important way to bring the learning outcomes of AR available to a wider audience (Romano et al., 2020 ). Further research can be conducted in which the science teacher of the class is the instructor. Another limitation of the study is that the instruction with AR-based argumentation was time-consuming, and the time allocated for the “Solar System and Beyond” unit in the curriculum was not sufficient for the implementation, because students tried to understand to use AR applications, and they needed time to reflect on the activities despite prior training on AR before the instructional process. This situation may cause cognitive overload (Alalwan et al., 2020 ). The adoption and implementation of educational technologies are more difficult and time-consuming than other methods (Parker & Heywood, 1998 ). A longer period is needed to prepare student-centered and technology-supported activities.

Tables ​ Tables8, 8 , ​ ,9, 9 , ​ ,10 10 and ​ and11 11

This study is a part of Tuba Demircioğlu’s dissertation supported by the Cukurova University Scientific Research Projects (grant number: SDK20153929).

The manuscript is part of first author’s PhD dissertation. The study was reviewed and approved by the PhD committee in the Cukurova University Faculty of Education, as well as by the committee of Ministry of National Education. The parents of students were provided with written informed consent.

Declarations

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Tuba Demircioglu, Email: moc.liamg@ulgoicrimedabut .

Memet Karakus, Email: moc.liamg@skkmem .

Sedat Ucar, Email: moc.liamg@racutades .

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Home > Books > Instructional Strategies for Active Learning [Working Title]

Unveiling Critical Thinking: Instructional Strategies to Enhance Argumentation

Submitted: 28 January 2024 Reviewed: 20 March 2024 Published: 24 April 2024

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.114878

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Argumentative writing serves as a stage where students showcase their critical thinking, a skill they already possess and have cultivated throughout their lives. However, it is argued that learners need instances within the classroom to activate this thinking, enriching it under the guidance of their teachers. It is the teacher who shapes and adapts the pedagogical environment, enabling students to respond naturally and spontaneously to meet class objectives. In the upcoming chapter, the implementation of a didactic sequence designed to enhance the argumentation skills of Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) students. This approach provided opportunities for students to, through reading and writing, interpret situations, analyze messages, evaluate options, infer conclusions, take positions, and explain them, actively monitoring their argumentation and writing process. This strategy embodies active learning in an environment facilitated by the teacher, where students forge their critical thinking.

• critical thinking
• didactic sequence
• argumentative writing
• active learning

Author Information

Diana lozano *.

• Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

A foreign language learner, considered a social agent, develops comprehension and expression skills that enable effective communication and assertive action in social interactions. The communicative tasks they fulfill are not solely related to language usage but are connected to goal-oriented actions that require critical thinking to respond, as they are associated with reflection and, above all, action in the face of social issues. This implies the need to adopt an alternative and humanistic attitude toward language education, as the critical dimension aligns with humanistic rather than technical approaches. These social acts lead the learner to make decisions that necessitate critical thinking and action.

Critical thinking comes into play in all language learner interactions due to the immediate information processing they are exposed to. Therefore, the descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) [ 1 ] envision a recognition of proficiency in the use of linguistic repertoire and knowledge appropriate to social situations. Learners enhance their language proficiency in an integrated manner, based on the development of their reactive and mediating capacity, as determined by foreign language curricula and teachers. The teacher guides students to apply their learning in real-life situations, ensuring that learning is activity-based. In the context of learning a foreign language in a classroom, the teacher facilitates the empowerment of students’ thinking and skills, preparing them to independently address situations beyond the classroom.

This implies that critical thinking should not be understood as something individuals can acquire through the practice of specific materials, nor is it something teachers provide to their students for use. The idea of capitalizing on the critical thinking learners already possess also implies that as it is put into practice to address social issues, this thinking will find alternatives for development and qualification. This chapter describes the scope of research conducted to obtain the Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics of Spanish as a Foreign Language at the Pontifical Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia. The objective was to observe and interpret how, through the implementation of a didactic sequence centered around the analysis of editorial cartoons, students of Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) create their own argumentative texts [ 2 ].

This didactic proposal, called ArguméntELE, illustrates how students actively engaged in their learning process to write an argumentative text in a foreign language, considering the teacher’s role in promoting activities that developed critical thinking skills in students through a didactic sequence. Students actively participated in constructing arguments, collaborating with peers, and applying language skills in practical, real-world contexts. Regarding the activities and exercises in the didactic sequence, it is interpreted that they constantly encourage the use of the different critical thinking skills described by Facione [ 3 ]. These skills are activated by designing and implementing activities that include the characteristics of each cognitive skill and emphasize a situation that allows its use. Therefore, it is expected that the activities in the didactic sequence will serve as supporting material for language teachers to include and adapt them in their classes to strengthen the student’s critical dimension as a social, intercultural, and autonomous actor.

