Beyond the Trifold in Civics Presentations: The Measure of Youth Policy Arguments

Youth are increasingly engaging in civic action to address social injustices. Many adult educators are also looking for instructional resources that support youth voice as a way to promote adolescent civic development and community change. Alas, assessment tools to support youth voice and policy argumentation are lacking. Existing tools overemphasize public speaking skills and rely on dated artifacts such as cardboard trifold posters. In this article we introduce the Measure of Youth Policy Arguments (MYPA), a tool designed to aid in the development and assessment of high-quality youth policy presentations. We also describe how to use the MYPA in formative and summative contexts. Additionally, we provide initial evidence for the validity and reliability of the MYPA. Furthermore, we argue that MYPA has applications in preparing youth for policy presentation and in assessing learning outcomes associated with youth voice projects.

The argumentative turn in public policy inquiry: deliberative policy analysis for usable advice

The argumentation turn in policy analysis emerged in the late 1980s as a response to questions concerning social relevance and usable knowledge. Toward this end, it focused on an apparent gap between policy inquiry and real-world policymaking. Basic to the approach was a challenge to the ‘value free’ positivist orientation that has shaped the field of policy analysis, underscoring in particular the limits of the technocratic practices to which it gave rise. After tracing the political and academic debates that surrounded the uses of policy analysis, the chapter presents the alternative argumentative orientation and its post-positivist methodological perspective. The discussion emphasizes its language-based foundations and outlines the logic of a deliberative-analytic framework for the assessment of policy argumentation. It illustrates the ways that policy analysis needs to integrate empirical and normative inquiry. Policy findings and practical policy argumentation are interpreted by decision-makers and citizens in terms of their relations to the larger framework of norms and values that imbue them with social and political meanings. Moving beyond a narrow empirical assignment, the argumentative turn seeks to assist these actors by also drawing out these normative connections. It is, as such, an effort to make good on Harold Lasswell's call for a 'policy science' of democracy.

Analyzing Social Policy Argumentation: A case study on the opinion of the German National Ethics Council on an amendment of the Stem Cell Law

This paper analyzes and evaluates the 2007 majority opinion of the German National Ethics Council which seeks to establish new information (as to the inferior quality of legally procurable human embryonic stem cells) as a sufficient reason for a relaxation of the 2002 Stem Cell Law. A micro-level analysis of the opinion’s central section is conducted and evaluated vis à vis the strongest known opponent position in the national debate at that time. The argumentation is claimed to rely on an unsupported semantic assumption regarding the parthood relation of the 2002 compromise and to misconstrue the strongest known opponent position.