In this paper, we provide a comprehensive literature review on the development of key argumentation skills to lay a foundation for a framework of the key practice, discuss and debate ideas, which is centrally involved in the expectations for academic reading and writing. Specifically, the framework includes 5 phases of core activities and related…

Too often, the authors assert, discussion of controversial issues in high school classrooms is channeled through the teacher, rather than engaging students in discussion with one another. Teachers fear that students won't know how to talk to one another productively about issues, or that they'll end up in shouting matches. But when…

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 20103) identify evidence-based argumentation as a key practice in science education. This argumentation comes in many forms, each providing a unique theoretical perspective and area of educational research. Argumentation can help model aspects of scientific culture and…

This study examines critical literacy and the intersections of oral, aural, written, and performative literate practices in City Debate, an afterschool program dedicated to providing debate instruction to students in a major Southeastern city. Previous research into definitions and beliefs about literacy in an urban debate program over its twenty…

This experience report details the use of debates in a course on Information Ethics. Formal debates have been used in academia for centuries and create an environment in which students must think critically, communicate well and, above all, synthesize and evaluate the relevant classroom material. They also provide a break from the standard…

Forensics--interpretation, speech, and debate--can and should be a meaningful part of every school's curriculum. To put it simply, the course of study, alongside cocurricular competition, promotes civic education and enhances the standard curriculum by helping students explore myriad topics from multiple angles and find the truth in each,…

The work of Students Informing Now (S.I.N.), an immigrant student organization at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is described in this column. The authors argue that S.I.N.'s diverse activities and textual products construct a counternarrative that challenges and reframes the debate on undocumented students and immigration. Focusing on…

This article presents a qualitative case study that uses discourse and social semiotic analysis methods in order to examine the rhetorical construction of fictional personas within an online role play used for learning in the college classroom. Of special focus are the differing patterns of semiotic resource use (for example, language and…

Argues that presumption represents a multidimensional concept, not a monolithic one. Claims that in reaching a decision on a nonpolicy debate, the decision rule "one who asserts must prove" ought to be given primacy over the predispositions of a given audience or of society at large. (JD)

The author, a high school teacher and forensics coach, describes ways to teach writing--including on-demand essays--that draw on successful practices she developed in coaching. Students learn the importance of using personal conviction and qualified thesis statements to build arguments, as well as learning "The Debater Four-Step," an effective…

Intrinsic justification in academic debate focuses on the essential characteristics of the terms in a topic. The technique, advocated by Ken Bahm, works with very few Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) topics. It gives rise to counterwarrants, which create more confusion than clarity, while its counterplans destroy affirmative grounds. In…

Examines how public discourse engages and redirects the constitutive powers of human communication. (JK)

Including speech transcripts and judges' critiques, this book presents the results of the 1986 (1) National Debate Tournament Final Debate, sponsored by the American Forensic Association, including the affirmative and negative presentations; (2) National CEDA Tournament Final Debate, sponsored by the Cross-Examination Debate Association, including…

Discusses the tradition of rhetorical theory and scholarship to sketch the chief characteristics of public communication. Suggests some implications for the study and criticism of contemporary media discourses of a rhetorical nature. (JK)

Intended for the young person who is interested in learning the fine points of debate, this handbook states that debate can influence people, sharpen the mind, and enhance a person's speaking abilities. The handbook covers a range of subjects of interest to the young debater--for example, (1) how debates are judged; (2) how to prepare for a…