How to Argue in Class

Just like weightlifting or playing the piano, practice is essential to help students develop the analysis skills necessary for evaluating and developing arguments. But what does it look like to practice arguing in the classroom?

ThinkerAnalytix is a nonprofit that partners with the Harvard Philosophy Department to develop resources and lesson plans using something called argument mapping — a visual method of displaying how reasons work to support a claim. These maps show the structures of arguments so students can actually see how an argument is constructed, pinpoint areas of contention, and assemble their own.

“Arguments are everywhere and almost everything is an argument,” says Nate Otey, COO and lead instructor at ThinkerAnalytix. “It’s impossible to imagine education without arguments, since a fundamental goal of education is to help students not only express and communicate their beliefs and reasons for that belief, but to be able to understand other people’s reasons and evidence and update their own thinking based on evidence.”

Early research suggests that argument mapping is incredibly successful at developing these skills, with some analyses of studies of the practice finding that argument mapping courses nearly doubled critical thinking skills, compared to standard critical thinking courses.

To get teachers comfortable using argument mapping in their classes, ThinkerAnalytix has developed professional development offerings and resources to support the method in the classroom. Here, Otey discusses what argument mapping is and how it can be used to evaluate an argument.

What is argument mapping?

Every argument has a structure and one of the potential explanations for the powerful effects of argument mapping is that it conveys that structure visually, rather than as a block of text. Students identify and plot the relationship between the main claim or thesis statement and its supporting premises or co-premises.

“If you read something in paragraph form, it’s washing over you and your brain is trying to decode how these sentences fit together,” says Otey. “What we’re doing is we’re showing students visually how these sentences relate to each other.”

>> Practice identifying main claims and premises.

How do you evaluate an argument?

Students also need to practice thinking about whether an argument is solid. To do so, students need to look at the premises a claim rests on and ask whether they’re true or if they come from a reliable source. If not, the claim may be invalid.

Additionally, the visual structure also allows students to think about inferences — represented by the lines connecting a premise to the conclusion — in an argument. “An inference has to do with how relevant a premise is to the claim above it,” says Otey. “So, students need to think about how persuasive of a reason we should find this premise in supporting a claim — for example, it’s a fact that Tom Brady has won seven Super Bowls. But how relevant is that to the claim that Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time?”

>> Explore and discuss sample argument maps.

Agreeing to Disagree

While students need to be able to assemble and build a strong case for their beliefs, it’s equally as important that they learn to listen to opposing views. To do that, ThinkerAnalytix asks students and teachers to participate in an assignment inspired by the work of Javier Hidalgo at the University of Richmond called The Disagreement Project.

Participants interview someone who holds an opposing viewpoint. They record the conversation and write it up honestly and without judgment, map the argument, and present it to the class.

“The skill being built here is intellectual charity,” says Otey. “[That means] getting students to think about how they can understand something they disagree with — not necessarily to change their mind — but to try to give it a fair shake.”

>> Access the disagreement project here.