Debate

What is it?

Debate is an activity that enables students to explore a wide range of views on a particular topic or issue. It consists of the design of structured phases of  argumentation in which participants or groups discuss a topic or issue from opposing sides.

Why use it?

• Allows students to participate in a collaborative and cooperative setting.
• Helps to promote critical thinking skills and strengthens leadership, team building, communication and presentation skills.
• Encourages students to engage in research and actively apply their knowledge.

How do I do it?

Introduction

• Provide the relevant context.
• Outline the purpose of the debate.
• Clearly state the learning outcomes and assessment criteria such as how marks will be allocated to the team and/or individual participant (if applicable).
• Establish the ground rules such as how disagreements are welcome but interruptions are not.
• Provide details of the timing for the different aspects or phases of the debate.

Debate preparation

• Generate ideas within the class for a topic/issue for debating.
• You can pre-allocate the students into groups or allow them to pick the side they wish to argue for.
• Consider the prior knowledge of the students and provide them with enough time to research the topic if needed. The more the students know about the topic the more robust the debate will be.
• Instruct the students to capture the relevant information for post-debate discussion and reflection (if applicable).
• Remind the students that the aim of debating is to consider the various perspectives that have been put forward and not to ‘win’ the event.

Debate delivery/conducting debate

• Affirmative team (supporting team) opens the debate and presents their argument, followed by a member of the opposing team. This continues until the time or the arguments run out.
• Ensure that students take key notes of the points required for post-debate discussion and reflection (if applicable).

Discussion/feedback

• Open the floor for discussion upon the completion of the session.
• You can use a pre-prepared form to get the students/teams to record their feedback.

Self/team reflection

• Encourage students to self-reflect and provide peer review. Please refer to  self and peer assessment activity  for further details.

Considerations

Case Study

Fandos-Herrera et al. (2019) discuss the introduction of the effectiveness of the discussant role as a teaching tool to stimulate debates in the classroom.

• Aim/research questions – To investigate the effectiveness of students’ interactivity, learning outcomes and satisfaction towards the discussant and discussed roles in debate activity.
• Research design – To analyse students’ interactivity, learning outcomes and satisfaction from discussant activity and compare students’ attitude and perception from model A (expected) to model B (experienced).
• Findings – The results indicated that, through the discussant activity, there was a positive interaction between peers which in turn had a positive influence on the perceived learning outcomes leading to positive students’ attitude and satisfaction by providing and receiving constructive feedback (Fandos-Herrera et al., 2019).

References

Bächtold, M. ,  Pallarès, G. ,  De Checchi, K. , &  Munier, V.  ( 2023 ).  Combining debates and reflective activities to develop students’ argumentation on socioscientific issues .  Journal of Research in Science Teaching ,  60 ( 4 ),  761 – 806 .  https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21816

Carmina Fandos-Herrera, Julio Jiménez-Martínez, Carlos Orús & José Miguel Pina (2019) Introducing the discussant role to stimulate debate in the classroom: effects on interactivity, learning outcomes, satisfaction and attitudes, Studies in Higher Education, 44:2, 380-396, DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2017.1366437