This study aims at finding out and comparing students' ability in identifying abuse(s) in argument deductions between science students and social science students. The design of this study is a descriptive qualitative. There were 108 students involved as the respondents (52 science students and 56 social science students). The instrument utilized was ten arguments taken from Guth (1969), which is a specified test to drill argument analysis—aligning content validity for this current study. The respondents were asked to analyze these arguments and find out the deduction abuses. Their approach in analyzing each argument was further interpreted through data analysis. There were a total of 1080 analyses, but 477 analyses of which were discarded due to a biased approach. The data were analyzed using thematic and interactive analysis. The result shows that, among science students, the most employed approach is faulty premise (199 analyses), followed by misleading statistics (53 analyses), hidden premise (37 analyses), equivocation (10), and circular premise (4 analyses). Meanwhile, among social science students, the majority also exploited the faulty premise (137 analyses). Additionally, the hidden premise was also engaged in a great number (130 analyses), equivocation (40), followed by misleading statistics (9 analyses), and circular premise (2 analyses). These findings circumstantially imply that, in learning, students with a science background are better at capturing stated details, while students with a social science background are competent at spotting both stated and unstated details in arguments. It is suggested that teachers should balance the students’ reasoning approaches, regardless of their academic backgrounds to achieve learning objectives. Keywords: logic, students’ cognition, deduction, reasoning skills, and teaching and learning.
Authors: Nyak Mutia Ismail, Marisa Yoestara, Zaiyana Putri, Noorul Azra Mohamed
Publish Year: 2020
