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Teaching Written Argumentation to High School Students Using Peer Feedback Methods—Case Studies on the Effectiveness of Digital Learning Units in Teacher Professionalization

Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(3), 268; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13030268

by Michael Morawski^1,* and Alexandra Budke²

Reviewer 1:

Riezky Maya Probosari

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(3), 268; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13030268

Submission received: 12 December 2022 / Revised: 8 February 2023 / Accepted: 23 February 2023 / Published: 2 March 2023

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The author(s) should declare the research' novelty and urgency related to the context of learning in the 21st century with all its challenges and why it is necessary to do this research.

The research method needs to be explained again and presented in a structured and systematic manner with explicit and up-to-date references; if it is qualitative, state the source, the data collection method, and how long the research lasted.

In the discussion, it is necessary to provide examples of feedback and argumentative dialogue (in real terms) so that all argument components can be seen and measured accurately, especially concerning geographic material.

The concept of argumentation and feedback should refer to a clear source, for example, Toulmin, McNeill, or another, then explain the feedback statement in the concept of argument is a form of aspect/competence of which argument (whether rebuttal, warrant, or what; if you use the Toulmin Pattern ). If referring to others, the author(s) must also describe the competency of the feedback as part of the argument.

Whether oral or written, feedback should refer to explicit references to clarify its position in argumentative dialogue, whether it strengthens a statement/claim or vice versa.

The data needs to present a contrast section on what changes occurred in the process (before and after treatment/implementation).

Author Response

The author(s) should declare the research' novelty and urgency related to the context of learning in the 21st century with all its challenges and why it is necessary to do this research.

Thank you for the important advice. Added lines in regarded chapter hopefully responded appropriately to the constructive criticism.

“In summary, the corona pandemic has highlighted that digital learning units and asynchronous learning are receiving greater attention and importance. Publicly available digital learning units that teachers can use in schools and universities have strong potential for handling and different levels of performance and can thus, in the context of the requirements of (digital) education in the 21st century, meet the demands for more educational and equal opportunities. The content-related topic of the language-conscious promotion of argumentation competences in geographic contexts among students of the teaching profession and then also the didactic implementation of these for future classes and students has also something to do with the requirements of this education. Especially considering that geography can be seen as a subject of the future, as it addresses the massive challenges of the 21st century such as the climate crisis or migration (Mehren, 2022). Classes are becoming more heterogeneous and linguistically diverse. This increases the requirements enormously to support students individually. Project work that accompanies students individually via OERs can relieve the burden. Students of teaching should therefore be professionalized for the work with OERs. In addition, it must be examined how this idea of individual support can not also be used for the professionalization of student teachers in general, as the article suggests. Modern university didactics and education must respond to these challenges. So-called Open Educational Resources (OER), are becoming increasingly important in all areas of (higher) geography education. This trend has currently been reinforced by the Corona pandemic. The joint working group of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (KMK) recommends as a "priority measure the establishment of a new or the support of existing platforms on the Internet, on which references to various OER sources and OER materials can be provided, found and downloaded in bundled form" (2015, p. 8).

OER structures offer several advantages for education to reflect upon: OER simplify integrated learning methods such as flipped classroom scenarios for standardized learning content. In the flipped classroom, students work through the learning content that is developed by the students at home through tutorials, which provides more room for application in school and university (Grimm & Rödel, 2018, p. 11). In addition, OER can support the self-learning process of learners through the independent processing of learning content. With the help of OER, the effectiveness of learning processes can be increased not only in individual contexts, but also in mixed scenarios such as blended learning (Beutner & Schneider, 2015, Grimm & Rödel, 2018, p. 11). OER settings therefore allow self-directed learning, in which learners are the focus. Hence, different learning styles and learning preferences can be taken into account. Professionalizing teaching units can further benefit from a high flexibility due to independence of time and place - individual design and scheduling possible (Arndt, Ladwig, T., & Knutzen, 2020, Nieuwoudt, 2020). Nieuwoudt (2020) also found that academic success can be increased when students are provided opportunities for synchronous and asynchronous participation in class. The possibility of updating materials offers great advantages for rapidly evolving content. Teaching and learning materials made freely available by associations can also support learning site collaborations (Grimm & Rödel, 2018, p. 11). “

The research method needs to be explained again and presented in a structured and systematic manner with explicit and up-to-date references; if it is qualitative, state the source, the data collection method, and how long the research lasted.

