DEBATING IN MARKETING CLASSES IN THE ITESM
By: Jorge Hernandez and Rodolfo Rincones
Abstract
ITESM encourages faculty to use pedagogical techniques to help promote active student
participation in classes. Typically, this is done through presentations of students’ class projects.
These presentations, however, elicit minimal participation from other class members; students are
often nervously absorbed in contemplating their upcoming presentation or are sitting passively or
relieved that they already have completed their presentation. In addition, there is limited student
assessment about the content of their classmates’ presentations or their involvement during these
presentations. Developing critical thinking ability has long been assumed to be one of the primary
educational outcomes a student might receive by participating in debates. This paper show the
advantages and disadvantages on the use of debates as a pedagogical technique to A) promote
critical thinking B) provide more meaningful, relevant, and engaged learning, and C) hold all
class members responsible for their own learning.
Introduction
Whether we think about it or not, we are involved in many debates every day. These can
range from informal discussions with friends, schoolmates or with yourself about the advantages
and disadvantages of taking a particular action to formal discussions in business meetings or in
class about issues or concerns. Regardless of the situation, however, we are evaluating the merits
of one proposition against the other. This weighing the evidence, advantages, and appeals of one
side of an argument or situation against the other is the basis of the debate.
Debate is the ultimate test of a speaker's skills. The student must not prepare only your
side of the argument, but must also analyze and know your opponent's side as well. The student
must choose relevant material, logical appeals, and emotional appeals to persuade and inform
your audience as well as be prepared to answer the arguments of your opponents. This requires
research, analysis, planning, and organization. The students must also listen carefully as your
opponents present their arguments and attack yours for logical and technical mistakes. The
speaking skills will receive an exacting test because only the first speaker has a prepared speech.
All the others, while they have a presentation plan, must adapt their presentation to the
requirements of the debate as it progresses.
Debate
Debate has been a well know pedagogical technique since there have been written
records about teaching and learning. Debate is a great way to develop your critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing,
applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from observation,
experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication.
Debaters need to know how to choose the best type of approach, method of organization,
or presentation style for a debate. Originally employed for learning philosophy and theology,
debate was later used in the fields of history, law, literature, and the physical sciences.
Debate is critical advocacy. It is advocacy in that the debater must advocate, propose, and
defend ideas. It is critical because the debater must not ignore the advocacy of others, but must
engage them and use the tools of critical thinking to evaluate the ideas of others. This process of
critical advocacy has been shown to involve the students in important behaviors and skills which
we should cultivate in our citizens. Many researchers over the past four decades have come to the
same conclusions.
Debate is a great way to develop critical thinking skills. Debaters need to know how to
choose the best type of approach, method of organization, or presentation style for a debate. They
also must know how to find the best evidence. The students must evaluate the evidence being
used by the other debate team and understand exactly what it does for their arguments. They must
think about the consequences of each argument and evaluate what is worth.
Critical Thinking
Emphasizing critical thinking in teacher education could potentially increase society’s
effectiveness in addressing national and international problems. The concept of critical thinking
involves retrieval and generation of valid information related to an identified problem, and then
the use of that information in reaching supportable solutions to the problem. Critical thinking is
important in all academic disciplines, but is indispensable in the field of teacher education. To
incorporate critical thinking in their courses, teacher educators first must understand and value
critical thinking. A good beginning point is for teacher educators to understand that critical
thinking can be represented both as a cognitive disposition and as ability.
With multiple ways identified to assess their students’ progress in critical thinking.
Teacher educators must then begin incorporating critical thinking demands and practices into
their regular methods and content courses. Improvement in student skill in critical thinking is not
an automatic by-product of teaching conventional academic courses (Chance, 1986; Ennis, 1992;
Harris & Clemmons, 1996; Reed & Kromrey, 2001).
One way to promote critical thinking in subject matter courses is to structure them around
critical thinking models (Allegretti & Frederick, 1995; Isaacs, 1991). Promoting transferability of
