sorry guys, I just haven't had time to answer John's query yet --but John, yes, this is what I was referring to. My students are writing on questions like (Archaeology) "what does x site suggest about the usefulness of y theory of state formation?" OR (English) "how does the representation of place work in chapter 3 of x?" OR (History) "was z riot an example of the 'moral economy'?" OR (Sociology) "how does Mills' idea of the sociological imagination help us to understand x biography of y migrant to Australia in the 1950s?" These are not "should"- type questions, unless in the sense of asking whether we should see a particular connection between theory and data. They're questions about how or why something happens/ed in the way that it does/did.
 
Kate

________________________________

From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions on behalf of John Harbord
Sent: Tue 3/16/2010 8:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: basics of academic writing



Kate's helpful comment on my post about policy briefs led me to think over the weekend that I hadn't given an adequate explanation of the brief. As my students do, hasty to get on to discussing the solutions, I forgot to detail that one of the most important parts of the brief is the analysis of the problem: it is essential here for the student to argue that the problem is serious, ie. by using data effectively to show that the status quo does not match certain criteria that the government share (or at least should be ashamed to deny that they share), or that performance is lagging embarrassingly behind other countries/cities/organisations/whatever. The next part of the brief, which many of my students, like Kate's, have difficulty with, is the analysis of the roots of the problem: what factors or what actions of what stakeholders lead/led to the undesirable status quo. Here, careful analysis of causality is critical, as solutions are unlikely to succeed unless they have been based on a full understanding of the real underlying problem, not the symptoms.

One of my students a few years ago wrote an outstanding analysis of why measures taken to relieve traffic jams and parking problems in one medieval Romanian city failed abysmally. This was followed by her careful presentation of how the job should be done, supported by an econometric model for calculating the parking fees necessary to ensure that the right number of people leave their cars at home; but the excellent grade she received for her thesis was as much for the analysis of the problem as it was for the presentation of the solution, or the econometrics.

One could use briefs of this type to give practice both in arguing past/present causality and anticipating future causality - if you focus on the structure and get students to draft and receive feedback on the two parts separately, it may help them to develop both skills.

Best,

John

>>> Caroline Chanock <[log in to unmask]> 12/3/10 12:23 >>>
Hi, John, and all,

I think this is a very good way to teach arguments about what should happen. However, most essays in humanities are about what does happen, and can't be argued in the same way. They demonstrate why or how something happens(ed) in the way it does(/did); and one of the great problems that our first year students have, in the B.A., is that they have been taught only the should meaning of argumentation and have great difficulty imagining that the other could be called argument.

Kate Chanock

________________________________

From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions on behalf of John Harbord
Sent: Fri 3/12/2010 9:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: basics of academic writing

Mirja asks about teaching argumentation. I have been scouring the mounds of documents on my desktop for some time in hope of finding again an excellent article published in a political science journal by two political scientists in a London university and passed on to me by a helpful student about using policy briefs as a teaching tool at undergraduate level (by the way, I think they are equally useful at graduate level). If anyone knows the one I mean I'd be grateful for a reference.

The policy brief, in short, is a document that identifies a problem in society that some branch of government could, if they were persuaded, put right. It identifies the branch of (local or national) government that would be responsible for the change, and is addressed to that branch or sub-branch. It tries, in that order, to persuade the audience that there is a problem, that it is a serious problem that cannot be ignored, and that its causes are clearly understood. It then considers actions to rectify the problem (depending on the type of brief, it may only consider one - the one preferred by the author - or it may consider several and choose the best). The second half of the brief thus argues that the selected policy option is the best one for government to implement to solve the problem. The well written brief also takes into consideration possible weaknesses of the preferred option and suggests how they can be mitigated. The brief finishes by outlining the steps that should be taken and urging action. The brief is usually started with an executive summary (written last, perhaps) which recaps all that has been said in a paragraph that persuades the audience that what they are going to read is worth reading and will give good results.

Policy briefs are better teachers of argumentation than traditional argumentative essays for a number of reasons:
1. They are authentic - people really write them, and you can find lots of good examples out there.
2. Connected to this, you can use those examples to see how good argument need not be personal argument - policy briefs are very impersonal
3. They have a very clear structure which helps the development of good writing and good argumentation
4. They engage real issues at a mature level - far better than the hackneyed old chestnuts about abortion and the death penalty
5. They create awareness of how change occurs in democratic, civil societies
6. They train students to write the kind of text some of them might have to write in real life one day
7. They help students see that research can inform argument to change and improve policy (to improve our lives) and that being at a university is not just about ivory towers.
8. They can easily be tailored to the very local and relevant.
9. They go beyond black and white choices (should this bridge be built or not) to the consideration of how problems should be solved (if we don't build this bridge, how can we better solve traffic problems).

Students of mine this semester have written policy briefs on a range of topics including:
- renewal of decaying state housing in Moldova
- reforming public transport in Lima, Yerevan and Dniepropetrovsk (public transport is a popular one but each solution was different)
- provision of public amusement parks in Irkutsk
- reducing road deaths in Romania
- combatting illiteracy amongst rural Roma
- amelioration of links between universities and business in Hungary
- how to prevent brain-drain of medical staff in Malawi
- resolving the problem of multiple municipal responsibility for the Danube waterfront in Budapest
- dealing with the problem of stray dogs in Sofia
- administrative reform in the Slovak higher education system

The article I mentioned at the outset provides a very good overview if someone else knows of it and can post a reference to the list, but the following link also provides good guidance: http://www.policy.hu/ipf/fel-pubs/samples/PolicyBrief-described.pdf

And as I say, a Google search for 'policy brief' will turn up dozens if not hundreds of samples, though many of these are often more bureaucratic and less readable, as they are concerned with things like fiscal decentralisation which don't exactly grab the average undergraduate's attention.

Best,

John

>>> Mirja Hamalainen <[log in to unmask]> 8/3/10 12:29 >>>
Thank you for all the messages on ?basics of academic writing?.
...

What I lately have been wondering about is how to deal with what I
would call the core of academic critical thinking: argumentation.

Best regards,
Mirja