Classroom Debates in Middle School Social Studies

Using transcripts of 6 classroom debates that took place in 4 urban schools, the present study takes a closer look at what middle school students do during classroom debates in the context of a social studies curriculum designed to support student argumentation in debate. Two coding schemes were used to analyze student comments in the transcripts: argumentative moves and the quality of grounds (reasons/evidence used to support a claim). Results show that: (a) students used textual evidence to support their arguments over a third of the time (37.6%), which is a higher rate than what might be expected given previous studies; (b) students connected their evidence to their claims 20.3% of the time (also a much higher rate than what might be expected given previous studies); and (c) argumentative moves were related to text-based grounds quality at a statistically significant level (p = 0.006). Students were more likely to support positions with textual evidence than support oppositions and supporting comments with textual evidence. Implications for middle school practice are discussed.