2. Theoretical contextualization: critical thinking in communicative tasks

Understanding the context within which communication takes place requires the activation and use of critical thinking. In a social interaction, explicit aspects, such as language and its structure, and implicit aspects, such as the speakers’ intentions or hidden cultural traits, are reflected. Foreign language learners are expected to participate appropriately and effectively based on their performance within the framework of their proficiency level. According to Facione [ 3 ], critical thinking is vital for society. It is essential for individuals facing situations where they must act to contribute assertively to improvement or transformation within immediate social and intercultural contexts. As social actors, individuals are involved in economic, political, and cultural processes, and each action impacts society. Therefore, the ability to interpret, analyze, evaluate, infer, explain, and self-reflect results in reasoned actions as ways for a critical thinker to effectively intervene in each situation.

In a consensus on critical thinking [ 3 ], experts agreed that several cognitive skills share characteristics with the core skills of critical thinking, such as interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. Consequently, a learner proficient in these skills is considered an expert in critical thinking. It is crucial to foster critical thinking in teaching and learning processes through activities that include real situations (social, cultural, political, and educational) from the immersion context and its specific realities. This consideration arises first from the understanding that a student, when not a critical thinker, may be easily persuaded in their immediate context. Second, it ensures that SFL students need to be critical thinkers to function as social agents within a community, seeking improvement in any social or intercultural situation. As suggested by Pascale et al. [ 4 ] as a social agent, the learner must be able, according to their needs in the public, personal, professional, and/or educational sphere, to engage in transactions requiring immediate participation. This response implies that the learner must consider and interpret the entire situation, necessitating critical thinking skills such as interpretation, analysis, and inference to explain their ideas, evaluate, and reflect on results and their implications.

While these skills are innate, they need to be strengthened in a foreign language learning context. Thus, if a learner can successfully complete specific communicative tasks according to their proficiency level, they should also be able to demonstrate their cognitive abilities. This involves awareness of natural processing in their first language and reflection on how to express and understand information. Strengthening critical thinking is not only important in general education, as stated in Refs. [ 5 , 6 ], but also in teaching a foreign language. Through the voices of these authors, it is emphasized that students need to use critical thinking skills to evaluate not only simple and everyday situations critically but also to wisely address situations that arise in other cultures. Learning a foreign language distinguishes language as a resource that allows the development of critical thinking by serving as both a means of communication and an instrument for constructing thought. As a result, active learning serves as a foundational framework by integrating engaging communicative tasks, enhancing cognitive skills, and emphasizing critical thinking, thus enriching the learning experience in foreign language education.

The student is considered a critical thinker in the context in which they operate and in their own learning processes. Consequently, it is advisable for the SFL teacher to recognize the importance of conducting activities that promote critical thinking skills as a complement to their classes. Teachers could also use the activities proposed in this research as a model to activate, strengthen, and improve critical thinking for students to achieve a high level of argumentation.

In a guided learning context where teachers propose activities with a learner-centered approach, it is recognized that active learning enhances critical thinking through activities developed by learners. Bonwell and Eison [ 7 ] state that students’ involvement can be increased by using strategies such as leading discussions and questioning techniques skillfully to engage students in a personal exploration of the subject matter. Students can engage in short writing activities in class, share what they have written in small groups, and participate in presentations, debates, and role-playing activities.

Materials for Spanish as a second language courses and even other languages must challenge claims, myths, and prejudices embedded in everyday discourse to counter-argue, disarm, review, and analyze one’s own perspectives and conceptions [ 8 ]. For learners of SFL, the target language of the conducted research, this skill is crucial during communication. Language communication involves a discourse where information is constantly given and received, influenced by language recognition, speaker gestures, tone of voice, intention, implicit messages, among other communicative aspects. Thus, it is essential to employ critical thinking skills to recognize the strengths or weaknesses of certain ideas. It is not just about expressing ideas but also about persuading others and drawing their conclusions based on the information received. According to Centro Virtual Cervantes [ 9 ], argumentation refers to the reasoned expression of a point of view through a word, a statement, or a text. Fostering argumentation becomes relevant within the teaching and learning processes of SFL, as it seeks to influence the opinions and persuasion of recipients.

