Heuristic Simplification of Conceptual Models for Training Planning Students in Negotiation and Argumentation

Abstract

Educational experiments during 2003-2010 at the Swedish School of Planning, Blekinge Institute of Technology, have developed conceptual models to support apprenticeship among planning students in the skills of negotiation and argumentation. The purpose has been to identify and test adequate degrees of heuristic simplification in conceptual models of professional practice. Results indicate that considerable heuristic simplification can be achieved and reliably tested within a specific educational context. Simplified conceptual models of negotiation and argumentation tasks which reflect professional practice facilitate learning. They do so by helping students to focus on important dimensions of a professional task, providing feedback on their efforts to practise complex skills and help to interpret teachers’ hints and corrections. A multi-criteria model of negotiation in planning has proved to be consistently effective in training professional skills. The simplicity of the negotiation model seems to have been adequate, stimulating student elaboration, which indicates progress in apprenticeship. A model of argumentation, on the other hand, needed further simplification of original assignments and target skills in order to produce satisfactory learning outcomes. Software has been used in both exercises as a method to operationalise conceptual models. Results indicate that in the negotiation exercise software helps in externalising professional approaches, visualising outcomes, providing immediate feedback and helps to diagnose student errors. In the argumentation exercise software has presented operating difficulties, and may have led to cognitive overload for some students. The introduction of simplified paper forms representing modified assignments and target skills has eventually produced satisfactory learning outcomes in the argumentation exercise. Conceptual apprenticeship is a term suggested for the training of this type of professional skills.