Argumentative strategies of undergraduate students participating in three different pedagogical practices

This study aims to investigate differences in argumentative reasoning of undergraduate students who have gone through three different pedagogical experiences. The argumentative reasoning is a metacognitive activity held through strategies such as justification of ideas, anticipation of alternative and opposing perspectives, and rebuttal of divergent perspectives (KUHN, 1991). The analytical specificity of this study consists on comparison of argumentative strategies that appear as one thinks about everyday and controversial topics. The method was based in adaptations of the interview script proposed by Kuhn (1991), that is, individual semi-structured interviews about two common, social and controversial topics in which participants should develop their perspectives (causal theories), justify them using evidence, anticipate alternative theories and counter-arguments, and rebuttal these divergent perspectives. The study included 15 participants divided into three groups according to the subjects they studied: six students of a course that focuses on the argument as a mediator of teaching and learning of contents from Psychology curriculum (DIP), four students of Introduction to Logic (DIL), and five students of another humanities course which does not focus on the development of the reasoning. The data were analyzed in two levels: analysis in order to identify the set of the data collected among the categories proposed by Kuhn (1991), and compare possible differences in argumentative strategies displayed by the participants in the debate on the proposed topics. The analysis showed that the inclusion of disciplines that focused on the improvement of reasoning (DIP and DIL) mobilizes in the individual a tendency to think about the grounds (through the development of evidence) and limits of their ideas (anticipating counter-arguments and alternative theories). So this study argues that factors such as motivation, lack of prior preparation and concepts about the main objective of the argument (defense's own point of view and consideration of alternative perspectives) can explain the weak performance observed in some skills.