Adolescents’ Disciplinary Use of Evidence, Argumentative Strategies, and Organizational Structure in Writing About Historical Controversies

This study considers how adolescents compose historical arguments, and it identifies theoretically grounded predictors of the quality of their essays. Using data from a larger study on the effects of a federally funded Teaching American History grant on student learning, we analyzed students’ written responses to document-based questions at the 8th grade ( n = 44) and the 11th ( n = 47). We report how students use evidence (a hallmark of...