A Sociocognitive Perspective on Transfer in Teaching and Learning Argumentative Writing

• In Event: Unpacking the Teaching and Learning of Argumentative Writing in an Urban High School English Classroom

Abstract

1. Purposes
The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of data from an instructional unit on argumentative writing in one 11th grade English classroom from a sociocognitive perspective in order to consider the issue of transfer with particular concern for how the social processes of the classroom foster transfer of knowledge of argumentative writing from instructional conversations to the writing performances of individual students. The data comes from a broader study the teaching and learning of argumentative writing.

2. Perspective(s)
Recently transfer has been defined in terms of not only knowledge or schemata but also social practices and tools across events or contexts. For example, in order for students to engage in argumentative writing, they need to develop what Reznitskaya and Anderson (2002) refer to as argument schema which enables its application to new situations, or, in other words, to enable transfer of abstract argumentative knowledge into written argumentation. The richness of an individual’s argument schema depends on the number, variety, and quality of prior encounters with argumentation. As students appropriate models for argumentative writing they do so by relying on complex social interaction and engaging in composing and meaning making rather than by imitating or transcribing a simple pre-fabricated argumentative model (Lunsford, 2002).

3. Methods
During the instructional unit, a field researcher timed and recorded the class activities and interactions in order to determine the allocation of class time to various activities. We also conducted a discourse analysis of a literacy event with an instructional conversation based on procedures developed by Bloome and his colleagues (2005). Finally, we scored the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest performances of students’ argumentative writing using an analytic score. The delayed assessment permitted us to consider how the instructional context fostered memory of argumentative discourse over time (one month).

4. Data sources
In deciding what to analyze in the videos of classroom instruction we considered different types of data, objects and materials: (1) we used the descriptions and the coding schemes to provide a valid picture of instruction in a single context. (2) we examined the relationship of classroom instruction to the quality of students’ performance on argumentative essays written before and after the instructional unit.

5. Results
Though complex, the results suggest the significance of instructional conversations that engage students in critical discussions of both topical and procedural knowledge. Inquiry of issues and arguments using discussion as a social construction of ideas seemed to support students’ transfer of procedural/rhetorical knowledge to argumentative writing. Analysis In the video we observed that the students do nearly all the developing of knowledge—they transform simple observations into complex interpretations of what they want to argue.

6. Scholarly significance
The general claim based on our analysis indicates the necessity of helping students learn and practice strategies by which they examine and transform ideas and information for particular writing tasks, in this case argumentative writing. Successful and versatile writers need to know a variety of procedures for transforming ideas into the stuff of argumentative writing.

Authors

• George E. Newell, The Ohio State University

• Jennifer Lynn VanDerHeide, The Ohio State University