News

Call for papers: Technological Innovations for Facilitation of Collaborative Argumentation-Based Learning

article_published_on_label
June 4, 2020

Journal:
Innovations in Education and Teaching International
Current Impact Factor: 1.171

Guest editors:
Omid Noroozi; Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands
Armin Weinberger; Saarland University, Germany
Paul A. Kirschner; Open University, the Netherlands

Dear potential contributors,

Dr. Omid Noroozi, along with Prof. Armin Weinberger and Prof. Paul Kirschner, are guest editing a special issue for the Journal of Innovations in Education and Teaching International (see below) entitled: Technological Innovations for Facilitation of Collaborative Argumentation-Based Learning.

If you wish to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue and are willing to commit to work with the deadlines, please send an email to omid.noroozi@wur.nl by July 30th, 2020 including the following information:

Title
Author(s)
Summary Max: 500 words (not less than 250 words)

We must note that an invitation to submit and acceptance thereof is not a guarantee that your article will be accepted. It will be subjected to normal blind peer-review by two or three reviewers and the final decision is based upon our recommendation and the ultimate decision of the journal editors.

Scope:
Argumentation is fundamental for meaning making and decision taking in modern societies. Argumentation can also be a vehicle for collaborative learning processes and knowledge co-construction in many learning tasks that entail complex matters and multiple perspectives, ranging from primary school to university and beyond. This is known as Collaborative Argumentation-Based Learning (CABLe). With CABLe, students acquire and co-construct knowledge through constructive discourse when they elaborate on their individual knowledge representations and develop new knowledge together as a team. When students become better arguers (learning to argue) in groups, they have better chances to collaboratively (co)construct knowledge (argue to learn).

This being said, argumentation is a curious ambivalent thing. Starting from an early age, we construct reasons for our point of view, yet even adults struggle to critically examine their own arguments or generate counterarguments. Likewise exploring a complex problem space, generating and identifying relations between different pro- and counterarguments typically needs to be facilitated for effective CABLe. Several factors could contribute to the observed difficulties. Some may have to do with cognitive, emotional, and/or social barriers during discourse. While some students might hold epistemic emotions (being curious and anxious), others might be emotional based on their achievements (proud of success or shameful of failure). Other contributing factors are the complex, nonlinear, ill-defined nature of argumentation, and the pressure in a real-time situation during argumentative discourse. This complexity forms a major challenge for the learning sciences in their quest to understand these processes and to make use of innovative technologies to facilitate successful learning.

New ways of coping with these difficulties have emerged in the context of the technological tools that are available for use in computer-supported environments for argumentation. Critical discourse and argumentation processes can be scaffolded, for example, through representational guidance tools, digital dialogue games as well as macro- and micro-scripting approaches. Research on CABLe shows that computer-supported argument scaffolds are successful with respect to their most proximal goal of performing trained argumentation tasks at hand (first-order scaffolding). So far, little is known about whether and how argument scaffolds can be designed to promote students’ argumentation competence development for transfer to comparable non-trained argumentation tasks (second-order scaffolding). Despite vast research on CABLe, the field still lacks an overview over the recent advancement of innovative, 21st century technologies that can be used for development of students’ argumentation competence.

Rapid advancement of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) environments and the swift growth of information, communication, and educational technology and tools offer ample opportunities to enhance students’ argumentation competence development. In this special issue, we particularly focus on how advanced technological innovations and educational technology can help facilitate motivational, epistemological, emotional, and social processes of CABLe.

To advance the field of CABLe, we need an overview of the use of advanced technological innovations to facilitate and accelerate successful first- and second-order argument scaffolding approaches both from a theoretical and a practical point of view. The aim of this special issue is to report cutting-edge pedagogical and technological developments in the field of CABLe. For this special issue, we welcome both conceptual, theoretical, and empirical articles that create links between educational technology, learning sciences, educational psychology, computer science, learning analytics, machine learning, and computational thinking with CABLe. The scope of the empirical articles is not restricted to any specific setting and can include formal, informal, non-formal, and workplace learning environments. It is important to note that the proposed manuscript needs to focus on the technology and its possibilities/affordances/achievements for facilitation of CABLe. The emphasis here in this proposal needs to be on what the technology brings us and thus proposals who lack clear focus on the role of technology will not be considered.

Timeline and Submission/Review Process:
Synopsis (one page proposal) July 30th 2020
Notification of acceptance of the Synopsis August 20th 2020
Full manuscript submission October 30th 2020
First round of review January 15th 2021
Re-submission of the full manuscript March 15th 2021
Final decision May 15th 2021
Publication date September 15th 2021