Arguing to Learn

This chapter reviews collaborative argumentation, where a community of learners works together to advance the collective state of knowledge through debate, engagement, and dialogue. Engagement in collaborative argumentation can help students learn to think critically and independently about important issues and contested values. Students must externalize their ideas and metacognitively reflect on their developing understandings. This chapter summarizes the history of argumentation theory; how arguing can contribute to learning through making knowledge explicit, conceptual change, collaboration, and reasoning skills; how argumentation skill develops in childhood; and how argumentation varies in different cultural and social contexts. The chapter concludes by describing a variety of tools that scaffold effective argumentation, including through computer-mediated communication forums and argumentation maps.