Critique generation when reading two opposing newspaper texts

Two studies investigated students’ critique generation, an elaborated form of content evaluation wherein students identify information selectively, inaccurately, or incompletely presented in text(s) and consider where such selective presentation may stem from. Critique generation, as an important critical reading outcome, was examined here, within the context of students’ reasoning about two op-eds, presenting conflicting points of view on a controversial social issue — whether or not Amazon should replace local libraries. Study 1 catalogued the types of critiques that students generated. Study 2 linked critique generation with both students’ conceptions of what the task of critique entails and with students’ reports of strategy use, although not with a host of, expected to be relevant, individual difference factors (e.g., need for cognition, media literacy). Both studies found critique generation to be significantly associated with performance on an argumentative writing task. Contributions of these two studies include documenting critique types that may distinctively emerge when students are asked to reason about a controversial social, rather than scientific, issue and identifying learner-reported strategies that constitute promising paths for fostering critique generation in future work.