Yair Neuman

Construction of Collective and Individual Knowledge in Argumentative Activity.

In this article, we elaborate methodologies to study construction of knowledge in argumentative activities. For this purpose, we report on a quasi-empirical study on construction of knowledge through successive argumentative activities on a controversial issue. A group of 120 fifth grade students participated in successive argumentative activities; some activities involved individuals and some involved collectives. According to a first methodology, construction of knowledge was measured through arguments/outcomes produced. We developed tools for evaluating changes in individual and collective arguments. In the study, we showed the generally beneficial effect of argumentative activities on collective and individual arguments/outcomes. The significant discrepancies between collective and individual arguments suggested that individual students only partly internalized the collectively constructed arguments. We developed a qualitative methodology to refine this hypothesis as well as other hypotheses concerning the interpretation of the quantitative study. The integration of the quantitative and qualitative methodologies for studying argumentation helped identify several mechanisms of construction of knowledge in argumentative activities. In particular, it brought new light on the mediating role of representational tools such as Argumentative Maps or Pro-Con tables.

Two Wrongs May Make a Right ... If They Argue Together

Several studies have investigated the cognitive development of interacting peers. This study focuses on a phenomenon that has not yet been studied: the cognitive gains of 2 children with low levels of competence who fail to solve a task individually but who improve when working in peer interaction. We show that this phenomenon (which we call the two-wrongs-make-a-right phenomenon) may occur when (a) the 2 wrongs disagree, (b) they have different strategies, and (c) active hypothesis testing is made possible. In a preliminary study, 30 Grade 10 low-achieving students were tested about the rules they use to compare 2 decimal fractions in a questionnaire. The students who were diagnosed as wrongs were invited to solve a task (the 6-cards task) with peers. Three kinds of pairs were formed: 7 W1-W2 pairs in which the 2 wrongs have different conceptual bugs; 4 W1-W1 pairs in which the 2 wrongs have the same conceptual bugs; 4 R-W pairs in which a wrong interacted with a right student. The 6-cards task was designed to create conflicts between students with different conceptual bugs and between wrong and right students. Two days after solving the 6-cards task, the students were asked to answer a similar questionnaire individually. The preliminary study revealed the two-wrongs-make-a-right phenomenon: Among the 7 W1-W2 pairs, at least 1 wrong became right. In contrast, in the 4 R-W pairs, only 1 wrong became right, and in the 3 W1-W1 pairs, no change was detected. In a case study that replicated the phases of the preliminary study, disagreement, argumentative operations (such as challenge and concession), hypothesis testing (with a calculator), and the internalization of social interactions mediated the change of peers from wrongs to rights. We then replicated the initial study with 72 low-achieving Grade 10 and 11 students, confirming the two-wrongs-make-a-right effect.

Missing the Point or Missing the Norms?: Epistemological Norms as Predictors of Students' Ability to Identify Fallacious Arguments.

Abstract The research described in this paper investigates one possible explanation for students’ ability or inability to identify fallacious arguments. As students’ ability to identify informal reasoning fallacies has been the subject of scant empirical investigation, the current study may broaden our knowledge concerning this phenomenon and locate it in a wider context of epistemological understanding. We hypothesized that students’ ability to identify invalid arguments (informal reasoning fallacies) in practice would be explained by their familiarity with argumentation norms. Two hundred and eighty-one middle and high school students were asked to perform informal reasoning fallacies and argumentation norms identification tasks. We compared performance on the fallacies task between students who were and were not familiar with the argumentation norms. The results provide strong support for our hypothesis by showing that students who were aware of general argumentation norms performed better in informal reasoning fallacies tasks.

Identification of Informal Reasoning Fallacies as a Function of Epistemological Level, Grade Level, and Cognitive Ability.

Informal reasoning fallacies are violations of critical discussion norms. As epistemological understanding of knowledge justification appears to underlie the informal reasoning skills of argument construction and evaluation, it was hypothesized that adolescents with greater epistemological sophistication would be more able to identify informal reasoning fallacies. It was hypothesized that 11th graders would be more epistemologically sophisticated than 7th or 9th graders and, thus, would more likely identify fallacies. Students responded to questions regarding argument scenarios that did or did not contain fallacies. More 11th graders identified fallacies. Epistemological level predicted only identification of one type of fallacy that might be described as epistemological in nature. Cognitive ability also seemed to contribute to the increased ability with grade to identify fallacies.