Thank you for the very important and constructive criticism. We hope that we were able to respond appropriately in the added lines (see below). We have written an introductory paragraph that again shows the methodological steps of the mixed methods approach more clearly and coherently. This was necessary in case and hopefully it makes the article more transparent now.

“By way of introduction, the methodological elements (mixed methods approach, Kelle, 2014) that played a role in the project are outlined here.

On the basis of the experiences of university didactics and the teaching experiences at the schools, the researchers created a course unit to professionalize students of the teaching profession in the area of argumentation competences in political geography, among other things. The students should learn the method peer feedback, so that they can use this method later with their students, in order to use argumentation competence with their later students.
Parallel to the creation of the learning unit, a competency model was developed in the process to operationalize which competencies students need to successfully use the method peer feedback in the classroom to promote argumentation competencies
A pre- and posttest was created to measure learning gains and changes in students' self-assessment and self-reflection related to their use and engagement with the OER unit. This measures exactly these aspects through open and scaled questions and answer schemes. This will be explained in more detail later.
The answers were analyzed quantitatively if nominally scaled or ordinally scaled. The open-ended questions were evaluated by content-summarizing content analysis according to Maying (2015) and Schreier (2014). For this purpose, different raters related the students' answers to the competency model. Through operationalized scoring in the model, students were able to be assigned points as an evaluation by consciously assigning statements to the model. This made it possible to give statements about students' self-assessment, reflection, and formulated skills (statements about methodological didactic content) both before treatment through the OER unit and afterwards. The individual steps are explained in more detail below.”

In the discussion, it is necessary to provide examples of feedback and argumentative dialogue (in real terms) so that all argument components can be seen and measured accurately, especially concerning geographic material.

Here, the article mainly refers to results of Morawski & Budke (2019). Otherwise, we do not quite understand the feedback at this point? Is it about the inclusion of student citations?

The concept of argumentation and feedback should refer to a clear source, for example, Toulmin, McNeill, or another, then explain the feedback statement in the concept of argument is a form of aspect/competence of which argument (whether rebuttal, warrant, or what; if you use the Toulmin Pattern ). If referring to others, the author(s) must also describe the competency of the feedback as part of the argument.

Thanks for mentioning this very useful point. The chapter on argumentation theory has been completely renewed to that effect.

Feedback, in the context of argumentation, refers to the process of evaluating, commenting on, and making suggestions for improving an argument. Feedback can be used to identify weaknesses in an argument, such as missing or inadequate evidence, and can also be used to identify strengths in an argument, such as clear and logical reasoning.

Feedback helps to identify if the warrant is logical and if the evidence used as grounds is relevant and sufficient to support the claim. For example, consider the following feedback statement: "The evidence you've provided to support your claim is not strong enough. You need to find more credible sources and include more data to strengthen your argument." This feedback statement addresses the warrant, or the principle of evidence that is used to connect the grounds to the claim and it suggests to find more relevant and credible sources to support the argument.”

“In the following paragraph the fundamental theory is illustrated that has been used to construct the instruction parts of the OER unit on teaching argumentation with peer feedback methods for the student teachers as well as the competency model.

It makes sense to start by saying that argumentation – as understood here - refers to the process of presenting, supporting, and evaluating claims or arguments in order to persuade or convince others. There are different approaches to understanding argumentation. The Toulmin model consists of three main parts: the claim, the grounds, and the warrant. The claim is the statement or position that is being argued for, the grounds are the evidence or reasons that are used to support the claim, and the warrant is the principle or assumption that connects the grounds to the claim.

