Enhancing evidence-based argumentation in a Mainland China middle school

While discourse-based educational approaches have become an object of increasing interest in Western countries, they are largely unknown in countries such as China that are characterized by a strong centralized government with limited encouragement of dissent. In the present study, 54 11–12 year-old Chinese students participated in an extended discourse-based curriculum that has been found successful in Western countries in developing skills of both dialogic and individual written argument. Although the curriculum involves activities unfamiliar to Chinese students, they easily became engaged and showed significant gains in post-intervention essays on both the curriculum topics and new ones. An additional component newly added to the curriculum involved explicit reflection on the relations between a claim and evidence and proved effective in enhancing gains relative to a comparison group not experiencing this addition. Underlying mechanisms in the transfer from dialogic to individual skill are considered, and issues with respect to culture and education are addressed.