Introduction: Special Issue on Argumentationin Education in Scandinavia and England

Richard Andrews Æ Frøydis Hertzberg

Published online: 12 August 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

The genesis for this special issue on argumentation in education in England,

Norway and Sweden was a two-day doctoral seminar on argumentation held at the

University of Oslo in April 2008. Chaired by Frøydis Hertzberg, this seminar

provided a forum for doctoral students and lecturers in Norway and Sweden to come

together with Richard Andrews, visiting from the Institute of Education at The

University of London, in order to share ideas on the state of argumentation in

schools and higher education—at least as far as it concerned the three countries

involved. But we hope the significance of the discussions, represented by the articles

in this issue of Argumentation, will be felt internationally.

First, it should be noted that the advent of an Argumentation and Education

strand at the 2006 ISSA conference in Amsterdam signified a rise of interest in

argumentation in this particular applied field, as well as a mutual prior interest from

educationalists in the study of argumentation. Interest ranges from primary through

secondary (elementary through high) schooling and on to further and higher

education contexts, largely because argumentation is central to the development of

rational thinking in personal, social and educational development (Billig 1996). Its

importance in higher education has never been in doubt, even though in countries

where the rhetorical tradition has declined since the 19th century (like England) it

has only tacit, assumed significance. But with an increase in the number of studies in

the last 20 years (e.g., Mitchell 1994a, b; Andrews et al. 2009) at the interfaces of

the last years of schooling and the beginning of university, as well as at secondary

R. Andrews (&)

Department of Learning, Curriculum and Communication, Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy,

Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK

e-mail: r.andrews@ioe.ac.uk

F. Hertzberg

Department of Teacher Education and School Development, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

e-mail: froydis.hertzberg@ils.uio.no

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Argumentation (2009) 23:433–436

DOI 10.1007/s10503-009-9168-5

school and primary school levels, argumentation now pervades the educational

curriculum.

What theoretical principles underpin practice in the field of education as far as

argumentation is concerned? The principal influence has been from argumentation

studies within classical and contemporary rhetoric; and in particular the rhetorics

identified within the North American tradition which derive, in turn, from the

classical tradition as well as more recently from the 19th century Scottish tradition

(Bain 1871). Rhetoric is seen to be a source for the categorization of broad types of

writing within the curriculum, distinguishing argument from narrative, exposition

and the more factual, descriptive genres. Debates about the curriculum include the

matter of whether argument teaching should be explicit and generic (as in higher

education within the USA in rhetoric and composition classes for beginning

undergraduates); or whether it is best taught in the service of learning a particular

discipline (arguing in History, say, being different from argumentation in the

sciences). At secondary school level, it is now acknowledged that despite the

difficulties in the art, the teaching of argumentation—both for compositional as well

as cognitive development—is essential for the success of students. One important

distinction that can be made is between argumentation and persuasion, where the

latter is seen as one of the functions of argument. However, argumentation is a

technical process whereas persuasion is an effect of good argument; they are not

synonymous.

A secondary influence has been the work of Toulmin (1958/2003) and his

followers, particularly through teachers and lecturers who have used his model (to

his surprise) within communication studies as a basis for teaching argument. At

school level, it has been the ‘field-independent’ dimension of Toulmin’s work that

has been most influential (i.e., the generic model) even though its declared function

as a way of testing the soundness of arguments has been used as a guide to actually

composing arguments. The limitations of the model for the latter function are

evident: it appears rather static as a composing tool, its architectural nature proving

hard for young writers to use as they develop their plans and drafts. But its value in

checking (for both students and teachers) where an argument has clear claims

(propositions) and supporting evidence—and what the warrants and backing are that

enable such a connection between claims and grounds—is invaluable. It is also

helpful in identifying how an opposing point of view can be rebutted. Its ‘field-

dependent’ dimension comes more to the fore in university disciplines, where the

different fields have different modes of operation.

