How can we encourage adolescents to ask the most effective questions? Several different lines of research design children’s and adolescents’ learning environments in ways that capitalize on self-initiated, largely self-directed question-asking and answer-seeking. We describe a number of studies indicating that such contexts yield effective outcomes for several different kinds of learning and across different populations. We discuss inquiry, and its importance for students developing a sense of agency and value in conducting their own inquiry and their learning more broadly. The role of argument, a context in which claims are expected to be justified by appeal to evidence, is highlighted as it can lead one to question a claim being made, and thus be seen as a driving factor to engaging in discourse about a claim. Finally, we stress that teachers must learn to cede control to an extent that allows students autonomy in choosing questions they find authentic and worthy of pursuit, and in letting students engage and address one another directly, allowing them to develop the norms of discourse that reinforce accountability to one another.

For many years, Inhelder and Piaget’s (1958) theoretical framework has served as a guide for examining cognitive changes emerging during the second decade of life. More recently, excitement has been generated by the identification of developments in the brain through the second decade that may be implicated in cognitive changes that occur during this decade (see Keating, 2004; Kuhn, 2006, 2009, for review). Yet the concepts of adolescent thinking becoming more formal, more abstract, and/or more systematic have yet to be firmly anchored in the day-to-day realities of how adolescents think about matters of consequence to them and how they need to think in order to engage effectively in the modern world (Kuhn, 2008). Moreover, most of the empirical evidence related to adolescent cognitive skills does not present a picture of strong and secure competence, making the question of how to support cognitive development in adolescence a pressing one.

In the first part of this chapter, we identify three areas of cognitive competence that we argue are critical to adolescents’ development if they are to engage optimally in twenty-first-century society. In the second part of the chapter, we describe some of our own efforts to support such development through the design of curricula to develop cognitive skills during what we argue is the critical period of early adolescence.

Introduction

Scope of the Investigation

The investigation to be described focuses on an individual's thinking processes, and as such it relates most directly to the sizable psychological literature on thinking and reasoning. Yet the work also addresses issues that are prominent in a number of other disciplines.

From a philosophical perspective, the present work relates to an increasing interest shown by philosophers in the nature and logic of natural language argumentation (Walton, 1989). As already mentioned, philosophers of education such as Scheffler (1965) have noted the importance of reflective thinking about thought, but their ideas have not been connected explicitly to the analysis of argumentation. Here we offer those with philosophical interests an analysis of elementary argumentive reasoning that is grounded in empirical data about the competencies and incompetencies that people exhibit in their argumentive reasoning about everyday topics.

From a language perspective, the present work relates to a growing area of research within discourse analysis pertaining to discourse that is argumentive (Grimshaw, 1990). What are the unique features that characterize argumentive in contrast to other kinds of discourse? Although it does not investigate social discourse directly, the research presented here, focused on the cognitive prerequisites of competent argument, offers some insight regarding the language of argument.

From sociological and political perspectives, the present work is relevant to a growing understanding of the complex interrelations that exist between individual and sociological processes (Dowd, 1990).

As the appearance of a volume like the present one attests, the growing use of the microgenetic method is in the process of transforming developmental research, focusing it on its true subject – change. Cross-sectional “snapshots” are not just limited in what they portray. More seriously, they may be misleading, since an individual's second encounter with a task may reveal an entirely different approach from a first encounter. The “dynamic assessment” over time that goes back to Vygotsky provides a more informative picture of how an individual functions. Extended over a longer time period, dynamic assessment merges with the microgenetic method. Strategies evolve with the exercise that comes from extended engagement, allowing observation of the change process – a process that presumably would take place in a similar way, although at a slower pace, in the absence of this dense experience.

In this pure form, the microgenetic method allows examination of behavior as it is reorganized simply as a consequence of its own functioning – a process we can assume is a common one in natural settings, since a great many behaviors do change in the absence of instruction or explicit feedback. In this form of the microgenetic method, which my co-workers and I began to use in the early 1980s as a means of studying mechanisms of change (Kuhn & Ho, 1980; Kuhn & Phelps, 1982), the only feedback individuals receive is that arising from their own actions.

