Informal Reasoning and Education

517 Pages·1991·8.007 MB·English

by  James F. Voss, David N. Perkins, Judith W. Segal

INFORMAL
REASONING
AND
EDUCATION
edited by
JAMES F. VOSS
Learning Research and Development Center
University of Pittsburgh
DAVID N. PERKINS
Harvard University
JUDITH W. SEGAL
United States Department of Education
Washington, D.C.
RO Routledge
UTLEDG Taylor & Francis Group
E
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First Published by
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
365 Broadway
Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642
Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Copyright © 1991 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by
photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Informal reasoning and education / edited by James F. Voss, David N.
Perkins, Judith W. Segal.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-0208-8.—ISBN 0-8058-0209-6 (pbk.)
1. Thought and thinking—Study and teaching. 2. Reasoning—Study
and teaching. I. Voss, James F., 1930- II. Perkins, David N.
III. Segal, Judith W.
LB1590.3.I54 1990
370.15'24—dc20 90-43491
CIP
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality
of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the
original may be apparent.
Contents
Preface vii
PART I: Contexts for Informal Reasoning
1. Informal Reasoning in Science 3
Ryan D. Tweney
2. Informal Reasoning in the Medical Profession 17
Caryn Christensen and Arthur S. Elstein
3. Informal Reasoning and International Relations 37
James F. Voss
4. Informal Reasoning in the Judicial System 59
Jeanette A. Lawrence
5. Everyday Reasoning and the Roots of Intelligence 83
D. N. Perkins, Michael Farady, and Barbara Bushey
6. Informal Reasoning in Inner-city Children 107
Dalton Miller-Jones
7. Contexts of Informal Reasoning: Commentary 131
Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair
iii
iv CONTENTS
PART II: Modes and Models of Informal Reasoning
8. Informal Reasoning and Informal Logic 153
Merrilee H. Salmon
9. Beliefs about Thinking 169
Jonathan Baron
10. Example-Based Reasoning 187
Edwina L. Rissland
11. Informal Reasoning in Decision Theory 209
Jonathan W. Leland
12. Rhetoric and Informal Reasoning: Disentangling Some
Confounded Effects in Good Reasoning and Good Writing 225
Joseph M. Williams
13. Intuitive Belief Systems and Informal Reasoning in
Cognitive Development 247
Frank C. Keil
14. I Win—You Lose: The Development of Argumentative
Thinking 265
Nancy L. Stein and Christopher A. Miller
15. Modes and Models of Informal Reasoning: A Commentary 291
Raymond S. Nickerson
PART III: Informal Reasoning and Instruction
16. On Mathematics as Sense-Making: An Informal Attack
on the Unfortunate Divorce of Formal and Informal
Mathematics 311
Alan H. Schoenfeld
17. Nonformal Reasoning in Experts and in Science Students:
The Use of Analogies, Extreme Cases, and Physical
Intuition 345
John Clement
18. Informal Reasoning in High School History 363
Kevin O'Reilly
19. Higher Order Thinking in the Teaching of Social Studies:
Connections between Theory and Practice 381
Fred M. Newmann
CONTENTS V
20. Informal Reasoning and Writing Instruction 401
Arthur N. Applebee
21. Structured Teaching for Critical Thinking and Reasoning
in Standard Subject Area Instruction 415
Robert J. Swartz
22. Informal Reasoning Assessment: Using Verbal Reports
of Thinking to Improve Multiple-choice Test Validity 451
Stephen P. Norris
23. Informal Reasoning and Instruction: A Commentary 473
Larry Cuban
Author Index 485
Subject Index