The dialectical and pragma-dialectical approaches to argumentation have

probably had the least impact on educational practice, at least to date, and certainly

within the English and Scandinavian contexts on which the present issue focuses its

attention. Such a lack of influence is to be regretted, as pragma-dialectics provides a

useful procedure for confronting, opening, arguing and concluding discussion in an

atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding. Both education traditions value

openness, debate and discussion in a democratic spirit, and both would have much

to learn from didactic procedures that could be converted to pedagogic ones for use

at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. Not unrelated to the

dialectical approach is a broader-based interest in dialogue (see Simon and

434 R. Andrews, F. Hertzberg

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Richardson in this issue), dialogism (Bakhtin 1982) and dialogic teaching (e.g.,

Alexander 2005).

With the help of Vygotsky (1962), the notion that argument is not possible in the

early years of elementary schooling has now been put to rest, with argumentation

now appearing in the curriculum in England, at least (largely through discussion

rather than in writing). It is Vygotsky who remains the principal locus of theory,

particularly in terms of the psycho-social development of argument and argumen-

tation in young people. His constructivist approach, coupled with an interest in

teaching via the notion of scaffolding and the ‘zone of proximal development’ have

been helpful in understanding and designing learning in the classroom. Such a

contribution has been closely allied to the value of discussion in classrooms, with

the notion that what is discussed and listened to ‘becomes’, in effect, inner speech

and subsequently abstract thought.

The contribution of Habermas (1984), while not readily apparent in the

classrooms of England and Scandinavia, nevertheless has potential significance for

education. His emphasis on argumentation as a ‘court of appeal’ for conflicts and

contradictions in everyday life is supplemented by a belief that argumentation is

central to learning because it enables us to learn from mistakes. The key quotation is

‘‘Argumentation plays an important role in learning processes… Thus we call a

person rational who, in the cognitive-instrumental sphere, expresses reasonable

opinions and acts efficiently; but this rationality remains accidental if it is not

coupled with the ability to learn from mistakes, from the refutation of hypotheses

and from the failure of interventions.’’ (p18) It has to be said, though, that Habermas

does not yet figure in much discussion about argumentation and education.

Finally, the linguistic and communicative dimension of argumentation is

recognized in those articles in this issue (e.g., Nestlog, Coffin) that use Halliday’s

(1978) relationships between content (the ideational), function (the relational) and

form (the textual dimension) of systemic functional linguistics to explore and

understand students’ compositions. The social semiotic (multimodal) approach to

discourse is a potentially rich one for argumentation studies, not least in education

where issues of power are clearly evident in teacher–student relationships, but also

in terms of the semiotics of learning. Such an approach would ask seemingly simple

questions like ‘What are the linguistic and other modal resources for learning?’,

‘What forms does learning take and how is it assessed?’ and ‘What role does

argumentation have in learning, and how is it manifested in semiotic codes?’

The articles in this special issue approach argumentation from the point of view

of educational practice, on the whole. We have arranged the sequence of articles in

terms of the age groups to which the article refers, starting with the youngest. We

have preferred this way of structuring the collection rather than a comparative split

between English articles on the one hand, and Scandinavian ones on the other,

because we think the common interests and practices with regard to argumentation

are more telling than the differences.

Rather than recite the focus of each article, we leave the abstracts to orient the

reader to the particular focus of each piece. We think that what the articles show

collectively, to varying degrees of explictness, is a theoretical basis in Vygotskian

thought combined with a rhetorical and/or linguistic and/or multimodal perspective.

Introduction 435

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The influence of Toulmin is evident in a number of cases, both in a general sense

and in specific cases of subject- or discipline focus. What is yet to be explored is the

relationship between education and specifically learning on the one hand, and the

pragma-dialectical approach and/or a more philosophical approach, as characterized

by Habermas, on the other. We thus look forward to continued research at the

interface of these important fields.

References

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Andrews, R., C. Torgerson, G. Low, and N. McGuinn. 2009. Teaching argument writing to 7–14 year

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Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Billig, M. 1996. Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge:

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Habermas, J. 1984. The theory of communicative action: vol 1 Reason and the rationalization of society(trans: Thomas McCarthy). Boston, MA: Beacon Press and London: Heinemann. (originally

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