In Toulmin's model, the feedback statement can be considered as a form of the warrant, which is the principle or assumption that connects the grounds to the claim. In other words, feedback helps to identify if the warrant is logical and if the evidence used as grounds is relevant and sufficient to support the claim. For example, consider the following feedback statement: "The evidence you've provided to support your claim is not strong enough. You need to find more credible sources and include more data to strengthen your argument." This feedback statement addresses the warrant, or the principle of evidence that is used to connect the grounds to the claim and it suggests to find more relevant and credible sources to support the argument.

So, the concept of argumentation refers to the process of presenting and evaluating claims or arguments, while feedback refers to the process of evaluating, commenting on, and making suggestions for improving an argument. In the Toulmin model, feedback can be considered as a form of the warrant, which is the principle or assumption that connects the grounds to the claim.

Education policy-wise argumentation is legitimized on a number of levels. In US settings, in the American National Science Education standards, argumentation is among the main requirements of scientific inquiry for Grades 5 to 12 (National Research Council, 2000). In the European Parliament’s recommendation of key competences for lifelong learning (European Union, 2006), argumentation skills are included in three of the eight key competences presented in the reference framework. In German national standards for

geography education, argumentation is highlighted as a central element of the competence areas for communication and evaluation (DGfG, 2014, p.22). All legislating curricula and reforms share a fundamental belief in the beneficial effects of argumentation.

These effects result from several perspectives, such as the assumed relationship between argumentation practice and conceptual change, because through argumentation meanings are negotiated, solutions are co-constructed and the epistemic status of concepts is changed (Baker, 2003, 2009; Asterhan & Schwarz, 2009).

Because meanings are negotiated, solutions are co-constructed, and the epistemic standing of concepts are altered through argumentation, these consequences are the outcome of various viewpoints, such as the assumption that argumentation practice leads to conceptual change (Baker, 2003, 2009; Asterhan & Schwarz, 2009). As a result, argumentation is viewed as a method of creating specific knowledge (Baker, 1999; Schwarz, 2009), and it pertains to people's epistemological ideas (Weinstock, 2006; Weinstock, Neuman, & Glassner, 2006, Hoogen, 2016). Argumentation is connected to informal reasoning processes that can only be engaged by engaging in argument (Means & Voss, 1996; Reznitskaya et al., 2001). People learn better when they debate (Kuhn, 2005), and argumentation is tied to critical thinking (Baker, 2003; Leitao, 2000; Nussbaum & Sinatra, 2003).

According to a number of German Ph.D. theses, students' reasoning abilities are essential for understanding spatial conflicts in geography, for problem-solving and for understanding complex systems, as well as for civic education and learning about sustainable development (Leder, 2016) All curricula-building processes and reforms have also involved extensive competence discourses; yet, these discourses lack (interdisciplinary) distinctive definitions and understandings of what argumentative competence and its constituent skills actually are (Rapanta, Garcia-Mila & Gilabert, 2013).

This conversation has often focused on what students should be able to do after a specific grade rather than what should be taught to them in terms of content. The broad consensus is that the purpose of argumentation is to convince a partner in an encounter to agree with the expressed position by supporting or refuting a critical thesis (Budke, 2011; Kopperschmidt, 1995; Kienpointner 1983). How argumentation competence can actually be developed and assessed is crucial to our work on argumentation as a geographical literacy strategy and, in it, peer feedback as a means of constructive criticism to improve its written argumentation skills.

Argumentation as a form, a method, and a goal are the three basic definitions of what argumentation is and how it may be evaluated, according to Rapanta, Garcia-Mila, and Gilabert (2013). According to the definition of an argument's structure or form, an argument is a unit of reasoning in which one or more propositions, or the premises, are joined to support a different statement, or the conclusion. Here, Toulmin's role of warrant has been honored, and it only becomes explicit when the producer needs to make warrants clear or when the argument is being contested (Angell, 1964, Toulmin 1958). It is important to pay close attention to the dialogical features of argument, including the application of reasoning in a context, when defining an argument or argumentation as a technique or strategy (Walton, 1998).

