Report on argumentation and teacher education in Europe

This document will ultimately form part of a comprehensive package of materials for teacher education and professional development in argumentation. The initial deliverable from Kaunas University of Technology described the rhetorical basis of argumentation theory for pre‐ and in‐service teachers, whilst this state of the art report sets out the current and rather unsatisfactory status of argumentation in curricula, initial teacher training/education and teacher professional development, across the fifteen S‐TEAM partner countries. We believe that this is a representative sample and that the report can be taken as a reliable snapshot of the situation in Europe generally

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Economics of the Firm and Economic Growth. An hybrid theoretical framework of analysis

The characterization of individual firms is an essential step toward the study of the behaviour of industries and other more aggregated units of economics, and so to the analysis of economic growth processes. Hence, the main goal of this study is to achieve a critical discussion around the conceptualisation of the firm and its role in the dynamical process of economic growth. The approach to the main topic starts with the construction of a theoretical matrix of the economics of the firm, opening with the two major traditions of institutionalist thought in economics, and evolving then towards some considerations around the contractual and the evolutionary approaches. Another important theoretical stream that deals with organizations in economic and sociological terms also appears, the population ecology approach. After this overview, it is developed a cross-exam of distinct theoretical perspectives and the identification of possible flaws of the neoclassical theory. This confrontation, which goes throughout many imperative and controversial issues within economics such as the nature of the firm and the cognitive capacities of economic agents, results in a systematisation about the impact of this discussion on economic growth. The conclusions appear as crucial to develop further research aiming the construction of economic growth models based on a microeconomics that is closer to the reality of firms.Firm; Economic Growth; Institutionalism; Evolutionary theory; Contractual Theory; Ecology Population Theory.

"Freedom" through Repression: Epistemic Closure in Agricultural Trade Negotiations

A central concern of critical theory is that of how the forces of Modern reason cause certain logics to become reified in the name of rational progress. Two such logics – the ongoing spread of liberal capitalism, and territorial particularism – are simultaneously embodied within social institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) that regulate the global economy, a phenomenon that occurs on the premise of maximising global welfare. Building upon a critical reading of Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative action, this article undertakes an empirical immanent critique of the extent to which such logics repress the possibility of normative imperatives being considered within agricultural trade negotiations. Specifically, it argues that the dialectic of functionalist and communicative rationality, operating as a theoretical heuristic, reveals that the DDA is susceptible to an ethical indictment that arises from its inability to countenance the alternatives to the dual logics of neo-liberalism and state-interest that could otherwise emerge from a free and rational discussion. The nature of the WTO as a site of social action is revealed to be that of a closed epistemic community in which important normative claims are repressed, and as such, one in which the underlying rational bases for communication are fundamentally distorted

From conditioning to learning communities: Implications of fifty years of research in e‐learning interaction design

This paper will consider e‐learning in terms of the underlying learning processes and interactions that are stimulated, supported or favoured by new media and the contexts or communities in which it is used. We will review and critique a selection of research and development from the past fifty years that has linked pedagogical and learning theory to the design of innovative e‐learning systems and activities, and discuss their implications. It will include approaches that are, essentially, behaviourist (Skinner and Gagné), cognitivist (Pask, Piaget and Papert), situated (Lave, Wenger and Seely‐Brown), socio‐constructivist (Vygotsky), socio‐cultural (Nardi and Engestrom) and community‐based (Wenger and Preece). Emerging from this review is the argument that effective e‐learning usually requires, or involves, high‐quality educational discourse, that leads to, at the least, improved knowledge, and at the best, conceptual development and improved understanding. To achieve this I argue that we need to adopt a more holistic approach to design that synthesizes features of the included approaches, leading to a framework that emphasizes the relationships between cognitive changes, dialogue processes and the communities, or contexts for e‐learning

