Interactional Processes Within the Teaching and Learning of Argumentation and Argumentative Writing

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Cultural Diversity and Interactional Processes in the Teaching of Writing

Abstract

This paper traces two students’ participation across two instructional units during the teaching and learning of argumentation and argumentative writing. Data is drawn from an ethnographically informed study in a 9th and 10th grade English language arts class within a humanities course. The teacher foregrounded argumentative writing as a product of argumentation and taught argumentative elements (i.e., claim, evidence, warrant) progressively, co-constructing knowledge with students. Using a micro-ethnographic discourse analysis, the researcher analyzed typical/telling events to trace students’ participation and triangulated students’ written products and student and teacher interviews. Results indicate that teacher and students understood argumentation as a set of social and relational practices, learned and deployed the language of argumentation, and created intertextual links as they developed arguments.

Author

• Allison S. Wynhoff Olsen, Montana State University