Jump to content

Unit 1 Objectives: What is evidence-based reasoning?

From KNILT

Objectives for Unit 1: What is evidence-based reasoning?

After completing this unit, you will be able to:

  • Define evidence-based reasoning
  • Identify evidence-based reasoning in student work

Introduction

A hush falls over the crowd as the judge bangs his gavel down. "Order, order in the court!" he booms, then: "Please counselor, repeat the question."

The counselor returns her attention to the witness. "Miss Green, can you identify the man you saw leaving the building that night?"

Hesitantly, Miss Green raises her eyes. "It was him!" she shouts, raising a shaky finger towards the defendant.

It's a scene that's played out countless times in American pop culture, one that would most likely conclude with a courtroom in uproar and Law & Order's iconic "duhn-duhn" before cutting to commercial. In a real courtroom, however, this scene that would seem so damning on television would most likely be lackluster. If all the prosecution could offer was identification by a hesitant witness, the defendant would walk out of the courtroom a free man. In a courtroom, the burden of proof is on the state: without hard evidence, there is no proof that a witness's testimony is true.

This mandate extends beyond the courtroom's steps. In all walks of life, evidence is demanded for verification. If you're a doctor diagnosing a patient, you'll need to list the symptoms that prove your diagnosis is accurate. If you're a person fighting with your wife about the fastest route to the movie theater, you'll need to consult with maps and traffic reports to convince her to hand over the keys. And if you're a student making a subjective claim in a classroom, you'll need to find textual evidence to prove that your reading is valid.

Throughout this course, I'll make a case for bringing evidence-based reasoning into the classroom. At its conclusion, you'll see that the body of evidence more than justifies a reliance on, well, evidence.

Mini-Lecture

The Common Core Standards (CCS) for English Language Arts (ELA) demand that students apply evidence-based reasoning in the classroom. This demand is reflected in two of the six major shifts between the former New York State standards and the CCS. Shift 4 requires that "students engage in rich and rigorous evidence based conversations about text" while shift 5 requires that "writing emphasizes use of evidence from sources to inform or make an argument."

We've covered the standards, so we've covered your butt from a why-is-this-worth-the-space-in-my-curriculum standpoint. But if you're a discerning educator, you're probably wondering how incorporating evidence-based reasoning into your curriculum will actually benefit your students outside the classroom. The answer is fairly straightforward. We live in a world of options. Recent technological advances have made it possible for people to have a variety of resources and opportunities available at their fingertips at a moment's notice. In order to live well in such a world, people need to know how to make informed decisions: they need to support their thinking with evidence that proves why one resource supports their doctoral thesis better than another, why one call-a-ride service deserves their business more than another, why one app is worth their $1 more than another is. By empowering our students to use evidence-based reasoning, we're empowering them to live mindfully and make choices that reflect who they are and how they think.

That all being said, what exactly is evidence-based reasoning? Merriam-Webster dictionary defines reasoning as "the process of thinking about something in a logical way in order to form a conclusion or judgment," while evidence is defined as "something that furnishes proof." We can fairly say, then, that evidence-based reasoning is the process of thinking about something in a logical way and supporting your thinking with proof to show that your thoughts are, indeed, logical. This evidence should come from a text that your students have encountered.

What exactly is a text? Well, a text is anything your students may be asked to "read" in the classroom. All of the following are common texts that may be encountered in an ELA classroom, although this list is hardly exhaustive:

  • Novels
  • Poems
  • Plays
  • Films
  • Paintings
  • Memoirs
  • Essays

Here comes the fun part: supporting your thinking with textual evidence. Imagine that you are an ELA teacher that is in the middle of a unit on William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. After beginning the balcony scene, you ask your students: "What does Juliet want from Romeo?" There are several ways a student could go about answering this using textual evidence:

  • Students could answer using a direct quotation from the text - here, they use the author's own words to support their thinking. Example: "When Juliet tells Romeo 'doff thy name,/And for that name, which is no part of thee/Take all myself,' it is clear that she wants Romeo to give up his last name and his identity as a Montague in exchange for her love."
  • Students could answer by paraphrasing the text, or putting the author's words into their own words. Example: "When Juliet tells Romeo 'Get rid of your name, and I'll give you my love,' it is clear that she wants Romeo to stop identifying himself as a Montague."
  • Students could answer by referencing a specific moment in the text. Example: "When Juliet tells Romeo that she will love him if she gets rid of his name, it is clear that she wants Romeo to stop identifying himself as a Montague."

Exemplars of Student Work

At the link below, you will find released test questions and annotated answers from New York State's 2014 8th grade Common Core ELA Exam. These are the actual passages and questions that students encountered on the test along with answers written by actual students!

  1. On pages 66-67 of the PDF, you will find a passage called "Margaret's Story." Please read this passage.
  2. After reading the passage, take a look at the answers to question about the passage, which can be found on pages 70, 71, and 72 of the PDF.
  3. For each of the three answers examined above, answer the following:
  • Does the student use evidence-based reasoning to answer the question?
  • What kind of textual support does the student use?

[Click here for exemplars of student work.]

Quiz

[Click here for the Unit 1 quiz.]

References and Resources for Further Exploration

Continue on to Unit 2!

| Unit 2: What are the earmarks of effective textual evidence?

Retrieved from "https://knilt.arcc.albany.edu/index.php?title=Unit_1_Objectives:_What_is_evidence-based_reasoning%3F&oldid=151972"