FAREF: Exploring Consolidation and Acquisition Effects of Procedural Scaffolding in Argument Evaluation

Despite extensive research on critical thinking instruction, approaches for supporting the maintenance of procedural argument-evaluation performance, particularly among struggling learners, remain underexplored. This exploratory study evaluated the Formalization and Argument Reasoning Evaluation Framework (FAREF), a flowchart-guided procedural scaffold integrating the Triangular Logic Model. In a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, 29 undergraduates received FAREF instruction ( $$n = 15$$ ) or conventional instruction ( $$n = 14$$ ). An omnibus item-level analysis yielded a significant three-way interaction between condition, initial skill, and pre-test response state, $$\chi ^2(1) = 4.08$$ , $$p =.043$$ , consistent with a consolidation-specific benefit for lower-skill learners; the interaction was fragile to single cases (leave-one-out range: $$p =.024$$ –.127) and marginal when initial skill was modeled continuously ( $$p =.053$$ ). No acquisition effect was detectable, and an equivalence test showed the study was insensitive to effects smaller than $$\pm\;0.10$$ on the proportion scale. The pre-test performance clustered near the chance level of the binary format, bounding all inferences. The findings are hypothesis-generating and motivate a powered, randomized replication with a validated instrument.