A teacher at one of our partner high schools, Williams College Prep (Chicago), assimilated some of the resources that we’ve been sharing with and suggesting to him, and from them created an especially useful variation of his own. AP Language and Composition teacher Thom Connor has been focusing a lot of instructional attention on teaching students to think through, articulate, and incorporate into their essays careful consideration of the counter-arguments to their argumentative positions. He’s been teaching various ways of responding to or refuting these counter-arguments, as well. And he designed a builder that adapts Argument-Centered Education versions into something that he feels comfortable with and that works especially well with his students.
Click above to download the Response & Refutation Builder
Students use this resource either to create their own counter-argument — role-playing what Deanna Kuhn (Columbia University) calls the “missing interlocutor,” the skeptical reader or listener who is inclined to disagree with them — or to summarize a counter-argument raised by a classmate in a debate or structured argumentation activity. Then they build a response or refutation of that counter-argument.
A response can be a partial or strategic concession, or a partial refutation. A refutation is a more direct contradiction and rejection of the counter-argument.
We created two models of use of the Response and Refutation Builder. The first is on an issue that Mr. Connor used in his AP Composition course, the issue of reparations for the legacy of anti-black prejudice in the U.S. The builder here posits that the student’s position is that reparations should be paid to the descendants of slaves living in the U.S. It develops the counter-argument that these reparations unjustly punish current generations for crimes and sins of their forebears. And it models a refutational response to that counter-argument.
Click above to download the Response and Refutation Builder model on reparations
The second model that we built is for a biology class. It is written within the context of a scientific lab report following an investigation into the varying levels of photosynthesis production attributable to different lights on the color spectrum. The model posits that the scientific conclusion being argued for in the lab report is that red and blue light produce more photosynthesis growth in plants than green and yellow light. The counter-argument is that the data set do not support this conclusion for growth observed in spinach plants, one of four plant species included in the investigation. The model here, too, demonstrates an attempt to refute this counter-argument.
Click above to download the Response and Refutation Builder photosynthesis lab model
Overall, the Response and Refutation Builder is a very good example of a teacher assimilating argument pedagogy and making it a full part of their professional capacity portfolio. Which is what Argument-Centered Education aims to do with all of its partner schools and teachers.
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