By using interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation skills within activities in the class, a significant improvement in the level of argumentation when writing an argumentative text can be achieved, thereby enhancing critical thinking. Similarly, when arguing about a situation or problem, the use of these skills is necessary to ensure that the presented premises are strong, relevant, and well-founded. If an instructor’s goals include not only imparting information but also developing cognitive skills and changing attitudes, alternative teaching strategies should be interwoven with the lecture method during classroom presentations [ 7 ]. This recognizes the need to activate deeper cognitive skills for understanding and analyzing information to interact or act in response to it. From a linguistic perspective, pragmatics reveals the enrichment of language comprehension beyond literal expressions, facilitating the understanding of implicit meanings and activating deep cognitive skills by considering context, inferring implicit meanings, and understanding cultural and social nuances of language. Teachers can incorporate these aspects into their class activities. With active learning, for a successful discussion to take place, instructors must set specific objectives for the class period, structure questions appropriate for the material under consideration, and demonstrate techniques to extend students while maintaining a supportive environment [ 7 ].

Active learning is guided by specific objectives established according to cognitive skills, as Kosslyn [ 10 ] estimates that it is not just about learning by doing, but activities need to be designed with a specific objective and keep students engaged. Kosslyn [ 10 ] also asserts that the key is to design activities appropriate to a set of knowledge and skills that students are aware of to achieve learning outcomes. This notion reinforces the activities proposed in the didactic sequence of this research, where each task aims to activate a critical thinking skill to develop communicative tasks.

2.1 Pragmatics and communicative competence

Pragmatics is defined as the discipline that studies language use, considering the relationship between the statement, the interlocutors, and the context in which the communication process unfolds. Therefore, its level of analysis focuses on how speakers interpret and produce messages in specific contexts [ 11 ]. For this reason, the research considered that the interpretation of editorial cartoons, as material in the classroom, should be based on the critical reading of extralinguistic elements, such as the author’s communicative intention or the social and cultural context it represents.

From the dimensions of written comprehension and expression, it is relevant to consider aspects of foreign language learning and teaching, such as the competencies that learners must develop. In a general framework, communicative competence is related, defined by Instituto Cervantes [ 11 ] as the ability of a person to behave effectively and appropriately in a specific speech community. This competence involves complying with a series of rules from a linguistic level, considering grammar, vocabulary, and semantics, etc., and from the level of language use, considering the sociocultural contexts where the communicative process unfolds. In other words, communicative competence is the ability to express linguistically correct messages without creating misunderstandings in specific intercultural contexts.

From communicative competence, several components emerge, such as linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic competences. According to Instituto Cervantes [ 1 ], linguistic competence refers to the formal knowledge of the language as a system and involves syntactic, lexical, and phonological skills independent of sociocultural contexts. Sociolinguistic competence involves sociocultural values or social conventions related to language use (courtesy norms, etc.). Finally, pragmatic competence refers to the speaker’s ability to make communicative use of language, considering not only the relationships between linguistic signs but also those between the communication context and the interlocutors.

From all the above, it can be suggested that effective understanding and analysis of hidden realities implied in editorial cartoons, for example, require the learner to develop the ability to identify these described extralinguistic elements. In many cases, these elements do not reflect the learner’s sociocultural context of origin. Therefore, with the design of the didactic sequence, activities were planned for the learner to have opportunities in the classroom to develop pragmatic competence together with linguistic and sociolinguistic competencies. In this way, their level of argumentation could improve, as they were able to generate linguistically correct messages, which are relevant and well-justified arguments avoiding possible misunderstandings.

In the chosen population of the conducted research and based on the authors’ teaching experience primarily, it was found that in SFL courses in a school in Bogotá, Colombia, students demonstrated a low level of argumentation for their proficiency level, according to the descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages [ 1 ]. This issue was evident with The Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test [ 12 ], which assesses critical thinking skills in a written argumentative text, although critical thinking in this test is reduced to an instrumental dimension, as it demands predetermined argumentative writing skills proposed by the CEFR descriptors [ 1 ].

This type of research provides fundamental theoretical foundations to enrich the practices of the researching teachers in the school under study and, in turn, benefit the learning processes of SFL students. Critical thinking skills must be put into practice in an SFL class because they are present in all students. However, the aim is for both the teacher and the student to be aware of their mental processes to increase their level of argumentation. This way, aspects that need improvement during class activities can be discovered to address the identified phenomenon. It is not about recognizing that the pedagogical practices applied are wrong but rather analyzing different ways and strategies to encourage the use of critical thinking skills in students.

