In this paper we describe the approach to critical thinking pedagogy used in our new text, Reason in the Balance: An Inquiry Approach to Critical Thinking. In this text we concentrate on develop-ing students’ ability to analyze and assess competing arguments in a dialectical context. This approach shifts the emphasis from the more common and traditional approach of evaluating individual arguments and fallacy identification. Our focus is on teaching students to analyze and assess competing arguments sur-rounding an issue with the (...) goal of achieving a reasoned and justifiable judgment. (shrink)

This paper examines the argumentation strategy prolepsis: anticipating and subsequently responding to an argument before it has been made. Although prolepsis is common to a variety of arguments, it seems insufficiently studied or understood—or, worse, misunderstood as simply a “feint.” Drawing on scholarship in rhetorical theory and cognitive and social psychology, I offer a new understanding of prolepsis, recognizing the technique’s potential in argumentative discourse—especially in the search for “common ground.”.