critical thinking practices, as emphasized by Halpern (1998), is an especially salient challenge in
teacher education. One possibility for enhancing transferability is to require students to critically
evaluate the claims into the economics news about the market situations.
Argument
Controversy is virtually inevitable in classrooms devoted to examining the pros and cons
of various actions, especially when issues of great personal and societal relevance are under
discussion. Thus, a pivotal feature of a teacher education emphasis on critical thinking is helping
students see all sides of controversial issues. The teacher’s job is confront students with strongest
arguments, but not the most extreme, arguments on all sides of an issue and to help them to arrive
at and defend a view they can commit themselves to.
Argumentation is the art of influencing others, through the medium of reasoned
discourse, to believe, or act as we wish them to believe or act. Since it has been considered
important for students to be exposed to the role of scientific argumentation in the establishment of
scientific knowledge (Osborne, Erduran, Simon & Monk, 2001), and since we know that students
learn more effectively in active and cooperative learning environments (Bransford, Brown &
Cocking, 1999), it seems appropriate to sketch the arguments and counter arguments used for the
two models of solution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in a format that could promote an
active learning environment at the Marketing classes.
A distinction is sometimes made between argument and persuasion. Argument, according
with to most authorities, gives primary importance to logical appeals. Persuasion introduces the
element of ethical and emotional appeals. The difference is one of emphasis. In real-life
arguments about social policy, the distinction is hard to measure. In Marketing we use the term
argument to represent forms of discourse that attempt to persuade the listeners to accept the
claim, whether acceptance is based on logical or emotional appeals or, as is usually the case, on
both.
Debate Teaches Critical Thinking
Critical thinking as an educational goal enjoys a general consent. A low quantity of
teachers would object to critical thinking as an important curricular component. Ziegelmueller &
Dause (1975) claim that, by debating, “individuals can be assisted in their efforts to make
important decisions and in their efforts to convince others of the wisdom of those decisions(p. 4).
Debate involves more than just the event. The research is a very important component of the
process. They argue that research skills are the heart of the inquiry phase of argumentation.
Another advantage, according to Ziegelmueller and Dause, of using policy debate, as a learning
tool is that it requires students to be willing to listen to the other side of, issue, and learn from it.
Tumposky (2004) has an even stronger defense of debate as an educational tool; The
analysis of both sides of an argument, which is developed in the debate format, encourages
participants to step outside their personal frame of reference and become aware of their own
thinking, if only to anticipate how such thinking might be vulnerable to attack from an
opponent(p.2)
However, Tumposky has some reservations about debating in the classroom. She finds
that debates can oversimplify some problems. In addition, she found that not every issue has a
reasonable other side. Thirdly, debate can be too confrontational in the classroom setting. Finally,
she is concerned that someone wins and someone loses. Tumposky’s conclusion is that debate
has not proven “to be an effective way for reaching goals associated with critical thinking, peer
interaction, analysis and metacognition” (p. 5).
Thomas Lickona (1991) makes a strong case for debate, asserting that “nothing gets
attention or stimulates thinking like controversy (p.268). Lickona likes the fact that students have
to consider both sides of a controversial issue such as the Vietnam War. He also likes that facts
are learned while researching the side one is defending. Lickona concludes; “Structured debates
are another effective way to stimulate reflection about controversial issues, especially for students
at the middle school and high school levels (p. 272).
Rogers (1969) argues that learning, in order to be effective, requires a quality of personal
involvement (p. 5). Rogers sees education as a stimulus that comes from the external
environment, whereas the individual “sense of discovery, reaching out, of grasping and
comprehending comes from within (p.136) Rogers' ultimate goal for students is self-directed
learning through which teachers set the stage for inquiry and problem solving, key components of
policy debate.
Debate is an Effective Learning Tool
Torff and Warburton (2005) argue that success as an adult depends on the ability to think
critically. They examined teacher’s beliefs on which critical thinking activities are rich, like
debate, and which are lean, like direct instruction. They concluded that teachers only tend to
assign critical thinking activities to “high-advantaged students” (p.156). An advantaged student is
defined as, a student that has high ability, high prior knowledge and low motivation or high
ability, high prior knowledge and high motivation (p.160).
Writing has always been considered a rich critical thinking activity, as has debate. The