3. Proposal and research methodology

This proposal and the research results were analyzed from a qualitative approach with an observation of students’ participation in the creation of their own texts within the environment created in the didactic sequence around cartoons, which was carried out during the application of the didactic material. For the implementation of the didactic sequence, there was an evaluation by a materials expert to confirm the methodology, and finally, an evaluation of the argumentative text they wrote to assess the use of arguments. This analysis allowed recognizing that students’ argumentation about controversial topics, such as the work environment exposed through cartoons, is mediated by their practice, and writing process, as revealed during the development of the didactic sequence. This sequence creates an active learning environment and is recognized as an engaging environment, which according to Narváez Pérez [ 13 ], is one where critical thinking is promoted through learning experiences that include exercises to ask and answer questions, synthesize, evaluate, compare, reflect, contextualize, make inferences, summarize, and solve problems. As advocated by the outlined didactic sequence.

3.1 Teaching strategy to promote argumentation

To enhance the argumentative skills of Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) students from a methodological and didactic perspective, a series of activities must be planned within a didactic sequence. The initial step involves the planning of activities, which stems from an analysis of the needs of the participating population. According to Woodward [ 14 ], class and course planning requires educators to think about their learners, content, materials, and activities, reflecting constantly on how to provide opportunities for students to enhance their learning. In other words, effective planning requires teachers to be aware of how to create a good class that aims to achieve the proposed cognitive goals. The teacher creates an active learning environment, which, according to Kosslyn [ 10 ], “improves how well students understand material, remember it, and know how to apply it across a wide range of situations.” Furthermore, it enhances the learning environment where the learner is the center, as Narváez Pérez [ 13 ] states, “creative activities are developed, points of view are explored, conclusions are drawn, deductive reasoning is practiced, hypotheses are questioned and formulated, analysis is carried out, comparisons are performed, new ideas are proposed, analysis is performed, and reflection is carried out.” Student-centered learning in the foreign language learning context enhances critical thinking, where the teacher plays the role of a mediator and facilitator of learning through applied strategies and resource utilization.

Regardless, it can be affirmed that for class planning to be effective, activities must be related to both learning objectives and student interests. These activities can be logically designed within a sequence. The Dictionary of Key Terms in SFL defines didactic sequence as a series of interconnected activities that aim to teach specific linguistic content within specific learning objectives. A set of activities may constitute a task, a complete lesson, or part of it. Depending on the type of activities, their characteristics, and their functions, the phases within the didactic sequence can be diversified. Also, the didactic sequence can incorporate principles of activity-based learning to ensure that these activities are not only interconnected but also designed to actively engage students, fostering a more dynamic and participatory learning experience through active learning.

Regarding these phases, Harmer [ 15 ] asserts that students need exposure, motivation, and opportunities to use language appropriately. Similarly, he acknowledges that students may react differently to stimuli, suggesting that most teaching sequences should integrate a series of characteristics or elements (hereinafter referred to as phases) that can last for minutes, hours, lessons, etc. In this regard, Harmer [ 15 ] proposes a series of phases that can ensure successful language learning. These phases include Motivation, Practice (controlled or free), and Interactive Explanation.

The didactic sequence of the research followed a communicative approach with a task-based methodology that presents a final task to set students in an active learning lesson where they are involved in higher-order thinking (analysis, synthesis, evaluation) [ 7 ], which involves writing an argumentative text about the work environment, as this is the central theme of the designed material. It is considered that certain characteristics of this type of text and the exercises proposed as facilitating tasks work in favor of metacognition when writing. For this reason, the didactic sequence is named ArguméntELE, as it is essential to promote good argumentation. Each of the activities proposed in this material responds to the theoretical contributions considered in the research, the needs of the students and their context, and the linguistic and functional contents of the PCIC (Plan Curricular del Instituto Cervantes) [ 11 ].

Furthermore, exercises that activate critical thinking skills relevant to argumentation processes must be proposed, and students are constantly asked for their opinions. With the completion of this research, the intention is to encourage teachers to activate the described critical thinking skills to increase their students’ level of argumentation. During the sequence, students are asked to express their opinions and justify them; but in the end, a comprehensive opinion is expected, considering aspects such as interpreting a problem in a situation, analyzing the factors involved in the situation, evaluating different options or points of view, hypothesizing about the inferred possibilities, explaining whether they agree or disagree, and also asking them to review their writing before submitting the final version.

