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Tell Me More

By Tim Pappageorge
Tell Me Why You Think That!
Do students learn better when they aim to agree or when they debate an issue?  It's a trick question, as David and Roger Johnson point out in their meta-analysis of discussion modes: it turns out that guiding students to engage in controversy in constructive ways leads to greater cognitive and affective gains than either of the typically practiced models of concurrence or debate.

Academic Controversy. Is a discussion format in which students switch roles after arguing their points.  Seeing the issue from another's perspective can be truly enlightening, and it helps students to engage in active listening--good for their interpersonal relationships in class and for increasingly the level of complexity with which they see a given topic.  Tough Talk is a recent book on the topic which has challenged my thinking.

Role-Playing leads students to have both the dramatic immediacy of arguing in role and the perspective of a broad view that they construct across roles as they listen to their classmates. And it's fun!  In a recent lesson centering on the teaching of the Kite Runner, I asked my students to discuss the U.S. response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by taking on the roles of U.S. Senator, Charlie Wilson, Soviet leader, Leonids Brezhnev, a woman sympathetic to the Mujahedin resistance forces in Afghanistan, and a U.S. voter favoring an isolationist stance.  The students offered their opinions, and then they switched roles to argue a counterpoint.  In all, they came to a more complex view of the topic than they otherwise would have, and they engaged in a respectful debate in the process.


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