Hi folks,

Has anyone in our yahoo groups produced a bibliography of research
that supports the use of argumentation mapping to foster critical
thinking? I would like to experiment with the use of Compendium with
a group of middle school academically and intellectually gifted
students mapping the impact of fossil fuel consumption on tensions in
the Middle East and global warming.

I'll want to hook up with an educational researcher interested in this
type of cognitive accelerant.

In response to the vizthink post, I found myself surfing around Robert
Horn's website when I came across a .pdf file with the following claim:

Claim. Research is finding that a semester's practice in doing
argumentation mapping is the best way to teach critical thinking. That
is work being done by Professor Tim van Gelder of the University of
Melbourne. He is finding that students who practice argumentation
mapping for a semester gain twice as much in critical thinking skills
as those gained in 3 years of undergraduate education.

Method. What was his method? Van Gelder says: "First students every
semester are pre- and post-tested ...using two different tests - one
the California Critical Thinking Skills Test and the other a written
test of our own devising, much like the Graduate Record Exam Writing
Assessment, and graded blindly by two independent scorers."

Results. "In the most recent study...students showed gains in critical
thinking across both tests of almost one standard deviation, " van
Gelder reports.

Interpretation. "This is about 4 times the expected gain for standard
critical thinking courses, and almost twice the gain in critical
thinking for three years of undergraduate education."

This is just the kind of research that I would be interested in.

Sincerely,

Gregory Louie
Biotechnology Teacher
Gravelly Middle School


--- In vims@yahoogroups.com, "karenostorer" <karenostorer@...> wrote:
>
> As fellow "visual thinkers" you might be interested in knowing about
> the VizThink conference coming up in January in San Francisco. Many
> contemporary visual thinking pioneers will be there as invited
> "facilitators" (they're not "presenting"!).
>
> Here are just a few of the facilitators:
> Robert Horn, author of Visual Language: Global Communication for the
> 21st Century
> Dave Gray, founder of Xplane
> David Sibbet, founder of Grove Consultants
> Nigel Holmes, former graphics director of Time magazine
> Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics
>
> This conference is sure to be visually and intellectually stimulating!
> Early registration discounts end October 24. For more detail, see the
> VizThink conference website, http://vizthink.com/
>
> Karen Bennett
>