Likewise, it is expected that students emphasize functional aspects for argumentation, as they are considered to have a great linguistic knowledge of their proficiency level, allowing them to understand instructions, statements, and express themselves to complete activities. According to the PCIC [ 11 ], students as social actors at this level have sufficient linguistic ability to present the details of a problem, make claims, and resolve conflicting situations by resorting to their ability to argue and persuasive language.

Thus, a total of 18 facilitating tasks are presented, allowing students to recognize various factors to enhance their level of argumentation, and they are tailored to each of the phases. Additionally, they are provided based on the four language skills for language learning (reading and listening comprehension, oral and written production). The didactic sequence comprises the following contents reflecting active learning:

Communicative Resources: Engage in problem interpretation, analyze factors, evaluate various options, propose hypotheses with inferred consequences, express agreement, or disagreement, and monitor the argumentation process. Active learning is exemplified as students participate actively in higher-order thinking processes like analysis, evaluation, and synthesis during problem-solving and argumentation.

Linguistic Resources: In accordance with PCIC [ 11 ], encompass expressions for opinions, assessments, agreement, disagreement, discourse organization, possibilities, and argumentation at the students’ language level. Active learning is apparent as students actively express opinions, assess information, and organize discourse, promoting language acquisition through practical application and interaction.

Lexical Resources: Utilize vocabulary for discussing work activities, unemployment, job search, and worker characteristics. Active learning is showcased through students’ exploration of pertinent vocabulary in real-world contexts, enhancing comprehension and retention through active engagement in discussions and exercises.

This sequence is characterized by starting with motivational activities related to the topic to be addressed within the proposed learning objectives. As explained earlier, these activities should be aligned with the learner’s interests and preferences to encourage their participation in the rest of the phases and activities. For the material designed to enhance the argumentation level of students, the exercises in the motivation phase provided an initial approach to reading and interpreting Quino’s cartoons. Then, with the free practice phase, the teacher could identify the students’ weaknesses to address them in the next phase. The free practice activities include exercises where students must give their initial perception of what they can interpret and analyze from the cartoons used. Regarding this phase, the designed material will integrate exercises of both oral and written productions without any restrictions regarding the interpretation of opinion cartoons. From their production, the aspects that need to be addressed in the Interactive Explanation phase can be defined.

Now, the material guiding the learning environment of the research is divided into the different moments of the boomerang didactic sequence proposed by Harmer [ 15 ], which was designed listing the following phases:

¡Involúcrate! (Get involved): In this phase, a motivation activity is presented that allows an analysis of the context of the situation proposed in the exercises. It involves sensitizing the student to approach the central themes of the material, which consist of different situations in the work environment.

The first activity involves reading a cartoon by Quino. As seen in Figure 1 , the sign behind the characters says “El valor del trabajo” in Spanish, which means the value of work, and the questions: what do you see in this picture, what do you get when you do a job? Students must justify their answers. To do this, first, the student must read, recognizing each aspect of the image, such as the location of the characters, the possible relationship between them; second, a reading of the text accompanying the cartoon, which is a statement by one of the characters. It is expected that the student begins to relate to the topic of the work environment and the aspects found in a cartoon, such as the relationship between characters, the characteristics that describe that relationship, the theme, the author’s implicit message, the hidden reality reflected, and that the student identifies with the situation or can identify if that reality is present in their country or context.

Cartoon to contextualize in the motivation activity.

¡Actívate! (Activate Yourself): In this phase, the student is allowed to engage in free practice to demonstrate their knowledge and seek, from their linguistic repertoire, to respond to the proposed language situation. Students are asked to take on the role of the person in charge of selecting a candidate for a job. This is illustrated in Figure 2 , where the material replicates the webpage of a job portal to immerse the student in this real-life situation.

Image to provide a role for the students in the practice activity.

The free practice phase aims for the student to identify how to argue by exploring and exploiting their prior knowledge. In the first step, students must identify aspects related to a job offer within an announcement based on candidate requirements. Then, with this information and two cover letters, they will decide which candidate is more suitable for the position and express it through an email justifying their opinion. In each activity of this phase, the student is free to respond from their linguistic repertoire, and aspects to be worked on in the next phase will be identified from their writing.

¡Aprende más! (Learn More): This is the central section of grammar presented with an interactive explanation. Discourse organizers (additive, consecutive, justificatory, information structuring, and counter-argumentative connectors) are exposed along with expressions useful when giving opinions, assessing, arguing, or counter-arguing an opinion. Figure 3 demonstrates how, in the material, the characters’ images are displayed, and linguistic resources that students can use to express themselves are highlighted in bold.

