Measuring Argument Literacy Skills of Elementary School Students

Dr. Reznitskaya and her colleagues are developing measures to assess argument literacy skills of elementary school students. Argument literacy is defined as the ability to comprehend and formulate arguments when reading and writing. Helping students develop argument literacy skills is increasingly seen as one of the key purposes of schooling, and the latest Common Core State Standards Initiative places a special emphasis on students' argumentation development. However, despite the recognized importance of argument literacy skills, educators today lack well-researched and practical tools that can provide them with meaningful diagnostic information about students' progress. To address this problem, Dr. Reznitskaya and her team are collaborating with elementary school teachers to design and validate two sets of instruments. One set, Reading Arguments, will assess students' ability to comprehend texts that contains arguments. Another set, Writing Arguments, will measure the ability to construct arguments in writing. These measures will be theoretically grounded, have desirable psychometric properties, and be feasible to use by practitioners and researchers in education.,