CSCL, Argumentation, and Deweyan Inquiry

Abstract

This collection represents something of a departure from prior work on argumentation. There is, for example, an established literature concerned with how argumentation is structured (cf., Anderson, et al., 1997; Eemeren et al., 1996). There are related research traditions devoted to developmental aspects of argumentation (e.g., Felton & Kuhn, 2001; Stein & Bernas, 1999) and exploring the relationship between argumentation and abstract reasoning skills (e.g., Chinn & Anderson, 1998; Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton, 1997; Stein & Miller, 1993). Research on argumentation within the CSCL community, however, has had a somewhat different orientation. As reflected in the chapters here and elsewhere,² CSCL researchers have focused on (1) how argumentation can be exploited as a site for learning generally and (2) how learning accomplished in this way might be augmented using technology. The goal, therefore, is one of fostering productive argumentation in instructional settings. Several of the chapters, however, testify to the difficulties attendant to facilitating such forms of argumentation among learners.

Speaking generally the fact of inference may be identified with the phenomenon of evidence. Wherever anything is discovered and used as evidence there, and only there, is inference. Now the hunting for, the weighing and sifting, the determination of force of evidence, is something which takes place in public, in plein air. That which is done in the courtroom with the participation of witnesses, court officials, jury, etc., and in consequence of which a man is hung, is not anything which can profitably be termed psychical. It belongs in the category where plowing, assembling the parts of a machine, digging and smelting ore belong—namely, behavior, which lays hold of and handles and rearranges physical things.

(Dewey, 1985, MW10:90-91)