Argumentation as a process involves and takes into account the full person as well as his or her context, i.e., taking into account the specific conditions in which the argument is used (Perelman, 1982). It has been confirmed that Kuhn's description of the four main argument skills—argument construction, justification, and counterargument construction and refutation—applies to both interpersonal and intrapersonal contexts (e.g., Erduran & Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2008; Garcia-Mila & Andersen, 2008; McNeill, 2008; Felton & Kuhn, 2001; Kuhn, 1991; Kuhn, Shaw & Felton These results support the hypothesis that all argumentation, even that stated in writing, is dialogical (Billig, 1987).

Therefore, argumentative writing is specifically understood in this context as a social, affective, and cognitive process of problem-solving that depends on and is influenced by factors like task context, audience, structural and content prior knowledge, topic, writing goal, and motivation (Bachmann & Becker-Mrotzek, 2010, p. 25; Feilke, 2017; Hayes & Flower, 1980). The grading of structural completeness is the most popular method used to examine the interdisciplinary quality of argumentation, such as in structural competency models (Dawson & Venville, 2009). Toulmin's argumentation model (1996) distinguishes between evidence, justifications, and conclusions and is applied here as a framework.

There is therefore a general consent to understand argumentation as a means to solve problems by confirming or disproving a critical thesis in order to, by logical reasoning, get the partner of interaction to approve the represented position (Budke, 2011; Kopperschmidt, 1995; Kienpointner 1983). Garcia-Mila & Gilabert (2013) come to the conclusion that from an educational point of view, argumentative competence can be classified into three main meta-knowing competence dimensions, mainly inspired by Kuhn (1999, 2000a, 2000b). These dimensions are the metacognitive assessment mode, to which the criteria of structure, conceptual quality, and epistemic quality; the meta-strategic mode, composed of the presence or type of a specific argument element and the preference or avoidance of specific discourse strategies-genres; and the epistemological mode, expressed through two main types of criteria, those related to the nature of the argument and those related to the fulfillment of an additional goal, such as collaborative learning or problem solving. Kuhn’s’ description of the main argument skills—that is, argument construction, justification, counterargument construction and refutation has been confirmed in both interpersonal (e.g., Felton & Kuhn, 2001; Kuhn, 1991; Kuhn, Shaw & Felton, 1997; Zohar & Nemet, 2002) and intrapersonal contexts (e.g., Erduran & Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2008; Garcia-Mila & Andersen, 2008; McNeill, 2008).

These findings add strength to the assumption that all argumentation is dialogical (Billig, 1987, p.149f.), including the one expressed here in written form. In that case, the form consists in the (imaginary) appearance of an interlocutor who represents the opposite position. Specifically, argumentative writing is therefore understood here as an epistemic and strategic process of problem-solving, which depends on and is influenced by social, affective and cognitive factors, such as context of tasks, recipients, the structural and content prior-knowledge, the topic, the intention of writing and motivation (Bachmann & Becker-Mrotzek, 2010, p. 25; Feilke, 2017; Hayes & Flower, 1980). The quality of argumentation is interdisciplinary, and is most commonly analyzed using the grade of structural completeness, e.g., by structural competence models (Dawson & Venville, 2009; Budke et al., 2020. Toulmin’s model (1996) for argumentation differentiates between data, warrants and conclusion and is used as a framework, including here. However, the quality of these elements can only be assessed by the different, subject-specific background of the subjects. Consequently, subject-specific criteria also have to be considered. For a qualitative approach and analysis of argumentation we therefore need to take a closer look at subject-specifics of argumentation, such as content, questions and issues, evidences and criteria of quality, and how they appear in the subject of geography.”

Whether oral or written, feedback should refer to explicit references to clarify its position in argumentative dialogue, whether it strengthens a statement/claim or vice versa.

