出版社：Australian Institutes for Educational Research
摘要：A fundamental role of education is to equip students with sound justificatory reasoningcapacities to support one’s beliefs or actions and to guide rational decisions aboutcomplex problems. However, empirical research into justificatory reasoning amongstudents is virtually non-existent and this impedes education research. This studyillustrated the measurement of justificatory reasoning ability and investigated how tertiarystudents might use different justificatory reasoning forms (absolutism, relativism andevaluativism) depending on the reasoned domain, a controversial domain versus a moraldomain. It further tested how different justificatory approaches might relate to varyingwillingness to engage in argumentation, as well as how they might engender beliefs withdifferent strength of convictions. The results suggest that absolutism was preferred formoral domain, whereas relativism was preferred for controversial domain. However,those who used evaluativism were most willing to engage in discourse to defend theirbeliefs, and their engendered beliefs were also the strongest. Besides demonstrating howjustificatory reasoning may be measured quantitively, the study provides guidance toeducators on designing curriculum to develop justificatory reasoning ability. The findingsalso suggest that educators should not unconditionally focus on developing evaluativismin students, supposedly the highest form of justificatory reasoning.
