School Workshops (25/26 Series)
Over the 25/26 school year, the Centre for Responsible Debate delivered five workshops across four Scottish secondary schools. After our pilot session at St Augustine’s High School in Edinburgh, the Centre have visited Greenfaulds High School in Cumbernauld, Preston Lodge High School in Prestonpans, and Notre Dame High School in Greenock. Together, these workshops engaged more than 100 pupils in discussion about the purpose of debate and how disagreement can be made more constructive.
These visits built on our wider engagement with Education Scotland. Following a national webinar introducing teachers to the Centre’s educational resources, several schools expressed interest in bringing the project directly into their classrooms. The workshops draw on the Centre’s learning resources and Charter for Responsible Debate, and they encourage pupils to reflect on what debate is for. When is adversarial debate useful? When does it become counterproductive? How can disagreement help us understand different perspectives, identify common ground, and think together about difficult questions?
Across the workshops, pupils engaged thoughtfully with these questions and with the principles contained in the Charter for Responsible Debate. Topics we considered ranged from everyday disagreements among friends and family to larger political and social issues. The workshop comprised whole-class and small-group discussions, along with worksheets from the Centre’s Learning Resources Worksheet 1, ‘What is the Purpose of Debate?’ The central theme throughout was that productive debate requires more than simply arguing for one’s position and listening respectfully to others’ arguments: it requires really thinking and reasoning together about what we are to do in response to difficult challenges. The idea is to find a common purpose through responsible debate, even when we fundamentally disagree on some issues.
Feedback suggests that this approach resonated. Across the workshop series, 85% of pupils agreed or strongly agreed that they had learned new concepts or skills, while 72% agreed or strongly agreed that it would be useful for their school to have a Charter for Responsible Debate. Teacher feedback was similarly encouraging, with all respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that the workshops were useful for student learning and introduced new ideas for their teaching styles and methods, and 75% planning to further employ the Centre’s Learning Resources.
These findings are significant because the workshops are designed to communicate ideas that emerge from the Centre’s research into public debate. The aim is not simply to teach pupils how to argue more effectively, but to encourage reflection on the different purposes that debate can serve and the conditions under which disagreement becomes productive. This first run of the workshops has helped us refine our educational resources and better understand how they can support schools. They have also demonstrated considerable interest among both teachers and pupils in learning about more constructive forms of public discussion.
We are excited to continue and expand this work. Interested in arranging a workshop for your school during the first part of the 26/27 school year? Email matthew@responsibledebate.org.