ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a three-year research and professional development programme designed to help teachers engage their students in productive argumentation during discussions of readings in language arts classrooms. Each year of the programme, researchers collaborated with a new cohort of elementary school teachers to identify and organise instructional activities and materials that support teacher facilitation of discussions centred on argumentation. The chapter focuses on a key measurement and instructional tool used in the programme, called the Argumentation Rating Tool (ART). The ART is an observational rating scale designed to help practitioners and researchers to assess the quality of teacher facilitation and student argumentation during discussions. The chapter describes theoretical and empirical foundations of the ART and illustrates its use during workshops, study group meetings, and coaching sessions conducted as part of the professional development programme.
