Pedagogical possibilities for argumentative agency in academic debate.

• Author: Mitchell, Gordon R.

Our principle is the power of individuals to participate with others in shaping their world through the human capacity of language;

Our commitment to argument expresses our faith in reason-giving as a key to that power; Our commitment to advocacy expresses our faith in oral expression as a means to empower people in situations of their lives;

Our research studies the place of argument and advocacy in these situations of empowerment;

Our teaching seeks to expand students' appreciation for the place of argument and advocacy in shaping their world, and to prepare students through classrooms, forums, and competition for participation in their world through the power of expression; and

Our public involvement seeks to empower through argument and advocacy.

- American Forensic Association Credo

The lofty goals enumerated in the American Forensic Association's Credo have long served as beacons that steer pedagogical practice in argumentation and debate. The Credo's expression of faith in "reason giving," "oral expression" and critical thinking as formulas for student "empowerment" is reflected in the many textbooks that have been written to guide the academic study of argumentation. "The relevance of skill in argumentation seems self-evident to anyone living in a democratic society," write George W. Ziegelmueller and Jack Kay in Argumentation: Inquiry and Advocacy; "The notion of full and free public debate on the vital issues facing society is deeply rooted in the documents and ideas comprising the American conscience" (1997, p. 6). Making a similar point in the introduction to their textbook Argumentation and Critical Decision Making, Richard D. Rieke and Malcolm O. Sillars suggest that "the ability to participate effectively in reasoned discourse leading to critical decision making is required in virtually every aspect of life in a democracy" (1997, p. xvii). "We need debate not only in the legislature and the courtroom but in every other area of society as well," echoes Austin J. Freeley in Argumentation and Debate, "since most of our rights are directly dependent on debate" (1996, p. 5).

For those schooled in the tradition of argumentation and debate, faith in the tensile strength of critical thinking and oral expression as pillars of democratic decision-making is almost second nature, a natural outgrowth of disciplinary training. This faith, inscribed in the American Forensic Association's Credo, reproduced in scores of argumentation textbooks, and rehearsed over and over again in introductory argumentation courses, grounds the act of argumentation pedagogy in a progressive political vision that swells the enthusiasm of teachers and students alike, while ostensibly locating the study of argumentation in a zone of relevance that lends a distinctive sense of meaning and significance to academic work in this area.

Demographic surveys of debaters suggest that indeed, the practice of debate has significant value for participants. Some studies confirm debate's potential as a tool to develop critical thinking and communication skills. For example, Semlak and Shields find that "students with debate experience were significantly better at employing the three communication skills (analysis, delivery, and organization) utilized in this study than students without the experience" (1977, p. 194). In a similar vein, Colbert and Biggers write that "the conclusion seems fairly simple, debate training is an excellent way of improving many communication skills" (1985, p. 237). Finally, Keefe, Harte and Norton provide strong corroboration for these observations with their assessment that "many researchers over the past four decades have come to the same general conclusions. Critical thinking ability is significantly improved by courses in argumentation and debate and by debate experience" (1982, pp. 33-34; see also Snider 1993).

Other studies document the professional success of debaters after graduation. For example, 15% of persons in Keele and Matlon's survey of former debaters went on to become "top-ranking executives" (Keele and Matlon 1984). This finding is consistent with the results of Center's survey, which suggests that participation in forensics is an employee attribute desired strongly by businesses, especially law firms (Center 1982, p. 5). While these survey data bode well for debate students preparing to test the waters of the corporate job market, such data shed little light on the degree to which argumentation skills learned in debate actually translate into practical tools of democratic empowerment. Regardless of whether or not survey data is ever generated to definitively answer this question, it is likely that faith in debate as an inherently democratic craft will persist.

Committed to affirming and stoking the progressive energies produced by this faith in argumentation, but also interested in problematizing the assumptions that undergird prevailing approaches to argumentation pedagogy for heuristic purposes, in this essay I make a double gesture. On the one hand, I underscore the importance of grounding the practice of academic argumentation to notions of democratic empowerment. On the other hand, I challenge the notion that such a grounding maneuver can be accomplished with faith alone. Moving beyond the characterization of argumentative acumen as a skill to be acquired exclusively through classroom or tournament training, I propose a notion of argumentative agency that brings questions of purpose to the center of pedagogical practice: For what purpose are argumentation skills used? Where can they be employed most powerfully (for better or worse)? What can be learned from efforts to bring argumentation skills to bear in concrete rhetorical situations outside of tournament contest rounds? In a three part discussion, I advance an analysis that contextualizes these questions and proposes reflective ideas that invite response in the ongoing conversation about the meaning and purpose of contemporary academic debate. After sketching the characteristics of some commonly advanced views on the nature of the connection between argumentation pedagogy and democratic empowerment (in part one), I explain how argumentative agency can serve as a conceptual bridge linking academic practice to empowerment (in part two), and then discuss specific strategies for making the pursuit of argumentative agency a guiding principle for work within academic settings (in part three).

LIMITS OF PURELY PREPARATORY PEDAGOGY

In the process of explaining their teaching approach, argumentation scholars sometimes invoke a bifurcation that separates academic study of argumentation from applied practice in public argument. This explanation typically begins with an elucidation of the democratic and emancipatory potential of debate as a process of decisionmaking, and then proceeds to an explanation of academic study as an essential preparatory step on the way to achievement of such emancipatory potential. This route of explanation is consistent with the American Forensic Association Credo, which declares that the purpose of forensic education is to "prepare students through classrooms, forums, and competition for participation in their world through the power of expression" (qtd. in Freeley 1996, p. 122). Writing from this posture to defend the value of National Debate Tournament (NDT) policy competition, Edward Panetta posits that NDT debate "will prepare students to be societal leaders ..." (1990, p. 76, emphasis added). Similarly, Austin Freeley suggests that academic debate "provides preparation for effective participation in a democratic society" and "offers preparation for leadership" (1997, p. 21, emphasis added).

What are the entailments of such a preparatory framework for argumentation pedagogy, and how do such entailments manifest themselves in teaching practice? On the surface, the rhetoric of preparation seems innocuous and consistent with other unremarkable idioms employed to describe education (college prep courses and prep school spring to mind). However, by framing argumentation pedagogy as preparation for student empowerment, educators may actually constrain the emancipatory potential of the debate enterprise. In this vein, approaches that are purely oriented toward preparation place students and teachers squarely in the proverbial pedagogical bullpen, a peripheral space marked off from the field of social action. In what follows, I pursue this tentative hypothesis by interrogating the framework of preparatory pedagogy on three levels, considering how it can position sites of academic inquiry vis-a-vis broader public spheres of deliberation, how it can flatten and defer consideration of complex issues of argumentative engagement and how it can invite unwitting co-option of argumentative skills.

As two prominent teachers of argumentation point out, "Many scholars and educators term academic debate a laboratory for testing and developing approaches to argumentation" (Hill and Leeman 1997, p. 6). This explanation of academic debate squares with descriptions of the study of argumentation that highlight debate training as preparation for citizenship. As a safe space that permits the controlled "testing" of approaches to argumentation, the academic laboratory, on this account, constitutes a training ground for "future" citizens and leaders to hone their critical thinking and advocacy skills.

While an isolated academic space that affords students an opportunity to learn in a protected environment has significant pedagogical value (see e.g. Coverstone 1995, p. 8-9), the notion of the academic debate tournament as a sterile laboratory carries with it some disturbing implications, when the metaphor is extended to its limit. To the extent that the academic space begins to take on characteristics of a laboratory, the barriers demarcating such a space from other spheres of deliberation beyond the school grow taller and less...