Eight reforms for improving parliamentary debate as educational debate¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The paper closes with concrete proposals for improving parliamentary debate as "a viable exercise in educational debate": formalize topic writing, allow research in debate rounds, promote scholarship about parliamentary debate, evaluate criteria that emphasize substance over style, ban time/space cases, conduct judging workshops and provide judging guidelines, define the mission of parliamentary debate, and add cross examination. Each targets a shortfall documented earlier in the paper, such as frivolous resolutions, banned evidence, inexperienced judges, and the absence of cross examination.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Organizations and tournament directors must act: sanction tournaments by topic quality, announce topic areas in invitations, and run judging workshops

Constraints¶

• The author notes few concerns represent structural problems in parliamentary debate but show symptoms of current trends in its practice

Target Learners¶

• collegiate parliamentary debaters
• tournament administrators
• debate judges

Target Learning Goals¶

• argumentation skills
• research and evidence use
• defending advocacy under questioning

Affordances¶

• Debate As Argumentation Laboratory

Related Strategies¶

• Require consistent advocacy in debate activities: bar or discourage conditional arguments

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Jensen, Scott. (1996). Point of Information: Practical and Theoretical Concerns in Parliamentary Debate. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED421730