Argumentation

A central task of education is seen to be the preparation of students for lifelong learning.
The competencies of argumentation are an important part of this because these
competencies are necessary both to understand and participate in discourse. The
concept of argumentation shows many connections to basic research in the field of
cognitive psychology, philosophy, and linguistics, especially to research programmes of
"inductive and deductive logical reasoning", "causal reasoning", "abductive reasoning",
"Bayes reasoning", "adaptive thinking", or "intuitive deciding" (Gigerenzer, 2000).
Reinmann-Rothmeier & Mandl (1998) found in a Delphi-study that skills for evaluating
knowledge and information represent the most important basic skills within a knowledge
society. Shapiro and Hughes (1996) saw such skills as part of information literacy.