Thanks for mentioning this very useful point. The chapter on peer feedback theory has been completely updated (see above).

The creation and verification of the model here should be noted as one of the crucial important findings of this study. In the sense of the reflections of the item-response theory (e.g. Baker (2001), Lord (1980) this kind of conceptualization and operationalization can also be transferred to further linguistic actions of geography teaching to even measure the statistical properties of questions and test items independently of the test takers' abilities (Morawski & Budke 2018, Budke et al. (2020). The feedback sheet proved to be effective, as most critical feedback comments on the partner's argumentation were recorded in the sheet. The results indicated that arguments were mainly improved, rather than discovering new ones. For future research, it could be beneficial to include a central task to encourage students to seek out additional arguments besides their partner's. Additionally, the use of multiple media was significant, as feedback comments that led to improvements in the text were not present in all media, leading to exclusive insights from the students.

Ultimately, the findings from the case study also go beyond the use of purely these OER and should be discussed in discourses in the wider OER community. It has been shown that it is precisely the intensive and personal reflection in the presence of the application task of OER that is meaningful. This means that, as initially suspected, meaningful flipped classroom instruction is efficient. The expertise of the teacher has also been shown in this case study in that the elaborated results can be classified. The potential of OERs in terms of individually generated feedback, which approaches the feedback quality of human teachers, needs to be further investigated. Especially when it comes not only to purely standardized multiple-choice answers, but also to open, more individual answers. In addition, student feedback should be repeatedly solicited in feedback loops to improve existing OERs. With regard to inclusive education, the extent to which subtitles are available for explanatory videos, for example, and which colors and font sizes and fonts are used should be reflected for accessibility.

The data needs to present a contrast section on what changes occurred in the process (before and after treatment/implementation).

The points that were improved between pretest and posttest in the process were now more clearly highlighted in the discussion and results section. Is the contrast now more transparent or do you think we should some sort of chart for that? Would be happy to integrate further feedback.

“In summary, hence, the results show here that all but one student improved in scoring on the posttest compared to the pretest (figure 3 In practical implementations such as the concrete structuring of worksheets and lesson plans, they still showed deficits in the posttest (figure 4).

Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that almost all students improved through the OER unit in terms of their assessed competencies and the assessed statements in the test. This shows that the unit shows some promising and efficient approaches that concretely reflect the benefits of OER units. The settings here allowed self-directed learning, in which the student teachers were supposed to be in focus. Furthermore, the students’ different learning styles and learning preferences were taken into account. This professionalizing teaching units could therefore further benefit from a high flexibility due to independence of time and place - individual design and scheduling possible (Arndt, Ladwig, T., & Knutzen, 2020, Nieuwoudt, 2020).

The question arises as to why fewer students made serious improvements in transfer knowledge compared to general knowledge about the method (figure 4). The results show that at this stage of the training basic skills in lesson planning seem to be partly missing, e.g., related to the differentiation of learning objectives or the practical monitoring and safeguarding of lessons. Once again, it should be mentioned at this point that the group of students studied is still quite at the beginning of their education (bachelor's degree) and they do not learn more practical skills in concrete terms until the master's degree. So, it is about embedding further possibilities of the OER in the university teaching to eliminate possible weaknesses of this. The OER and further work with this should discuss, among other things, even more the concrete practically oriented lesson planning of the students, because you can obviously - based on the results here- only partially convey transfer knowledge with such a learning unit. This OER should be used when basic skills for lesson planning are available - in our case, in the Master's. For subsequent studies it might make more sense - especially for students in the Master's program - to conduct the posttest after the final seminar session and after the discussion of the presented teaching units. In this way, acquired competencies can still be included in the survey through the reflection on the material. This type of structuring would also be a suggestion for the design of another seminar in this area. This may also explain why students scored higher in terms of general method knowledge.

