Argumentation as Social Practice: Warranting and Contextualized Rationality

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: The How and the Why: Exploring the Role of Argumentation in Academic Writing Contexts

Abstract

This paper focuses on how a teacher moved from a structuralist epistemology for teaching argumentation to a social practice approach. Careful attention was paid to the social practice of warranting in two separate but related avenues: how warranting as a social practice was developed in classrooms during instructional conversations as well as how warranting was made explicit and utilized during collaboration between teacher and researcher. Instructional conversations and semi-structured “planning meeting” interviews were mapped and examined to trace the epistemological change. Findings discussed include implications for utilizing argumentation as social practice in ELA classrooms to foster civil deliberation, implications for teacher change, as well as insights about teacher/researcher collaboration.

Author

• Theresa Thanos, The Ohio State University - Columbus