Deliberative argument: Using classroom discourse to foster critical thinking

Fostering critical thinking in the classroom requires an understanding of its roots in argumentative reasoning. Critical thinking involves eliciting and evaluating the reasons behind claims. To engage in this investigative activity, one must understand the elements of argument and how they come together to justify a conclusion. Research is converging on the view that students make substantial gains in their ability to engage in critical thinking (and transfer those gains to new topics) as they gain experience in argumentative dialogue. However, while practice in argumentative dialogue may promote a student’s ability to critically evaluate others’ claims, it may also hinder a student’s disposition to critical evaluate of their own. This article proposes an approach to argumentative dialogue that prompts students to put all ideas under scrutiny, including their own, in the service of developing a more subtle, more sophisticated, or simply more accurate understanding.