Activity with linguistic resources as a reference in the interactive explanation.

With all the contextualization from the previous exercises, students are presented with the phase that allows them to focus on useful strategies to increase their level of argumentation, linguistic resources, and the specific activation of each of the critical thinking skills presented in the objectives. For this reason, the phase consists of a topic divided into six situations and exercises, one to emphasize the use of each skill. Also, each includes a red box explicitly describing each linguistic resource with examples.

The first point activates the interpretation skill. In this, the student must comprehend a text about the relationship between money and happiness in a specific context. Then, the student must identify the main idea of this article and each of its paragraphs to choose the appropriate discourse connector according to its function until completing it.

The second point encourages the use of analysis skills. This is developed by asking the student to identify the relationships between two important factors within a specific work environment: depression and the type of work. This information is presented in a graph showing that most workers with unpaid jobs show more symptoms of depression. Then, students must describe if this situation also occurs in their home countries.

The third point stimulates the use of the evaluation skill, as when making assessments about the opinions of the interlocutors, in this case, the characters of the Mafalda series, students must express opinions considering different options or points of view. The exercise aims for students to recognize and use the linguistic elements that allow them to give opinions and make evaluations, which are presented in a table with their respective examples.

Now, with the fourth point, the use of the inference skill is activated by establishing possible consequences of an action in any situation and its implications. Through linguistic resources, such as ways to express possibilities, students can infer and express consequences or implications of hiring employees with depressive tendencies or symptoms.

With the fifth point, the use of the explanation skill is encouraged, where the student must have recognized the other skills to indicate whether they agree or disagree with some opinions presented through audios about one of the Mafalda cartoons. Similarly, some expressions are presented in a box, which students can use to respond to this activity.

Finally, in the last point of this phase, the self-regulation skill is activated by inviting the student to perform a conscious self-evaluation, to remember the linguistic resources they have learned throughout the development of the material and classify them according to their communicative function. These resources will be very useful to achieve the communicative objective proposed for the didactic sequence. During the development of the didactic sequence, students should be informed that these points present strategies that should be considered to strengthen an argument.

¡Practica! (Practice): With controlled practice exercises, students can follow rules and structures that allow them to approach the correct use of language to fulfill the proposed learning objectives. In Figure 4 , the character descriptions provide insight into their worldview, and students are required to complete the texts with expressions to articulate a point of view. However, critical thinking is engaged by intentionally using these messages with implicit cultural information, as the cartoon’s author critiques the social classes of Latin America, with each character embodying a particular perspective.

Practice activity to analyze the characters.

This phase is the controlled practice phase, which seeks for students to consider aspects of different cartoons, such as the personalities of the characters that also represent many of the thoughts of Latin Americans, and the message that the author conveys through them by using linguistic resources to give opinions that they recognized in the previous phase.

¡Escribe! (Write): In this phase, students are presented with exercises for free practice. Through this practice, students engage in written production exercises to integrate the knowledge acquired through the previous phases. In the final phase of free practice, the ultimate task is introduced, in which students are required to express their opinions on one of the themes covering the work environment in their country. For instance, salary, unemployment, job search, characteristics of a worker, the relationship between money and happiness, and paid and unpaid work. In this task, they must incorporate the aspects they learned in the “Learn More!” phase and consider the argumentation factors addressed in each point of the sequence.

4. Reflections

4.1 reflections on the natural and spontaneous use of critical thinking within a pedagogical environment mediated using cartoons.

Based on the observation of the implementation of the designed material, it was considered that the cartoons by Joaquín Salvador Lavado (Quino) encouraged students to use critical thinking skills such as analysis, interpretation, and inference when reading them. This was analyzed because many of the cartoons used contain implicit criticisms of the Latin American reality related to the work environment. Students recognized that these situations were not only specific to Latin America but also present in their home countries. Each participating student, from the first exercise, indicated that some of the situations presented in the exercises and depicted in the cartoons also occur in their countries, depending on their profession and working conditions.

