A RESEARCH-BASED JUSTIFICATION FOR DEBATE ACROSS THE CURRICULUM.

• Author: Bellon, Joe

One of the most notable recent developments in the forensics community is a desire to move the activity beyond its traditional boundaries. One manifestation of this trend is the rise of activist and outreach programs sponsored by college debate programs. These efforts are often aimed at bringing more (and more diverse) people into the world of competitive debate, and several such programs are experiencing dramatic success. This desire to expand debate is not limited to bringing others in, however. Increasingly, former debaters in the academic community initiate efforts to move debate outward, encouraging their colleagues to incorporate the skills and practice of debate in a broader range of classroom settings. Ultimately, those of us who have witnessed the power of debate to enhance learning and motivate students are becoming advocates of instituting debate across the entire college curriculum.

Of course, advocates of debate across the curriculum must produce strong evidence demonstrating pedagogical benefits if such initiatives are to succeed. Fortunately, the idea of distributing certain kinds of instructional practices across the college curriculum is no longer considered revolutionary. The effort to incorporate writing into many different subjects has been underway for decades and is now supported by hundreds of studies. As even a cursory search of academic periodicals will demonstrate, many different disciplines have begun to suggest that their practices should exist across the curriculum. Unfortunately, and in part because so few institution-wide debate across the curriculum programs exist, relatively little specific research conceming the benefits of debate across the curriculum has been published. As a new generation of scholars focuses on debate as an appropriate subject for research--and as more debate across the curriculum programs are created--more resources may be devoted to debate asse ssment.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the dearth of direct research on debate across the curriculum renders us incapable of meeting our evidentiary obligation in advocating such initiatives. A considerable tradition of scholarship exists verifying the benefits of engaging in forensics. Furthermore, research conducted by educational psychologists is demonstrating the substantial cognitive gains by students involved in participatory learning activities like debate. My purpose is to review the findings of several scholarly communities and in the process make the case for debate across the curriculum a more compelling one.

COGNITIVE RESEARCH AND COMMUNICATION ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

The most prominent of the various efforts to institute specific teaching practices across the curriculum is undoubtedly writing across the curriculum (WAC). Developed and popularized in the early 1970s, WAG programs began as a sort of grassroots response to highly publicized research condemning college students' ability to write effectively. WAC programs became increasingly common during the 1980s, and the ubiquity of these initiatives was matched by the publication of numerous studies advocating specific pedagogical practices in the WAC context. As Walvoord (1996) documents, however, the WAC movement did not produce the kind of outcome-oriented evidence of success that the public increasingly demanded. Instead, WAC advocates focused on how to implement their programs. Walvoord also notes that the WAC movement has not successfully reached out to important forces in national educational reform. Recently, some institutions have pursued a broader approach to improving communication skills in the form of communic ation across the curriculum (CAC) initiatives.

For now, CAC programs greatly outnumber debate-oriented projects. Indeed, Cronin & Glenn (1991) cite approximately 20 existing college or university communication-intensive programs, and by now the number is considerably larger. Fundamentally, debate across the curriculum (DAC) is a specific type of communication across the curriculum program. As a result, CAC research will contain a great deal of relevant information for those seeking to establish DAC. Even so, not every piece of research advocating CAC automatically warrants DAC. For example, we might discover that the most effective type of communication intensive programs derive their benefits from immersion in conversational activities.

To make the case for DAC, I follow a three-step process. First, I attempt to identify the strongest arguments in favor of CAC in general. Second, I outline the research concerning the benefits of participation in competitive debate, a literature familiar to readers of this journal. Third, I draw on existing research in educational psychology to explain how the first two conclusions can be merged into a strong argument in favor of DAC.

That colleges and universities are generally doing a poor job of equipping their graduates with strong oral communication skills is a claim almost universally accepted by both the academic and business communities. Even those who are supportive of status quo pedagogy admit that much more could be done to improve college students' communication skills. Donofrio (1997) cites a long list of reports, studies, and informed commentary indicting the end result of existing communication-oriented instruction (or, perhaps, reflecting its absence). It is not surprising that most college students have not achieved communicative competence upon graduation, since such a small percentage of their required coursework involves communication skills. As Cronin and Glenn note:

Except for students majoring in communication, most undergraduates take at most one course emphasizing oral communication skills; therefore, most non-speech majors have little or no opportunity for structured practice with competent evaluation to refine and reinforce their oral communication skills (356).

Not only are college students afforded little opportunity to develop oral communication competency, they receive relatively fewer such opportunities than younger students. Corson has identified an overall tendency for schools to provide less and less curricular time for oral communication after students reach age 14. Many institutions seem to assume that students have already gained the necessary literacy and knowledge development skills they need from spoken language practice once they reach high school. As we will see, this assumption is soundly refuted by existing research.

When undergraduates are presented with more opportunities for communication-intensive activities, their schools usually stress writing skills. As Steinfatt (1986) explains, most calls "for increased competence in communication" result in the "specification of 'English' courses in curricular reform documents" (461). "Writing across the curriculum" has tended to supersede "communication across the curriculum." Obviously, students need to learn to write well, and the research supporting CAC can be read as complementing existing writing-intensive programs. However, a number of scholars have produced findings indicating that we cannot afford to ignore the oral aspect of communication. As a result of research funded by the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, Newmann & Wehlage (1995) conclude that academic achievement can be judged satisfactory only if students are required to "express the results of [their] disciplined inquiry in written, symbolic, and oral discourse by making things, ...and in pe rformances for audiences" (8). Students who are not required to produce "expressions" that are meaningful outside of the classroom are generally not involved in "constructing or producing meaning or knowledge" (8). To understand the implications of this statement, it is helpful to reflect for a moment on some of the basic contentions of modem cognitive research.

In the past fifteen years, many cognitive researchers have turned their attention to learning and educational practices. Their work has yielded strikingly similar results, to the extent that such research is now commonly grouped under the rubric of "constructivism." Bransford & Vye (1989) provide a serviceable overall description of constructivism's primary tenet:

[R]esearch on cognition suggests that learning involves the active construction of knowledge. Teachers and texts can provide information that is useful for constructing new knowledge, but the mere memorization of this information does not constitute effective learning. Studies show that information that is merely memorized will remain inert even though it is relevant in new situations (192).

For teachers and educational administrators, this finding has profound implications. First, students, not teachers or texts, are necessarily at the center of the learning process. Because knowledge is constructed by students, schools cannot legislate the achievement of meaningful goals by altering the content teachers deliver. Improving learning requires both that we change how we teach and that we reconsider the assumptions we bring to our relationships with students. Second, constructivism indicts many standard teaching practices--at least to the extent that they dominate the classroom. Memorization, the hallmark of too many undergraduate courses, has been found to be an inadequate method of inducing learning. In their groundbreaking research on the functioning of the human brain, Caine & Caine (1991) conclude that "teaching devoted to memorization does not facilitate the transfer of learning and probably interferes with the subsequent development of understanding. By ignoring the personal world of the lear ner, educators actually inhibit the effective functioning of the brain" (86). Finally, constructivists have concluded that, because students learn by actively constructing new meaning based on prior knowledge and understanding, they must be provided classroom opportunities to experiment, examine...