Taking Perspectives: Teaching Critical Thinking in the Argumentation Course.

Abstract

ABSTRACT Argumentation courses, which emphasize the theories of argumentation, and debate courses, which teach competitive debate, can effectively teach critical thinking, training students to see situations from a variety of perspectives and then to evaluate those perspectives for their relative merit. William G. Perry maps out nine stages by which college students move from uncritical acceptance of Authority to being independent critical thinkers. Debate lends itself to the development of stages One through Six, whereby students move closer to apprehending knowledge as relative and truth as subjective through the processes of defending opposite viewpoints and researching controversial topics. Argumentation is best suited for stages Six through Nine, as it examines how the student's point of view can best be supported through logic, reasoning, and evidence. For ..his purpose, Stephen Toulmin's Model of Argumentation provides a method for revealing the interrelatedness of arguments and suggesting the extensive reach of argumentation into students' decision-making lives. Fallacies of reasoning and tests of evidence provide two practical ways for exploring that decision-making process. (An outline of Perry's nine positions of development, and a diagram of Toulmin's Model of Argumentation are appended.) (MM)