This allows us to confirm that, as mentioned earlier, cartoons include implicit conventions that allow the creator to express a denial using symbols, juxtaposing incongruent images or images and incongruent words, or blatantly violating or reversing visual conventions [ 16 ]. The understanding of this implicit information is achieved through the stimulation of critical thinking skills. This is the case with the first exercise of the ArguméntELE didactic sequence, in which the teacher presented the initial exercise as a discussion activity between two students who had to discuss the meaning of that cartoon ( Figure 1 ). To understand this cartoon, students had to analyze and infer the meaning of both the graphic and linguistic elements, so the observer interprets that this cartoon served to encourage the use of analytical, interpretive, and inferential skills, leading students to describe and express an opinion and evaluation about it. This information confirms what Vásquez [ 17 ] states that learning can be developed involving thinking skills, seeking for the student to access the reality shown in the cartoon through the identification of the context, the characters that compose it, etc., culminating in an interpretation of the facts or ideas expressed by its author (p. 2). In this way, the student recognized the reality represented by the cartoon because, even though it may be different in their context, they interpreted and presented it from their experience throughout the sequence.

During the observation, it was noted that the cartoons invited them to consider their own context and make comparisons about the reality they presented. This leads to the affirmation that the use of cartoons was favorable for students to understand the main ideas of the author and to understand the complex, concrete, and abstract themes implicit in his works. When discussing and expressing an opinion about a cartoon, the activation of the skills of evaluation and explanation was observed again. This could be observed again since Quino’s cartoons allow students to recognize some of the realities in their own context by identifying what each of his works and characters represents. To understand the cartoons used in the didactic sequence, students used interpretation skills because, with this, meaning could be found in the characters’ comments. After this, they were able to activate the evaluation and explanation skills because, after assessing and considering what each character in the cartoon expressed, they could give an opinion with reasoned examples. As the teacher placed more emphasis on the arguments and presented aspects to consider for doing so, students included them in their oral and written discourse.

Throughout the development of the didactic sequence, it was evident that students considered and used the linguistic and non-linguistic inputs indicated by both the material and the teacher to improve their arguments in each response. This demonstrated the activation of self-regulation skills because students were aware of their own learning process and monitored how they interpreted each cartoon to express opinions about the situations the author wants to reflect. They also showed that these aspects were considered when rereading the points in the “Learn More!” phase when they were writing their final text.

However, it is important to clarify that the teacher should guide the reading of some of the cartoons used because it is not certain that the student can recognize all their graphic and linguistic elements with a first attempt. The teacher’s role is crucial in facilitating active learning, ensuring students navigate the complexities of visual and linguistic nuances within the cartoons for a more comprehensive understanding.

4.2 Reflections on the design of ArguméntELE from a methodological perspective

This research aimed to analyze and reflect on how, through the implementation of a didactic sequence based on the use of opinion cartoons, the argumentative writing of Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) students was strengthened. It is relevant to recognize how the activities developed allow students to argue and promote their learning by activating critical thinking skills. Simultaneously, an evaluation was conducted on how the design and presentation of each topic played a significant role in student motivation and the ease of performing activities. The reflections presented in this section are based on the observation of the material implementation.

In the design of the didactic sequence, the characteristics, and phases of the Boomerang didactic sequence [ 15 ], the students’ level, activities to encourage critical thinking skills, and linguistic elements related to expressing opinions, evaluating, expressing agreement and disagreement, suggesting possibilities, organizing a discourse, and arguing, according to the PCIC [ 11 ], were considered. Methodologically, the design of communicative and facilitating tasks was considered to reach the final task following the characteristics of the task-based approach. These tasks aimed to stimulate the use of critical thinking skills (interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation) using Quino’s cartoons as a motive for reading.

The Boomerang didactic sequence proposed by Harmer [ 15 ] integrates activities that activate the mentioned critical thinking skills and constantly invite students to express opinions and argue. This sequence is suitable for advanced levels and addresses the students’ needs. In each phase of the sequence, activities related to the students’ topic of interest and the use of Quino’s cartoons were integrated to reinforce the students’ level of argumentation through the writing of argumentative texts and the activation of the mentioned skills.

Through the observation of the material implementation, it was concluded that the exercises were relevant to each stage of the Boomerang didactic sequence. Although students indicated that it was extensive, they could recognize that there are many aspects to consider when arguing. Initially, the exercises in the motivation phase (¡Involúcrate!) succeeded in involving and motivating students with the sequence’s theme and the reading of cartoons. This activity opened a discussion within the class about the work reality of the participating students’ places of origin, as each one shared their experiences regarding their jobs. It also helped generate a discussion about how to read a cartoon and interpret the gestures of characters and other graphic elements present.

When students presented an example of the work situation in their places of origin, they indicated what their jobs were like and the forms of remuneration or subsidies they received. This demonstrates their ability to analyze situations that demand an immediate response as social actors. They also expressed that it was interesting to recognize connections between cultures because they recognized who Quino was but were not aware of his impact on the Hispanic world. Regarding the description of the work situation in their home countries, this provided an opportunity to break stereotypes.