No matter how implicit or unaware of it the subject is, some sort of epistemological theory regarding the process of knowing underlies a subject's argumentive reasoning. What basis does one have for knowing what is true with regard to a topic? What are the criteria for accepting beliefs as true, rejecting them as false, or modifying them? In a sense, these are questions that the present investigation has been designed to answer, insofar as these epistemological standards are reflected in the argumentive reasoning that subjects display.

To the extent that they are aware of them, it may also be fruitful to ask subjects in a more direct way about their epistemological beliefs. Although the primary objective of this study was not to examine explicit, or conscious, epistemological theories, responses to a number of questions included in the interview provide some sense of subjects' epistemological thinking. Our findings in this respect are the topic of this chapter. These findings reflect forms of epistemological thought that broadly resemble those reported in previous investigations of naive epistemological theories, beginning with those of Perry (1970) and continued by a number of others (King, Kitchener, Davidson, Parker, & Wood, 1983; Kitchener & Fischer, 1990; Kramer & Woodruff, 1986; Leadbeater & Kuhn, 1989).

Most of the interview questions on which the analyses presented in this chapter are based occur at the end of the interview for each topic.

In this chapter we examine subjects' ability to generate an alternative theory to their own – a theory that might be held by someone who disagreed with them and thought their theory was wrong. Note that this is a different dimension than the one that appears in chapter 2. There we found that a number of subjects express two (or more) alternative theories, endorsing both as conceivable explanations for the phenomenon. The question addressed in this chapter is whether a subject is able to conceive of a contrasting theory – one that someone who disagrees with the subject might cite. Can subjects identify what would constitute an alternative to what they themselves believe – something they conceive not to be a cause of the phenomenon?

This question is an important one. The pseudoevidence scripts examined in chapter 3 suggest the possibility that a scenario of events leading to school failure or return to crime may be regarded simply as “the way it happens,” without regard for the possibility that it could be otherwise. Hence, it is important to know whether subjects are able to conceive of alternative theories to their own, and it is also of interest to examine the relation between this ability and the reliance on pseudoevidence that we found so prevalent in chapter 3.

We begin with an examination of the theories that participants offer regarding the causes of school failure, prisoners' return to crime, and unemployment. The theories are in a way the least important part of the investigation, as our central concern is the nature of the arguments people offer to support their theories, not the theories themselves. Nonetheless, all of the thinking to be examined in the remainder of the book will have these theories as its subject. It is therefore worthwhile to begin with a close look at them.

The interview on each topic begins in a very simple, straightforward way with the question “What causes —?” Subjects are free to respond in any way they like, briefly or at length. When the subject finishes speaking, the interviewer introduces the probe “Anything else?” as an encouragement to the subject to continue. When the subject finishes speaking in response to this probe, the theory is accepted as complete. If the subject's theory includes multiple causes, the subject is asked to identify which cause he or she sees as the major cause of the phenomenon, and it is this cause that the subject is then asked to argue with respect to in the remainder of the interview. (See appendix 1 for the complete interview.)

PEOPLE AS THEORISTS

It is first of all necessary to establish that subjects participating in the study indeed have causal theories about the phenomena they are asked about and are able to express these theories in the interview situation.

The categories of reasoning described in each of the chapters were arrived at through an inductive, iterative procedure. The 160 subjects in the main sample produced a total of 480 protocols for the three topics. For each major skill examined (causal theories, supporting evidence, alternative theories, counterarguments, rebuttals), the procedure began with random selection of a set of approximately 20 protocols (representing all topics, as well as age, sex, and education groups). Copies of these protocols were distributed to the group undertaking category development for a major category (which included the author and one to three others). Each member of the group analyzed the protocols independently and devised a set of categories sufficient to account for the reasoning represented in these protocols. The group then met to compare category systems and to devise collaboratively a set of categories agreed on by the group. A second set of protocols was then randomly selected, copied, and distributed to the group for coding. As part of this second iteration, the group again met for reconciliation of the independently conducted coding and for further development and refinement of the category system. In addition, all protocols from earlier iterations were reviewed and recoded as necessary. This iterative procedure was continued until agreement was reached regarding the category system and the categories could be applied to a new set of protocols with high agreement (typically four to six iterations).

