Welcome to the launch of The Debatifier, an education blog administered by Argument-Centered Education. The name comes from our term ‘to debatify’ – which means, to infuse argumentation and debate into curriculum in order to produce energy, engagement, and college-directed thinking and literacy skills.

We intend for The Debatifier to be the premier place on the web for innovative educational theory and the experience-based reflection on the central role of argument in effective, high-performing, college-directed K-12 education for all.

We aspire for Argument-Centered Education, as an education services organization, to be distinguished in two crucial and complementary areas: its thought leadership in the education sector, and the in-class impact it has on teaching and learning. The Debatifier is a primary vehicle to demonstrate and advance our thought leadership.

We will be posting twice weekly on all matters related to making K-12 instruction more rigorous and successful through the use of argument-based resources, strategies, projects, and assignments. And because we – along with a growing body of educators and theorists – believe that academic argument is the ‘soul of an education’ (to use Neil Postman’s phrase quoted by the Common Core), argument-centered instruction touches most of the most important education issues of our time:

• Differentiated instruction
• Effective professional development and growth for educators
• Complex learners
• Assessment and its use
• College-readiness and retention
• Non-cognitive, affective skills
• Critical thinking

The Debatifier will address all of these and more, while provoking your own thinking and reflection – and, we hope, participation, whether it be by submitting to us a guest post for this blog, or by commenting in the sections below. Guest posts from leading scholars and theorists will appear regularly. And it will be of little surprise that we hope to generate some intelligent debate on this blog, too.

Ultimately, the end-use of this forum for conceptualizing, sharing research, and exchanging ideas and strategies on the educational uses and effects of argument and debate is to help educators grow and climb in their professional work to make schooling more successful.  Educators’ work is the most important that can be done: creating opportunities for, and influencing the lives of, children.  The Debatifier exists to generate and spread ideas to advance that work.