Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T00:39:38.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

What people may do versus can do

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2011

Deanna Kuhn
Affiliation:
Department of Human Development, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. dk100@columbia.eduwww.educationforthinking.org

Abstract

It warrants examining how well people can come to argue under supportive conditions, not only what they do under ordinary conditions. Sustained engagement of young people in dialogic argumentation yields more than the temporary “contextual effect” that Mercier & Sperber (M&S) identify in the target article. If such engagement were to become the norm, who can say what the argumentive potential of future generations is?

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Billig, M. (1996) Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, M., Crowell, A. & Kuhn, D. (2009) What constitutes skilled argumentation and how does it develop? Informal Logic 29(4):379–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graff, G. (2003) Clueless in academe: How schooling obscures the life of the mind. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, D. (1991) The skills of argument. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, D. & Crowell, A. (in press) Argumentation as a path to the thinking development of young adolescents. Psychological Science.Google Scholar
Kuhn, D., Goh, W., Iordanou, K. & Shaenfield, D. (2008) Arguing on the computer: A microgenetic study of developing argument skills in a computer-supported environment. Child Development 79(5):1310–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar