Prediction of students' argumentation skills about controversial topics by epistemological understanding

This study focuses on the contribution of overall epistemological understanding to argumentation skills, after controlling for topic knowledge and interest, in eighth graders. Students were introduced to two controversial topics, global warming and genetically modified food, through the reading of a two-sided text on each topic. After reading, students were asked to generate an argument, a counterargument, and a rebuttal for each topic. Findings from hierarchical regression analyses show that epistemological understanding was a significant predictor of all three components of argumentation skills for both controversies. In addition, participants at the evaluativist level of overall epistemological understanding generated arguments, counterarguments, and rebuttals of a higher quality than participants at the multiplist level. Findings were substantially replicated by a domain-specific analysis of epistemological understanding. Topic knowledge moderately, but significantly, contributed to the production of rebuttals about transgenic food only, while topic interest did not play a significant role.