Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Multidisciplinary Conference NURTURING CRITICAL MINDS: Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Education and the Workforce, Vilniaus, Litvanya, 27 - 28 Haziran 2024, ss.28
Debate has long been regarded as a teaching strategy to promote critical thinking and collaborative learning (Brown, 2015; Oros, 2007). Scholars regard debate as a teaching technique promoting higher order thinking skills (Dipta et al., 2023). However, lack of research on debate activities at tertiary level is also emphasized (O’Neill, 2024). Therefore, in the current study we employed debate as a pedagogical practice. Students (N=35) studying at the English language teaching program at a state university in Türkiye worked in groups of f ive to six and debated with against each other in Verbal Communication Skills course for six weeks around such topics of social issues as emergency and first aid during earthquakes, climate change, environmental catastrophes, fires, and deforestation, and gender equality/ inequality. The students were required to read two to three background texts and watch video clips on the topic to stimulate their interest, activate their knowledge and acquire relevant knowledge. This also aimed at enabling them to mind map to review the ideas and sub-ideas of all the texts and videos. Volunteers as camera operators recorded the debating teams’ performance. The debating teams were later asked to watch the video of their debates and reflect on it individually around such aspects as their verbal and non-verbal communication skills, group cooperation skills, and linguistic skills to argue for and against the debate topic. They were also asked to evaluate what enabled them to get stronger in their verbal and non-verbal communication skills. The results showed that the students considered that they worked and cooperated very well, and kept improving despite such problems with tone, pace, eye contact, or gestures in the first few debates. Later reflections revealed that the students became more critical of their debate performance in terms of adequate and effective participation, speech confidence, and the role of adequate preparation.