The study further shows, nevertheless, positive effects of the treatment through the OER unit. It is striking however that not all students benefited equally from the unit in scoring and that students improved differently in different areas. At this point it should be reflected that the OER unit is mainly conceptualized as a self-learning unit, which accordingly can not offer the interactivity as a face-to-face seminar (Grimm & Rödel, 2018, p. 11, Beutner & Schneider, 2015 p. 20f., Arndt, Ladwig, T., & Knutzen, 2020 p.10f., Nieuwoudt, 2020, p.17f.). The question arises to what extent criteria such as individuality or the quality of (automatic) feedback could be even more increased in further seminars (Scanlon, E. 2010, p.10f.). For example, a diagnostic questionnaire could be inserted in front of the OER unit and the students could work on certain focal points of the unit in a differentiated manner depending on their own identified deficits or interests (Arndt, Ladwig, T., & Knutzen, 2020, Nieuwoudt, 2020). The iterative cycles of testing and refining in an approach like ours produced new knowledge within the still rather deficiently researched field of asynchronous teacher training in the area of student argumentation development, which is applicable for future projects in that OER contexts (Barab & Squire, 2004, Wang & Hannafin, 2005).

It is undoubtedly critical and limiting to note here that the study did not include a control group so far and therefore it cannot be said beyond doubt whether the concrete increase in scoring between pretest and posttest can be attributed exclusively to the learning unit. However, the students' answers certainly suggest that this might be a reasonable explanation as they sometimes directly referred to and quoted the learning unit in the answers of the test and they would have had no other contact with the peer review method during their studies. Further studies in the field of this OER research should in any case investigate the effectiveness of the OER unit also related to other groups of students in the training and control groups to compensate for aforementioned methodological deficits and to achieve more concrete indications of the effectiveness of specific areas of the treatment (OER unit).

Another way to look at the poorer results in transfer knowledge is that these may also have to do with the curricular design of the teacher study programs in Germany in general, that basic legitimizing documents such as core curricula and educational standards or theoretical advantages and disadvantages of methods are talked about relatively quickly in seminars or lectures, but the practical exercise only come up later. It is worth mentioning here that teacher education has two phases in Germany - the first phase teaches theoretical foundations related to geography and geography didactics content, theories and concepts, and a second phase teaches practical teaching in schools.

To ensure the quality of geography education defined in the way of language aware teaching, a contribution is to be made in the course of teacher training. In this sense, the study brought the following: a model was developed to diagnose competencies that students should have when using the peer feedback method to promote argumentation skills in future students (table 1). In the area of professionalizing language-aware teaching related to pupils' argumentation competencies would be to discuss and further develop the competence model presented here (table 1) in the context of formative assessments. The model can be used in future workshops for in-service training of teachers and students alike by using the model and testing procedures to measure the effectiveness of training, similar to the case study here. After the initial testing phase in the study area presented here, changes could be made in the structuring of the competency areas. For example, the precise separation between practical and theoretical knowledge and the subdivision into preparation and diagnosis as well as competencies for transfer and implementation has emerged as a meaningful split in the model. The final result is now published in this article (table 1). Not only has the competency model been successful in operationalizing the students' responses in their processing of the OER unit, no, the model furthermore remotely exemplifies how linguistic actions and methods of language-aware geography teaching can be systematized and queried by using the example of peer review. It would also be effective to divide the students' results into levels in order to be able to assess more concrete support measures after the course of the OER units. It would also be conceivable to conduct group interviews with students of different levels as a supplement to the feedback sessions in order to be able to draw further conclusions about problems regarding implementation in the discussions developed there. These interviews could lead to even more individualized attention to student teachers' deficits and areas of interest. Thinking further, this could lead to offering/developing modular OERs that offer units for specific sub-interests of language-aware geography instruction.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper requires a major revision in order to be acceptable. The paper should be made a more concise. In some parts of the text it goes into too much detail (e.g. lines 341-373; complete competency model in Table 1; Figure 3, 5 and 6 comparing the results of individual students).

