This paper (p. 9) presents ten principles of critical reasoning and argumentation within a project-based learning approach to teaching academic literacy.

Ten principles of critical reasoning and argumentation:

C1. Instruction needs to provide opportunities for self-regulation through which learners develop their argumentation skills.

C2. Successful instructed learning provides interaction opportunities promoting dialogue to enable learners to develop their reasoning ability inter-subjectively.

C3. Instruction needs to ensure that learners focus on relevance by referring to known information from literature in relation to their own projects.

C4. Instruction needs to ensure that learners have opportunities to explain their ideas and research choices.

C5. Instruction needs to ensure that learners focus on their choice of words to express appropriate levels of confidence in relation to evidence.

C6. Instruction needs to be directed at developing the ability to analyse issues and problems (such as by breaking a problem down into manageable components).

C7. Instruction needs to develop the ability to synthesize output such as in group literature reviews or discussion sections of reports.

C8. Instruction needs to develop the ability to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of arguments, research approaches, and conclusions (in literature for example).

C9. Instruction needs to develop the ability to interpret findings from reading or from learners’ own investigations.

C10. Instruction needs to provide opportunities for learners to critically examine their own written output in terms of coherent and balanced argumentation.

The principles are discussed in relation to project-based activities described in  the text.