The ability not just to think, but to think well is, or at the very least should be, essential to fulfilled adult life. We might wish to ask, then, whether the thinking abilities of average people are sufficiently developed to make a maximum contribution to people's life fulfillment. Our ability to answer this question, it turns out, is severely limited. Human mental ability has been the subject of systematic empirical study for the past century, beginning with early psychometric investigations that provided the foundation for the theory and practice of the measurement of intelligence and culminating in the now-mature and well-respected field of modern cognitive psychology. Although much has been learned, there is still a good deal of human thinking about which we know almost nothing – thinking that might figure importantly in people's lives once they have completed formal schooling, and the particular intellectual demands it poses, and begin to channel their energies into the concerns of adult life.

Only very recently have researchers begun to examine the sorts of thinking that occur in people's everyday lives, in contrast to the kinds of thinking elicited on intelligence tests or in psychological laboratories or the kinds emphasized in school. Thus far, such efforts have focused largely on the thinking that people do in their work lives (Perlmutter et al., 1990; Scribner, 1986; Sternberg & Wagner, 1986; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985, 1986).

To justify adequately an assertion that one has made is in some sense the heart of argumentive reasoning. An inability to answer the “How do you know?” question suggests that the assertion should not have been made. In subsequent chapters, a case will be made that there are other aspects of argumentive reasoning that warrant close attention as well, but first it is essential to take a very close look at the arguments people offer to support the theories they espouse.

After subjects present their causal theories, the second segment of the interview for each of the three topics begins with the question, “How do you know that this is the cause —?” A number of probes follow, encouraging the subject to expand and become more specific, for example, “If you were trying to convince someone else that your view [that this is the cause] is right, what evidence [verbal emphasis] would you give to try to show this?” (See appendix 1 for full sequence of probes.) Probing ends with the question, “Is there anything someone could say or do to prove [verbal emphasis] that this is what causes —?” (If the answer is yes, the subject is asked to describe what it would be; if the answer is no, the subject is asked to explain why not.)

Subjects' responses to the request for evidence cover a very wide range. Not all or even a majority of responses, it turns out, fall into the category that we shall define as genuine evidence.

In this chapter we reach the most cognitively complex argumentive skill assessed in our interview. If a subject has generated either a genuine counterargument or an alternative theory, the subject is asked to rebut this opposing line of reasoning. The core question, which opens this segment of the interview is, “What could you say to show that this other person was wrong?” (The other person referred to is the one who disagrees with the subject's view and whose position is generated in the preceding segment of the interview.) Subjects frequently, however, anticipate this question, spontaneously offering a rebuttal immediately following a counterargument or alternative theory.

If a subject has been unsuccessful in generating either an alternative theory or a counterargument, the possibility of generating a rebuttal is foreclosed. For this reason, just before initiating this segment of the interview, the interviewer proposes an alternative theory to any subject who has not successfully generated one, thus providing the subject an opportunity to rebut it.

The skill examined in this chapter is the most complex one we assess because to execute it optimally the subject must integrate previous lines of argument. This can be done in either of two major ways. First, a rebuttal can integrate an argument (i.e., theory and supporting evidence) and counterargument by criticizing the counterargument, arguing why it does not have force and hence restoring force to the original argument. Second, a rebuttal can integrate an original and an alternative theory, arguing that the original theory is more correct.

CAUSAL THEORY AND JUSTIFICATION

1. 1. What causes prisoners to return to crime after they're released?

2. 1a. (Probe, when subject completes initial response) Anything else?

3. (2. If multiple causes mentioned) Which of these would you say is the major cause of prisoners' returning to crime?

4. 3. How do you know that this is the cause?

5. 3a. (Probe, if necessary) Just to be sure I understand, can you explain exactly how this shows that this is the cause?

6. 4. If you were trying to convince someone else that your view [that this is the cause] is right, what evidence [verbal emphasis] would you give to try to show this?

7. 4a. (Probe, if necessary) Can you be very specific, and tell me some particular facts you could mention to try to convince the person?

8. 5. Is there anything further you could say to help show that what you've said is correct?

9. 6. Is there anything someone could say or do to prove that this is what causes prisoners to return to crime?

10. 7. Can you remember when you began to hold this view?

11. 7a. (If no) Have you believed it for as long as you can remember?

12. 7b. (If yes) Can you remember what it was that led you to believe that this is the cause?

CONTRADICTORY POSITIONS

1. Suppose now that someone disagreed with your view that this is the cause. What might they say to show that you were wrong?

2. […]