Not taken seriously? When debates are staged within the classroom

Abstract

The classroom debate is considered a democratic tool and, as such, surrounded by high hopes. In parallel, it seems to be a complex task for teachers to arrange classroom debates that meet their intentions. This article takes an interest in matches and mismatches between teachers’ intentions and the students’ reactions, with a particular focus on reactions that include irony and similar aspects, an aspect only tangentially treated in previous research. Given this, the aim is to illustrate, analyse and understand a variation of debate realisations. The empirical material consists of tape recordings from four different arrangements and from three secondary schools. The analytical procedure relied on critical classroom discourse analysis (CCDA). In addition, three dimensions of a debate; the relational, the textual and the intellectual, were used to highlight didactical aspects in particular. The different debate realisations are discussed in relation to sociological aspects and the results give an understanding for the circumstance that classroom debates are not realised isolated from the surrounding world.