当前位置: X-MOL 学术npj Sci. Learn. › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Improving analytical reasoning and argument understanding: a quasi-experimental field study of argument visualization
npj Science of Learning ( IF 4.2 ) Pub Date : 2018-12-04 , DOI: 10.1038/s41539-018-0038-5
Simon Cullen , Judith Fan , Eva van der Brugge , Adam Elga

The ability to analyze arguments is critical for higher-level reasoning, yet previous research suggests that standard university education provides only modest improvements in students’ analytical-reasoning abilities. What pedagogical approaches are most effective for cultivating these skills? We investigated the effectiveness of a 12-week undergraduate seminar in which students practiced a software-based technique for visualizing the logical structures implicit in argumentative texts. Seminar students met weekly to analyze excerpts from contemporary analytic philosophy papers, completed argument visualization problem sets, and received individualized feedback on a weekly basis. We found that seminar students improved substantially more on LSAT Logical Reasoning test forms than did control students (d = 0.71, 95% CI: [0.37, 1.04], p < 0.001), suggesting that learning how to visualize arguments in the seminar led to large generalized improvements in students’ analytical-reasoning skills. Moreover, blind scoring of final essays from seminar students and control students, drawn from a parallel lecture course, revealed large differences in favor of seminar students (d = 0.87, 95% CI: [0.26, 1.48], p = 0.005). Seminar students understood the arguments better, and their essays were more accurate and effectively structured. Taken together, these findings deepen our understanding of how visualizations support logical reasoning and provide a model for improving analytical-reasoning pedagogy.



中文翻译:

改进分析推理和论点理解:论点可视化的准实验现场研究

分析论点的能力对于更高层次的推理至关重要,但是先前的研究表明,标准的大学教育仅在学生的分析推理能力上提供了适度的提高。哪些教学方法对于培养这些技能最有效?我们调查了为期12周的本科生研讨会的有效性,在该研讨会中,学生练习了一种基于软件的技术来可视化辩论性文本中隐含的逻辑结构。研讨班的学生每周开会,分析当代分析哲学论文的摘录,完成论证可视化问题集,并每周收到个性化反馈。我们发现研讨班的学生在LSAT逻辑推理测试表格上比对照学生有了更多的进步(d = 0.71,95%CI:[0.37,1.04],p  <0.001),这表明在研讨会上学习如何可视化论点可以使学生的分析推理技能得到广泛的普遍提高。此外,从并行课程中得出的对研讨会学生和对照学生的最后论文的盲目评分显示,对研讨会学生的偏爱很大(d  = 0.87,95%CI:[0.26,1.48],p  = 0.005)。研讨班的学生更好地理解了论点,他们的论文也更加准确和有效。综上,这些发现加深了我们对可视化如何支持逻辑推理的理解,并为改进分析推理教学法提供了模型。

更新日期:2018-12-04
down
wechat
bug