Sociocultural Demands and Individual Differences in the Language for Learning and Teaching Argumentation at School

• In Event: Writing Disciplinary Arguments: Theoretical and Instructional Considerations

Abstract

In this poster session, we will focus on the language skills and mindsets required by both students and educators to navigate a highly interconnected and increasingly intercultural 21st-century world. In particular, we will pursue three goals in this session:

(1) First, we will examine the language of written argumentation, conceptualized as communicative resources that respond to the demands of school as a particular sociocultural context.
(2) Second, we will present data on marked individual differences in adolescents’ language proficiencies, interpreted as the result of students’ differential opportunities to learn at school.
(3) Third, we will discuss the concept of critical rhetorical flexibility as a proposed developmental objective with potential to drive transformative learning for both students and educators.

Prior writing theory and empirical research have characterized developing writers’ progress as moving progressively from mastering personal genres (narratives, recounts) to mastering factual genres (procedures, reports) and, finally, analytic genres (those focused on analysis, such as explanations and argumentation) (Martin, 1989). Prior psychological writing research has examined the development of argumentation by studying mostly argumentative components, e.g., thesis, argument (Toulmin, 2003), or types of perspectives conveyed, e.g., own-side, dual (Kuhn & Crowell, 2011). The linguistic skills that need to develop in tandem with these socio-cognitive argumentative skills, however, have received minimal attention.

Among the multiple factors that influence writing proficiency, argumentative writing poses challenging –yet often overlooked—language demands that need attention in classrooms. Adopting a sociocultural approach to language development, and drawing from textual analysis, developmental linguistics, and ethnographic studies of language socialization and enculturation, in this poster session we will discuss the language resources that characterize argumentative and explanatory school texts, as well as extensive evidence of individual differences in adolescents’ language development. On the basis of extensive empirical evidence, we will argue that without understanding and addressing the immense variability in the language proficiencies students need for understanding and producing argumentative and explanatory texts at school, schools run the risk of maintaining and even exacerbating the inequalities that exist in the larger society.

We will end by proposing that teaching and learning through language that supports conceptual understanding and equitable learning communities can be supported by adopting critical rhetorical flexibility as the developmental telos for both students and teachers. Rhetorical flexibility entails the ability to use an increasing variety of language resources flexibly with various interlocutors and in a variety of contexts (Ravid & Tolchinsky, 2002). Critical rhetorical flexibility entails also critically evaluating whether to conventionally follow the traditions of discourse prevalent of certain contexts or, instead, to contest those with alternative or hybrid language moves. We will argue that as students need to expand their repertoire of language resources to navigate new academic and non-academic contexts, teachers also need to expand their linguistic and cultural repertoires to welcome and support diverse voices in multiple contexts in their classrooms and schools.

Authors

• Paola Uccelli, Harvard University

• Linda Andreev, Harvard University

• Ziyun Deng, Harvard University

• Emily Phillips Galloway, Vanderbilt University

• Christopher Barr, Rice University