CFP: Reasoning, Argumentation, and Critical Thinking Instruction

RACT2015 brings together international experts from fields as diverse as education, philosophy, speech communication, psychology, mathematics, and rhetoric, among others.  
The main purpose is to assess the state of the art in research on reasoning and argumentation that can play a load-bearing role in the development of cutting-edge critical thinking instruction, both as dedicated courses and across the curriculum.

Key-notes

• Andrew Toulmie (Department of Psychology and Human Development, University of London, UK)
• Jean Goodwin (Department of English, Iowa State University, Ames, Io., USA)
• Jean-François Bonnefon (CLLE Research Center, CNRS Toulouse, France)
• Michael Weinstock (invited) (Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva, Israel)
• Robert Ennis (via video-link) (Educational Policy Studies, College of Education, University of Illinois, Champaign, Il., USA)
• Ulrike Hahn (Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, London, UK)

We invite up to 36 contributed papers, of which nine are reserved for Junior scholars, for presentation in a 50 minute slot, of which at least 20 minutes are reserved for discussion.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• corroborated teaching-methods from K-12 to graduate level instruction, didactic models, and learner typologies
• replicated empirical results from experimental or natural settings on lay or expert reasoning
• evidence pro/con critical thinking as a key-skill in the university-graduate job market
• comparative studies of international educational policies
• theoretical models of reasoning “on the hoof” as well as task-constrained reasoning
• conceiving the argumentation-reasoning interface
• socio-political or science-historical work on human (ir)rationality and its rhetoric
• the social management of individual cognitive biases
• empirical or conceptual research on de-biasing-methods
• cross/multicultural and cross/multilingual research on argumentation in private and institutional group decision-making contexts
• historical as well as conceptual analyses of notions such as fallacy, bias or reasoning error
• evidence pro/con two systems/two processes accounts of human reasoning
• reliable instruments for the qualitative evaluation of critical thinking instruction
• visualization-techniques for logical and probabilistic models of reasoning, (software-based) argument-diagramming, and their responsible classroom use

Submission

To contribute to RACT2015, please submit a maximum 1000 word extended abstract prepared for blind review as a PDF file at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ract2015  on or before August 30th.
For details, please refer to http://ract2015.wordpress.com/cfp/ .