Pupils' evaluation and generation of evidence and explanation in argumentation

BACKGROUND Studies on argument have found that participants tend to prefer explanations to evidence. This apparent bias toward explanation has been qualified recently by research that has found it to diminish with the availability of evidence. AIM This study examines the use of explanation versus evidence in the context of argumentation with reference to the goals of particular argument situations. SAMPLE Seventy-nine eighth-grade pupils at a regular, urban middle school. METHOD The pupils read argumentation scenarios, each having the stated goal of either explaining or proving a claim. The pupils rated the degree to which each of two provided assertions (one a theoretical explanation, and the other evidence-based) helped achieve the goal of the argument. On a second task, the pupils chose which of the two assertions should be more effective in achieving the argument goal. On the third task, the pupils generated either an explanation or evidence for each of the argumentation scenarios. RESULTS Pupils demonstrated sensitivity to the relative epistemic strength of explanation and evidence. They rated explanations as more advantageous in achieving the explanation goal, and evidence as more advantageous in achieving the proof goal. Conversely, however, when asked to generate or recall an explanation or evidence, pupils produced more explanations than evidence independent of the argumentation goal. CONCLUSIONS The study refines the definition of argumentation context to include specific goals. Pupils were sensitive to the context of the argumentation situation (e.g.goals, availability of evidence). However, they appeared to have a disposition toward explanation when asked to produce an explanation or evidence-based justification.

Cultural Resources and the Gap between Educational Theory and Practice.

One source of potential failure in fostering reforms in education is educators’ cap-tivity between an educational manifesto—a conscious ideology or theory, which aimsto guide educational practice—and dominant cultural resources that may prevent theactualization of the manifesto. The aim of this paper is to raise educators’ awarenessof this issue and to illustrate, through the qualitative analysis of an educationalactivity, the dynamics in which an educational manifesto is imprisoned by culturalresources.

Metaphor Identification in Large Texts Corpora

Identifying metaphorical language-use (e.g., sweet child) is one of the challenges facing natural language processing. This paper describes three novel algorithms for automatic metaphor identification. The algorithms are variations of the same core algorithm. We evaluate the algorithms on two corpora of Reuters and the New York Times articles. The paper presents the most comprehensive study of metaphor identification in terms of scope of metaphorical phrases and annotated corpora size. Algorithms’ performance in identifying linguistic phrases as metaphorical or literal has been compared to human judgment. Overall, the algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art algorithm with 71% precision and 27% averaged improvement in prediction over the base-rate of metaphors in the corpus.

Patterns of Verbal Mediation During Problem Solving: A Sequential Analysis of Self-Explanation

Abstract The explanations that participants give themselves (self-explanations) while learning or solving problems have been shown to be positively associated with various performance measures. The major aim of this study was to identify patterns of self-explanation that distinguish between good and poor problem solvers. Thirty-two Grade 9 students were asked to solve 3 mixture problems—1 warm-up problem and 2 test problems—while thinking aloud. The problem-solving process was videotaped, protocols were transcribed, and 5 content categories were identified. Through a sequential analysis, patterns of self-explanation that differentiate between good and poor problem solvers were identified.

Go Ahead, Prove that God Does Not Exist! On High School Students' Ability To Deal with Fallacious Arguments.

Abstract Informal reasoning fallacies are arguments that are psychologically pervasive but logically incorrect. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that students’ ability to identify the fallacies is associated with a process of text comprehension, specifically with a sub-process of inference during text comprehension. One hundred and eighty four high school students from three grade levels of an urban heterogeneous high school in Israel participated in the study. The students were asked to complete informal reasoning fallacies and text comprehension tasks. It was found that performance in the text comprehension tasks significantly predicted students’ ability to identify the fallacies.

Metaphor-based meaning excavation

Excavating the meaning of a target term is a challenge facing information sciences and various applications of Web 3.0. In this paper, we present a novel method for excavating the meaning of a target term by analyzing metaphors in which the term is embedded. More specifically, we (1) review some of the basic theoretical difficulties associated with the dominant cognitive theories of metaphor; (2) outline a mathematical model of metaphor that addresses some of these difficulties; (3) introduce a novel method for excavating metaphor-based meaning; and (4) illustrate the relevance of the methodology and the potential applications of the model with a concrete example.