Regarding the first free practice (¡Actívate!), it served to identify the linguistic aspects to be addressed in the Interactive Explanation phase. The ¡Actívate! section contains reading exercises that encourage students to deduce, evaluate, and compare information to reach a justified conclusion to be reported in writing. In the production of the final written texts, it is noticeable that students attempted to meet the criteria of the instruction in their established order; they expressed this while completing the final task. Therefore, it is considered that to carry out a more effective argumentation exercise, students should have more time to do it. With these actions, students unconsciously put into practice critical thinking skills useful for further developing their level of argumentation.

Although the use of critical thinking skills has been encouraged in previous phases, in the ¡Learn more! phase, six exercises are presented that emphasize the six specific critical thinking skills aimed at activating the didactic sequence while linguistic aspects for each skill are considered. Facione [ 3 ] indicates that there are activities that demonstrate each thinking skill. For example, the interpretation skill is evident from categorization; analysis from the examination of ideas; evaluation when assessing the quality of arguments; inference by making conjectures about alternatives; explanation through justification; and self-regulation through self-examination. These activities were presented in the didactic sequence, and it was observed that participating students were ready to develop them using these skills and the linguistic contents integrated into the other phases of the sequence.

On the other hand, in the ¡Practice! phase, controlled practice exercises are presented in which students must follow established patterns and then express themselves freely in the second free practice (¡Escribe!), which is the final task. During the controlled practice phase, students indicated that they knew people with traits like Mafalda’s characters. However, in the final task, students could not apply everything they had learned through the didactic sequence. This can be attributed to time, which probably was not sufficient to write the text. Therefore, the development of the didactic sequence should have been done in several class sessions, about three or four, to provide students with the opportunities and time needed to carry out the activities effectively. In their final writings, they used some discourse markers to organize their ideas (To begin with, however, also, etc.), expressions to give opinions and assess (For me, I think, it seems to me, etc.), but expressions to indicate possibilities or express agreement or disagreement were not recognized.

5. Conclusion

When designing material for a class, the logical sequence of learning is considered to organize activities. This sequence should consider, in the case of foreign languages, the students’ performance level, their motivations, and their experience or mastery of the topic to be addressed. Connecting students with the learning objectives of the class would lead them to active learning. According to Bonwell and Eison [ 7 ], if active learning is to be promoted, students must be engaged; they should be able to develop their skills, think critically, and explore their own attitudes. Therefore, it is crucial for the teacher to carefully select resources or activities to fulfill their objectives with active learning.

The ArguméntELE didactic sequence highlights active learning as a fundamental framework that propels language education beyond traditional boundaries. Throughout the sequence, active learning is not simply a pedagogical concept but a lived experience for students. Immersion in Quino’s cartoons, along with critical thinking exercises, actively engages students in interpreting, analyzing, and expressing opinions on real-world scenarios, fostering a deeper understanding of language in context. Active learning, as manifested in the sequence, goes beyond mere participation; it becomes a catalyst for cognitive processes such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The motivation phase, involving discussions sparked by cartoons, actively involves students in relating personal experiences, establishing connections, and setting the stage for the journey ahead. The subsequent phases—free practice, interactive explanation, and controlled practice—mirror active learning principles by encouraging students to actively apply linguistic elements and critical thinking skills in progressively challenging and personally relevant tasks.

Furthermore, the ArguméntELE sequence embodies activity-based learning by structuring a series of purposeful activities within a didactic sequence, forming a cohesive and dynamic educational framework. The interconnected activities strategically guide students through a learning trajectory, ensuring that each task contributes to a holistic language learning experience. In this approach, students actively shape their learning path, enhancing their engagement and sense of ownership in the educational process.

Additionally, the ArguméntELE sequence reflects the principles of active learning by prioritizing student involvement in higher-order thinking and exploration of their attitudes and values. The practice and writing phases actively encourage students to express opinions, evaluate, and engage in argumentation, aligning with active learning’s emphasis on fostering skills beyond mechanical memorization. In this way, active learning in the ArguméntELE sequence is not just a methodology—it is a transformative force that empowers students to be active participants, critical thinkers, and effective communicators. The sequence serves as a testament to the potential of active learning as a robust framework, shaping a language learning experience that transcends traditional paradigms and prepares students for the dynamic challenges of a globalized world.

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