Analysis of Written Material-based, Multi-perspective Argumentation in Geography Lessons: A Comparison Between Two Samples From Ecuador and Germany

Abstract

The ability to argue is an essential prerequisite for participating in social discourse as argumentation can be used, to form one's own opinion and to weigh up, evaluate and justify different options. Argumentation skills should be trained in geography classes in particular, as this subject often deals with socially relevant themes, including sus-tainability, climate change, and resource conflicts. A distinctive feature of geography teaching is the use of many dif-ferent materials including maps, diagrams, and illustrations that serve as the foundation for arguments. The present study focuses on the skills and difficulties students have in writing a material-based, multi-perspective argumentation about a spatial conflict and compares those skills and difficulties of students from Ecuador (n = 42) and from Germany (n = 17) in terms of their similarities and differences. The students were provided with eight different materials from which they had to extract information about a spatial conflict and then had to write an argumentative text on the topic. These students' texts were then analysed using a model of the didactic requirements for a written, material-based, multi-perspective argumentation. The findings of this study indicate, that the skills and difficulties students had, seem to be due to the cognitive demands of the task rather than on the students' respective cultural and educa-tional context as the results show comparable trends in most categories of the model in both countries. The students did not name many actors and rarely positioned them. Most argumentations were also not multi-perspective. Only a small amount of information from the materials was used by the students in their argumentations and rather impre-cise, but mostly correctly and implicitly.