The strongest part of the paper is the theoretical framework which combines OER, argumentation and peer feedback. The results of the experimental case study are relevant for evaluating the developed OER, but do not provide more generalized new knowledge to the wider OER research community.

In the abstract and first sentence the authors refer to OER as license-free educational materials. This is fundamentally incorrect understanding. All OER’s are published under a certain open license, typically one of the Creative Commons licenses.

Authors refer to an appendix, which is missing from the paper (lines 335-337). Do they mean the description of categories presented in lines 341-373? Under Section 5, there is only one subsection 5.1. Some parts of the abstract are directly copied from the main content of the article (lines 30-32; 39-41).

Finally, the title of the paper could be simplified.

Author Response

The paper requires a major revision in order to be acceptable. The paper should be made a more concise. In some parts of the text it goes into too much detail (e.g. lines 341-373; complete competency model in Table 1; Figure 3, 5 and 6 comparing the results of individual students).

Thank you for the sensible advice. The sections have also been almost completely rewritten and completely revised according to the suggestions of the other reviewer. We hope that a more precise tone has now been struck (See red marks in the text).

The strongest part of the paper is the theoretical framework which combines OER, argumentation and peer feedback. The results of the experimental case study are relevant for evaluating the developed OER, but do not provide more generalized new knowledge to the wider OER research community.

We hope that the more detailed comments at the end of Chapter 6 now do justice to the meaningful feedback commentary.

“Ultimately, the findings from the case study also go beyond the use of purely these OER and should be discussed in discourses in the wider OER community. It has been shown that it is precisely the intensive and personal reflection in the presence of the application task of OER that is meaningful. This means that, as initially suspected, meaningful flipped classroom instruction is efficient. The expertise of the teacher has also been shown in this case study in that the elaborated results can be classified. The potential of OERs in terms of individually generated feedback, which approaches the feedback quality of human teachers, needs to be further investigated. Especially when it comes not only to purely standardized multiple-choice answers, but also to open, more individual answers. In addition, student feedback should be repeatedly solicited in feedback loops to improve existing OERs. With regard to inclusive education, the extent to which subtitles are available for explanatory videos, for example, and which colors and font sizes and fonts are used should be reflected for accessibility.””

In the abstract and first sentence the authors refer to OER as license-free educational materials. This is fundamentally incorrect understanding. All OER’s are published under a certain open license, typically one of the Creative Commons licenses.

Thanks for the tip. We have revised this. (See red marks in the beginning).

In summary, the corona pandemic has highlighted that digital learning units and asynchronous learning are receiving greater attention and importance. Publicly available digital learning units that teachers can use in schools and universities have strong potential for handling and different levels of performance and can thus, in the context of the requirements of (digital) education in the 21st century, meet the demands for more educational and equal opportunities. The content-related topic of the language-conscious promotion of argumentation competences in geographic contexts among students of the teaching profession and then also the didactic implementation of these for future classes and students has also something to do with the requirements of this education. Especially considering that geography can be seen as a subject of the future, as it addresses the massive challenges of the 21st century such as the climate crisis or migration (Mehren, 2022). Classes are becoming more heterogeneous and linguistically diverse. This increases the requirements enormously to support students individually. Project work that accompanies students individually via OERs can relieve the burden. Students of teaching should therefore be professionalized for the work with OERs. In addition, it must be examined how this idea of individual support can not also be used for the professionalization of student teachers in general, as the article suggests. Modern university didactics and education must respond to these challenges. So-called Open Educational Resources (OER), are becoming increasingly important in all areas of (higher) geography education. This trend has currently been reinforced by the Corona pandemic. The joint working group of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (KMK) recommends as a "priority measure the establishment of a new or the support of existing platforms on the Internet, on which references to various OER sources and OER materials can be provided, found and downloaded in bundled form" (2015, p. 8).

Authors refer to an appendix, which is missing from the paper (lines 335-337). Do they mean the description of categories presented in lines 341-373? Under Section 5, there is only one subsection 5.1. Some parts of the abstract are directly copied from the main content of the article (lines 30-32; 39-41).

