Abstract
Experimental evidence shows that in dedicated Critical Thinking courses “Lots of Argument Mapping Practice” (LAMP) using a software tool like Rationale considerably improves students’ critical thinking skills. We believe that teaching with LAMP has additional cognitive and pedagogical benefits, even outside dedicated Critical Thinking subjects. Students learn to better understand and critique arguments, improve in their reading and writing, become clearer in their thinking and, perhaps, even gain meta-cognitive skills that ultimately make them better learners. We discuss some of the evidence for these claims, explain how, as we believe, LAMP confers these benefits, and call for proper experimental and educational research.
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Notes
- 1.
For more details about Rationale TM, including its conventions and more examples, see http://rationale.austhink.com/
- 2.
Footnote for logicians: Some arguments containing logical operators such as universal quantifiers (e.g. categorical syllogisms) legitimately contain such operators as danglers. For example, in ‘All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal’ the key term ‘All’ is legitimately a dangler.
- 3.
Based on an example from Scriven (1977).
- 4.
- 5.
We have reason to believe (from personal communication) that the LSAT has been successfully used to measure improvements in critical thinking in an as-yet-unpublished experiment involving argument mapping at Princeton University. Note, however, that Princeton undergraduates are a highly select bunch who, unlike the average subject of our experiments, already possess the high level of literacy needed to get a substantial improvement on LSAT critical thinking.
- 6.
- 7.
In one subject we gathered feedback half-way through the semester. The results of that feedback are given here whenever relevant.
- 8.
Since the first edition of this chapter was published, other instructors have used versions of LAMP in standard undergraduate courses. One as-yet-unpublished experiment was conducted at Princeton University and compared LAMP results with a control, with encouraging results (personal communication). As far as we are aware, this is the only controlled, pre-post-tested study of an argument mapping intervention in a standard classroom. We hope there will be more.
- 9.
We have mostly used Argument Mapping in university subjects, though we have had some experience with senior secondary and with gifted primary school students, as well as with professional adults in the IARPA project.
- 10.
Their maps, also, reflected this shift, though it is difficult to separate their mapping skill from their understanding.
- 11.
‘BS’ was code for bovine excrement.
- 12.
For a glimpse at some of the benefits of fast feedback and collaborative learning see Mazur (1997).
- 13.
The failure to truly understand what we’re reading extends far beyond students. In one workshop, hardened bureaucrats were scandalised when they realised they were unable to articulate the argument in a memo. ‘And yet,’ they said, ‘this is so utterly familiar! I read things like this all the time!’
- 14.
- 15.
This is not surprising. As Deanna Kuhn (1991) showed, people’s grasp of argument is poor in general. Kuhn’s own studies were conducted in the US; but there is no need to assume the situation is better elsewhere.
- 16.
See Thomason (1990).
- 17.
There are ways for a teacher to focus on and scaffold this process of producing written prose from a map. We have constructed both a step-by-step guide for doing so and exercises to hone the skill.
- 18.
- 19.
Thirteen out of twenty-eight students (46 %) agreed that argument maps helped keep tutorial discussions on topic, seven (25 %) disagreed, while eight respondents were undecided.
- 20.
We have seen this not only in classroom situations but in the corporate world as well. When facilitating a meeting on a politically sensitive issue where no one was prepared to be seen to be breaking with the ‘party line’, we found that genuine, valuable discussion got going only once someone said, ‘I don’t actually think this, but someone might say…’, whereupon others joined in and voiced much underlying anxiety in this way.
- 21.
By ‘real’ texts we mean genuine texts derived from published sources, not artificially simple texts contrived by us. The task of understanding and mapping real examples of arguments is much harder, since such arguments are seldom clearly laid out in prose.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Mark Daley, Steve Crowley, Olaf Ciolek, Tim van Gelder, the editors and anonymous reviewers for very helpful feedback.
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Rider, Y., Thomason, N. (2014). Cognitive and Pedagogical Benefits of Argument Mapping: L.A.M.P. Guides the Way to Better Thinking. In: Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S., Sherborne, T. (eds) Knowledge Cartography. Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6470-8_6
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