Purpose
“Thinking as argument is implicated in all of the beliefs people hold, the judgments they make, and the conclusions they come to. It arises every time a significant decision must be made," (Kuhn, 1991, p.3) ²⁹ yet research indicates that, across all age groups, such ability is the exception rather than the norm. If we want students to form and revise their opinions on the basis of sound reasoning, we must develop their ability to formulate and evaluate arguments. What kinds of instructional activities improve argumentation skill? How might we design such activities to capitalize on Asynchronous Learning Networks? The purpose of assessing students' argumentative reasoning to provide insight into such questions.

Description
Students' argumentative reasoning can be assessed at two different levels: the individual level and the group level. Individual argumentation assessment can be conducted using students' written products, individual interviews, or his or her contributions to group discussions. Social argumentation assessment can be conducted using group written products or, more commonly, transcripts of group discussions.

At minimum, an argument is a claim and a reason supporting it, yet argumentative reasoning assessments usually consist of the description and analysis of student writing or talk in terms of a much wider set of characteristics, such as the following:

• logical argument structure
• justification of claims based on evidence
• justification of claims based on course content vs. outside resources vs. personal experience
• consideration of alternative claims (i.e., the extent to which students' weigh the arguments on all sides)
• cognitive procedures (e.g., elaborations, clarifications, questions, syntheses)
• rhetorical moves with a given group (e.g, agreements, disagreements, questions, rebuttals)
• group participants' opinion or belief change as a result of interaction
• argument types (e.g., functional, non-functional, non-justificatory)

General Requirements
Argumentative reasoning assessments are only applicable to those activities and assignments in which students are, in fact, prompted to display the content and structure of their reasoning, so it's important to make sure the assessment matches the requirements of the given task.

Limitations
Coding schemes designed to assess certain aspects of such reasoning, such as the extent to which individuals are considering the function or purpose of the given topic of debate, are necessarily topic-dependent. In practice, this means that different coding schemes must be developed for each topic of interest. Careful selection of which topical discussions or assignments are worth examining, therefore, is critical.

Example Research Studies

• Derry, Gance, Gance, & Schlager (2000)
• Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson (1997)
• Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton (1997)
• Siegel (2000)

Additional Resources

• Chinn, C. A. & Anderson, R. C. (1998). The structure of discussions that promote reasoning. Teachers College Record, 100(2), 315-368.⁹
• Halpern, D. F. (1996). Thought and Knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking (3rd Ed.), Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.²³
• Kuhn, D. (1991). The skills of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.²⁹