Argumentation in Higher Education : Improving Professional Practice Through Theory and Research

Argumentation in Higher Education offers professors, lecturers and researchers informative guidance for teaching effective argumentation skills to their undergraduate and graduate students. This professional guide aims to make the complex topic of argumentation open and transparent. Grounded in empirical research and theory, but with student voices heard strongly throughout, this book fills the gap of argumentation instruction for the undergraduate and graduate level.

Written to enlighten even the most experienced professor, this text contributes to a better understanding of the demands of speaking, writing, and visual argumentation in higher education, and will undoubtedly inform and enhance course design. The book argues for a more explicit treatment of argument (the product) and argumentation (the process) in higher education, so that the ground rules of the academic discipline in question are made clear. Each chapter concludes with practical exercises for staff development use.

Topics discussed include:

• The importance of argument
• The current state of argumentation in higher education
• Generic skills in argumentation
• The balance between generic and discipline specific skills
• Information communication technologies and visual argumentation

How can we best teach argumentation so that students feel fully empowered in their academic composition? Professors (new and experienced), lecturers, researchers, professional developers and writing coaches worldwide grappling with this question will find this accessible text to be an extremely valuable resource.

Richard Andrews is Professor in English at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Richard Andrews has ten years of experience teaching English, Drama, and English as a Second Language in schools in Yorkshire, London and Hong Kong. Since then, he has worked on initial and continuing teacher education at the universities of Hull, Middlesex (London), York, the Institute of Education (London) and New York University. He is the author and editor of a number of books on argument, including Narrative and Argument (Open University Press, 1989), Teaching and Learning Argument (Cassell, 1995) and, with Sally Mitchell, Essays in Argument (Middlesex University Press, 2000) and an edited collection of academic essays, Learning to Argue in Higher Education (Heinemann/Boynton-Cook, 2001). His research interests are in argumentation (verbal and visual), visual literacy’s and e-learning. He continues to run workshops and courses for teachers and students: most recently ‘Dramatic Activities in the English Classroom’ and ‘Educational Linguistics’ at NYU, and ‘Argumentation and Education’ at The University of York.