Thanks for the tip. We have revised this. A digital appendix of the journal is meant here. Thanks for the reflection of the abstract. We have changed the abstract.

language-aware and content-complexity perspective. Peer feedback can be a successful method for geography teachers to successfully promote written argumentation skills in the (political geography) classroom. The peer feedback method has many empirically verified advantages in educational research and is also successfully used in bilingual education. To ensure that future teachers have verified methods at their fingertips, geography education is in demand by dealing professionally with OERs. The paper examines the extent to which a group of student teachers (n=16) can be professionalized through an OER unit in how they use peer feedback methods to foster (written) argumentation competence in their future pupils. The research question of the paper is: To what extent and in which areas does the OER unit improve the teaching competencies of student teachers in the area of promoting the argumentation competencies of their future students with peer feedback methods? The study provides highly relevant impulses for future implementation for language-aware professionalization of geography teachers using digital learning units.

Geography can be seen as a subject of the future, as it addresses the massive challenges of the 21st century such as the climate crisis, sustainable resource use, urban development or migration. In connection with the teaching of these topics in class, it is of great importance that the students acquire argumentation skills in order to be able to form their own opinion on the topics, to support it with correct evidence and to be able to argue convincingly. This creates the basis for them to participate as responsible citizens in democratic societies in the decision-making process to solve the problems of the future.

In order to promote students' argumentation competences in geography lessons, future teachers should be taught suitable didactic methods during their teacher training. In this context, the focus of this article is on the method of peer feedback, which has been shown in previous studies to be particularly relevant for promoting the competences to assess argumentation and to improve one's own argumentation (Lit).

The research project highlighted in this article is anchored in the "Digeo" project[1]. The joint project "DiGeo" is dedicated to the development and application-related research of a digital subject concept for building up competence in the responsible use of digital geomedia in geography teacher training. In the course of the 36-month joint project at the universities of Duisburg-Essen, Frankfurt a. M. and Cologne, exemplary digital learning formats will be developed and tested as open educational resources (OER). The University of Cologne took on the part dealing with the need to professionalize student teachers in the area of language-aware teaching and specifically the promotion of argumentation skills in students.

Finally, the title of the paper could be simplified. Thanks for the tip. We have revised this.

[1] https://www.ilias.uni-koeln.de/ilias/goto_uk_cat_3758292.html

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

It would be better if the authors provided the student's argumentative dialogue regarding the problem. Indicate the components of the feedback and aspects of the arguments in the dialogue and then briefly explain whether the arguments are good and follow the feedback given.

Author Response

Thank you for the further feedback. The idea of the course unit was to professionalize the student teachers in the method of peer feedback in language-aware geography teaching. Therefore, the students should reflect critically on their experience with the method. It was not yet a matter of discussing a geographical problem or directly evaluating student texts. It is also possible that we misunderstood your comment or feedback at this point?

The manuscript has been improved and could be accepted for publication after minor revisions. I have still the following comments:

1) The title of the article could be still simplified. Having parenthesis in the title is not a good solution. How about the following title?

Teaching written argumentation to high school students with peer feedback methods – Case studies on the effectiveness of OERs

Thank you for the further feedback. Title has been changed to:

Teaching written argumentation to high school students using peer feedback methods – Case studies on the effectiveness of digital learning units in teacher professionalization

2) “(Lit)” on line 33 does not look like a correct reference.

Thank you for spotting the mistakes. Literature has been added.

3) In-text citations to multiple sources should be in alphabetical order in APA style (line 66; line 74; line 117; etc...)

Thank you for the further feedback. The sources have been arranged as demanded.

4) “overview met analysis” on line 197 does not seem to be part of the reference

Thank you for the further feedback. The sources have been arranged as demanded.

5) Starting and closing parenthesis are not matching (line 864; line 867)

Changed. Thank you!