advantage of debate is that it includes the engagement of the actual debate, the acquired
knowledge that researching brings to the process and the writing skills used to construct the
speeches of the debate. Combining these skills is important in learning effectively.
Black (2005) defines effective learning clearly:
Cognitive thinking skills include the ability to: refine generalizations and avoid over
simplification; transfer insights to new contexts; develop perspectives; beliefs, arguments and
theories; design and use criteria to be used for the purpose of evaluating information and
sources; raise and pursue significant questions; analyze arguments, interpretations, beliefs, and
theories; and evaluate assumptions (p.45).
Debate seems to be the best single activity to cultivate increased critical thinking skills
and increased learning on the subject debated as defined by remembering what was learned.
Ngeow and Kong (2003) sum this up:
The purpose of learning with in this context is not to ‘get it right’ but to produce
something meaningful through critical inquiry, debate and reflection. Using debate in
classroom of disadvantaged students seems like a good way to help students learn more
about a subject and critically think about it. (p.1)
Debate in classroom
Teachers can benefit from debating in their classrooms if they are searching for an
activity to increase critical thinking. If students are engaged in this lesson, teachers may find it an
alternative to direct instruction. If a little controversy and competition stirs the students to take an
interest in a marketing issue, then it is a successful teaching method.
It will be another
tool/weapon in the teacher’s arsenal. Teaching students through debate will allow teachers to
blend several lessons into one. There is a research component, there is a writing component,
there is a critical thinking component and there is a public speaking component. The most
important consideration for teachers will be that students learn the information taught in the
lesson. Along the way, students can also get a feel for how public policy is made.
This project was undertaken to test students’ ability to learn from a debate. Would research a
topic and critically thinking about that topic help students to retain that knowledge? Would the
stimulation of debating help students learn more about the topic. If debating positively impacted
the student’s learning then more debates should be added to classroom instruction. Debate could
be added as a best practice for critical thinking instruction. While critical thinking is the most
important part of the debate process, active participation is also very important and will help the
student make decisions about the material in the lesson. Hans Furth (1970 p.129) establish,
“Freedom of critical thinking involves the active participation of the thinking subject”.
John Dewey (1916) insists that thinking is the best method of intelligent learning. Dewey, the
father of our present education system, thought discussion of ideas lead to engagement in the
lesson being taught. He also believed that debating the topics could lead to “spontaneous
inquires” (p. 156) on the part of the students, furthering advanced thought. Because the most
challenging and vital critical thinking questions can have multiple answers, an informed base for
addressing such questions requires information on all sides of an issue. These arrangement
counters one of the greatest impediments to our becoming more critical in analyze the facts.
There is an inclination to listen to or read only information consistent with our own viewpoints.
Different researchers have demonstrated that persons primarily seek information confirming
rather than disputing their expectations and conclusions (Frey, 1981; Holton & Pyszczynski,
1989; Lundgren & Prislin, 1998; Jonas, Schulz-Hardt, Frey, & Thelen, 2001).
The Debate Format
There are two teams. One team presents arguments in favor of the topic and the other
team presents arguments in opposition to the topic, the two teams will face each other. There will
be a moderator to insure that both teams get equal time. Two parts of the debate, the introductory
and concluding statements, are prepared. The third part, the question and answer period is
spontaneous so the student must be very well prepared.
On the day of the debate, the students are divided with girls debating against the
boys. This was even due to the distribution of students in these classrooms. In addition,
by separating the students based on gender, discussions about who is the smarter of the
students were avoided; as were cliques choosing sides. The students conferred together
and chose which side of the issue for example, for or against of Wendy’s hamburgers,
they wished to support. Then the students had a few minutes to review the information
from the summaries.
Once the subject has been chosen and assigned to a debate team, the debate team must
restate the topic as a proposition. Developing a correctly written proposition is crucial because it
will shape your debate, delineate, and indicate your areas of research. Regardless of whether girls
are the affirmative or the negative team, the first step is to develop an offensive debate matrix.
This matrix outlines the main arguments that the students will use to convince your listeners to
support your side of the proposition, this matrix includes the following:

The debate proposition

Main ideas listed in order of importance

Supporting ideas that develop the main ideas

Specific examples and details to illustrate subordinating ideas

Documentation references

Visual references
OFFENSIVE DEBATE MATRIX
TOPIC:
TEAM:
PURPOSE:
PROPOSITION:
Main Ideas
Supporting
Ideas
Details
References
Visuals
It is enough to know how the students present the information; the students must also
analyze your opponent's argument and strategy. Therefore, the second step is to develop a
defensive debate matrix. The purpose of this matrix is to help the students to identify weak or
questionable aspects of your argument and to formulate methods to offset or defend against the
opponent's attack. This matrix includes the following:

Any points that the students intend to use that are open to questions or that may
be attacked by your opponent.

Any points that the students do not intend to use but that your opponent may
bring up against you.

Supporting material and specific strategies that the student will use to combat
your opponent’s attack.
DEFENSIVE DEBATE MATRIX
TOPIC:
TEAM:
PURPOSE:
PROPOSITION:
Weak Points
Defense
Now that the students have analyzed and documented your arguments, you are ready to
analyze and prepare to attack your opponent’s arguments. To do this, you must delineate your
opponent’s strong and weak points. This requires creative, thinking, research, and analysis. As the
students developed the other matrices, the student must asked, ‘what are my strong and weak
points and what specific information can I use to convince the audience to support my side. Now
the students must apply this question to the opponent’s arguments. This will provide the basis for
your attack strategy during the debate. The attack strategy matrix should contain the following:

Your opponent’s strong points in order of importance.

Your material and strategy to discredit them.

Your opponent’s weak points.

Your material and strategy to capitalize on them.
ATTACK STRATEGY MATRIX
TOPIC:
TEAM:
PURPOSE:
PROPOSITION:
Opponent's Strong Points
Attack Strategy
Opponent's Weak Points
Attack Strategy
1. The debate will take the time allotted by the teacher.
2. Introductory statements are 3 minutes each team, presented by the team leaders. Then
each member of the team gives a brief presentation of his/her point of view supporting
their proposition with more specific points, opinions, facts, examples, statistics, etc.
3. After the introductory statements, the CON team starts by asking questions of the PRO
team about statements or claims in the introductory statements. These questions should
be directed at any weaknesses in the statement. The students go from there. All the team
members from both teams may now participate. Try not to interrupt and maintain
courteous behavior throughout the debate.
4. If time permits, the audience will be allowed to ask questions at the end of the debate.
5. The audience as well the teacher will evaluate the student throughout the debate.
DEBATE SCORESHEET
PLEASE COMPLETE THIS SCORESHEET FOR BOTH TEAMS. REMEMBER YOU ARE EVALUATING DEBATING SKILL,
NOT THE POSITIONS BEING ARGUED.
DEBATE TOPIC:
PRO TEAM:
CON TEAM:
Rate each team on each category listed below using this scale of 1 to 4
1=Poor
2= Adequate
3= Good
PRO
CON
4=Superior
CATEGORY
A. Analysis: the team presented the strongest possible arguments to support its position.
B. Evidence: The team supported its arguments with good examples.
C. Organization: The team’s introductory and concluding statements were clear and well organized.
D. Questions: The team’s questions were concise and exposed weaknesses in the opposing team’s
arguments.
E: Answers: The team’s answers to questions were concise and to the point.
F: Presentation: The team members communicated their position persuasively by combining
delivery, gestures, and eye contact to create an image of competence and leadership.
G. Participation: All members of the team participated, by making statements, asking questions of
the other team, or answering the other team’s questions.
Comments:
Total Points
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About the Authors:
Jorge Hernandez is student of Doctorate in Administration with the University of Mexico
(UNAM) and has a Master Degree in Administration by the ITESM, 1999; Actually is professor
in the school teaching Marketing, Marketing Research, International Political Economy between
others.
Dr. Rincones has Ph. D. in Administration and Education Development; is associated professor in
UTEP from 2001, and actually is course coordinator of post grade and leadership in the Education
Program.