PREFACE
TEACHING REASONING:
THE CHALLENGE FACING OUR SCHOOLS
Reasoning has long been considered one of the highest forms of mental activity.
Indeed, it plays an important role in virtually all areas of life, including the
vocational, the civic, the social, and the academic. People who are good rea-
soners generally excel, or so it is believed.
Although reasoning has always been held in high esteem, many would argue
that it is even more important to success in daily life now than ever before. We
live in a highly complex and rapidly changing technological environment. Infor
mation about complicated issues fill the pages of our newspapers, demanding a
high level of reasoning proficiency on the part of all citizens. The workplace is
also changing in ways that place greater demands on reasoning. Recent trend
data suggest that, in the economy of the future, a substantially larger segment of
the workforce can expect to encounter challenging reasoning requirements than
do so today. Offering evidence in support of this point, the Hudson Institute
(1987) reported that the fastest growing occupations in the United States require
a high level of proficiency in reasoning. By contrast, occupations that are declin
ing in size require a low level of proficiency. Using current economic statistics to
predict the skill requirements of the labor force in the year 2000, occupations that
are now in the middle of the skill requirement distribution for mathematics,
language, and reasoning proficiency will become the least skilled occupations of
the future.
Because reasoning plays such an important role in our lives, it is not surpris
ing that educators have always aimed to teach children how to reason. The
vii
Viii PREFACE
official documents of school districts throughout the United States now often
contain language that affirms such aspirations (Sizer, 1985). Although reasoning
has never achieved the status of an academic subject that consumes a specific
block of instructional time, many of the activities associated with learning aca
demic subjects have also always been considered useful in fostering proficiency
in reasoning. These include opportunities to read and interpret texts, develop
written and oral arguments, and solve problems. In this sense, although our
schools do not teach it as a separate subject, students are assumed to receive
instruction in reasoning as a byproduct of instruction in other subjects.
Yet, when we look more closely at the school curriculum, we find that not all
of the courses offered make challenging reasoning demands. Students who
choose the most difficult courses encounter such demands on a frequent basis,
whereas those who choose the least difficult ones encounter them rarely, if at all.
This, in turn, has led some educational observers to argue that, although our
schools express a commitment to teaching students how to reason, they do not
view this commitment as extending to all students.
In a historical overview of the evolution of American secondary education,
Powell, Farrar, and Cohen (1985) indicated that a crucial turning point in our
schools' interpretation of this commitment occurred during the first half of this
century. Our secondary schools then faced the enormous challenge of expanding
from selective institutions, designed to train an intellectual elite, to mass institu
tions, offering an education to all young people. Confronted with the need to
educate a much more varied student population, they responded by adding to the
school curriculum many new and intellectually undemanding courses. A college
placement track was retained for intellectually able and ambitious students, while
less demanding vocational and general tracks were added for other students.
Once established, this pattern of providing courses at varying levels of academic
difficulty became a standard feature of the curriculum. As a result, over the
years, large numbers of students have found themselves receiving educations that
have entailed few, if any, reasoning demands. The persistence of this situation
has led many to conclude that, although we have succeeded in making secondary
education available to all young people, we have never seriously accepted the
challenge of teaching all members of this diverse population how to become
competent thinkers and reasoners (see also Resnick, 1987).
Altogether, over the past several years, a diverse array of stakeholders in the
educational process have echoed concern about the school's lack of success in
teaching reasoning. Included among them are: school teachers, school admin
istrators and the professional organizations that represent them, government
agencies responsible for administering educational programs at the state and
national levels, and other groups that have an important influence on educational
policy (Bennett, 1988; Marzano et al., 1988; National Commission on Excel
lence in Education, 1983; National Governors' Association, 1986; Reich, 1989).
Their concern is buttressed by data from a variety of reports and assessments.
PREFACE ix
For example, in recent reports of the National Assessment of Educational Prog
ress (NAEP), students have been found to perform well on tasks that demand
routine basic skills, but poorly on tasks that demand complex higher order skills.
Data from reading assessments indicate that, although almost all students
eventually learn how to comprehend short, uncomplicated passages of text con
veying information about familiar phenomena, large numbers of students, even
at older ages, experience difficulty with longer and more complicated passages
and with passages that convey specialized information (NAEP, 1985). Similarly,
data from mathematics assessments indicate that almost all students eventually
learn how to perform basic calculation operations and solve simple word prob
lems, but large numbers of students, even at older ages, experience difficulty
applying mathematical concepts and operations to nonroutine situations (NAEP,
1988). Data from writing assessments tell a similar story. Large numbers of
students, even at older ages, experience difficulty with complex writing tasks,
such as building and evaluating arguments (NAEP, 1986).
As researchers follow recent graduates into the workplace, additional grounds
for concern about the quality of their reasoning emerges. A National Academy of
Sciences Panel, examining the performance of high school graduates in working
situations, reported that many graduates lack the ability to draw correct in
ferences from written, pictorial, or mathematical information, to develop alter
natives and reach conclusions, and to express their ideas intelligibly and effec
tively (National Academy of Sciences, 1984).
Studies of the instructional programs offered by schools provide yet further
grounds for concern. Several recent studies of American high schools, involving
visits to classrooms along with extensive interviews with students, teachers, and
parents, have presented a dismal picture of the frequency with which students
actually encounter demands for reasoning in the course of engaging in daily
classroom activities (Boyer, 1983; Goodlad, 1984; Sizer, 1985). The enormous
diversity of courses available in the typical American high school has led one set
of observers (Powell et al., 1985) to characterize it as a "shopping mall" that
seeks to accommodate a vast heterogeneity in clientele by providing a broad
spectrum of products. Included among the course offerings available in American
high schools are some that make strenuous reasoning demands and many others
in which it is possible to achieve a passing grade simply by memorizing the
information highlighted by the teacher and/or text. A small minority of students
(those seeking admission to highly select colleges) opt for the more demanding
courses, but the vast majority, to avoid academic engagement, select the ones
that make minimal reasoning demands.
Other fine-grained studies of instructional materials and activities reinforce
the view emerging from such global studies. Applebee (chapter 20 in this vol
ume), for example, has looked closely at the nature of school writing assign
ments. He has found that, in most classrooms, writing represents an opportunity
for assessing the factual knowledge students have acquired, rather than an oppor-