Teachers as Facilitators of Students’ Argumentation Ability: An Emerging Need

Abstract

The connection between argumentation and education has been the focus of extended research in the last decades. Thus far, pedagogical interventions have been designed to teach students how to argue or help them learn through argumentation. The role of the teacher has been crucial in most of the studies. Nonetheless, no clear guidelines yet exist on how teachers should/could implement argumentation with their students in the classroom. This paper presents a qualitative review of key empirical studies that describe the role of teachers as mediators of students´ argumentation practice, to finish with an integrative account of what, how, and when (it) needs to be done to support teachers´ development and application of arguing skills in the classroom.