Ethical Competence for Teachers: A Possible Model

In Education Sciences, the notion of ‘competence’ is widely used, both as an aim to be reached with students and as performance in teachers’ education. This article advances a type of competence that is highly relevant for teachers’ work, namely the ‘ethical competence.’ Ethical competence enables teachers to responsibly deal with the daily challenges arising from their professional roles. In this study, I put forward a definition of ethical competence and I propose a conceptual structure, both meant to support the illustration, description, and development of ethical competence for teachers

Learning and Instruction: Social-Cognitive Perspectives

In this article, we try to expand the lenses classically used in social psychology of development, and in particular, in the post-Piagetian tradition, to recent contributions of social and cognitive dynamics in development and learning. Psychological development has to be redefined as involving socially framed, culturally mediated, and interpersonally negotiated processes, and the dynamic relation between the person, others, objects, and instruments that are reconfigured through teaching–learning activities. The units of analysis, besides the traditional focus on the individual and/or isolated cognitive event, also include nowadays peer interaction and partners' roles, dialogical processes, argumentation, and specific institutional features of human practices, as illustrated through experimental social psychology. According to this general framework, learning and thinking appear more clearly as the collaborative result of autonomous minds confronting viewpoints and cultural artifacts (tools, semiotic mediations, tasks, division of roles) and trying to manage differences, feedbacks, and conflicts to pursue their activities. Moving from one activity to another, and from one space to another (pretest, joint activity, posttest), children have to reorganize their understanding, their language, and the organization of their social interactions

Action theory in Habermas and educational practices

In this paper I explore the potential for viewing education as an “unrestricted communication community” (Habermas 1990: 88), using categorisations from Habermas of different kinds of action as analytical tools for examining educational practices. For the paper, I pursue two main themes: 1) how the concept of communicative action in relation to the three forms of knowledge-constitutive interest (Habermas 1987) can be operationalised in educational discourse 2) how the distinguishing of communicative action and discourse ethics from other forms of action may be used to understand the interaction taking place in educational contexts to develop evaluative tools for examining teaching practices. The potential of this framework for encouraging critical reflection on teaching, on critical incidents in teaching, peer observation, or tutor observation of novice practitioners is also discussed in relation to the forms of reflexivity that Habermas identifies as necessary conditions of human freedom (1996). Taken together, these different constructs form a powerful framework for critically examining the truth and validity claims both explicitly made and implied in educational practices from the perspectives of the individual as well as the professional community to which the individual belongs. It is accepted that a rational, communicative action aimed at reaching consensus does not necessarily dominate either the school or the higher education institution’s normal mode of discourse. Thus, the paper also differentiates other forms of action, incorporating these into the overall critical framework

A Comparison Between the Impact of Rhetorical Argumentation and Narrating Stories as Communicative Tasks on Achieving the Mastery of Fluency and Accuracy

The present study is an investigation of the impact of the patterns of rhetorical argumentation, and narrating stories (together with describing past experiences) on students’ fluency and accuracy in speaking. Accordingly, the merit of speaking in any language is entirely based on identifying the components of speaking to design comprehensive tasks each in its specific context (Nunan, 1984), while the criterion for evaluating speaking a second or a foreign language is divided into fluency and accuracy (Brumfit, 1984). In the same sense, fluency and accuracy are two broad to be considered as components of speaking, specifically when it comes to testing the communicative proficiency of the students. Consequently, the task of identifying precisely the components of fluency and accuracy can be traced to the organizational patterns of speaking and the implementation of the different tasks to promote speaking

Assessing relevance

This paper advances an approach to relevance grounded on patterns of material inference called argumentation schemes, which can account for the reconstruction and the evaluation of relevance relations. In order to account for relevance in different types of dialogical contexts, pursuing also non-cognitive goals, and measuring the scalar strength of relevance, communicative acts are conceived as dialogue moves, whose coherence with the previous ones or the context is represented as the conclusion of steps of material inferences. Such inferences are described using argumentation schemes and are evaluated by considering 1) their defeasibility, and 2) the acceptability of the implicit premises on which they are based. The assessment of both the relevance of an utterance and the strength thereof depends on the evaluation of three interrelated factors: 1) number of inferential steps required; 2) the types of argumentation schemes involved; and 3) the implicit premises required