A Comparative Analysis of Argumentation Skills at Intended and Experienced Levels of Iran’s Higher Education Curriculum

One of the ultimate goals of pursuing higher education is to prepare the next employees with the necessary knowledge and skills. This includes cultivating university students’ scientific skills, especially argumentation skill. From an educational point of view, argumentation skill is a learning mechanism, the use of which leads to knowledge development. Exploring the states of this skill in the intended and experienced curricula of Iran's higher education system is the aim of this study. The analysis of the intended curriculum was done by using the directed qualitative content analysis method. The sampling method was the purposeful sampling technique. The units of analysis include word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. The expression method consisted of latent and manifest messages. Thereafter, for the experienced curriculum, using the snowball sampling technique, the argumentation ability of 130 university students was assessed. Findings The first finding of the analysis of the intended curriculum showed that at the policy and management levels of Iran’s higher education equipping students with academic skills such as argumentation has been recognized and defined as goals both latently and manifestly. The second finding showed that students written responses didn’t have a proper argumentative structure. This finding is not consistent with the first finding. The inconsistency between the intended curriculum and the experienced curriculum indicates that at the level of implementation, this skill development has not been paid attention to. In addition, the experienced curriculum shows that students do not acquire argumentation skill from the hidden curriculum of the university environment