The National Debate Coaches Association (NDCA) — the nation’s premier organization for high school and middle school competitive debate teachers and coaches — has asked Argument-Centered Education to present and conduct a workshop on argument-centered instruction at its annual conference on May 19th – 20th, 2018.  The title of the presentation, to be delivered on May 19, is “Argument-Centered Education: Efficient and Effective Strategies to Increase Your Students’ Literacy Scores.”

The workshop will begin with an short overview of argument pedagogy and a look at some of the data and evidence on its effectiveness as an instructional approach to raising measurable literacy levels.  It will move to an interactive mode in which coaches will work with and through curricular resources designed to increase student achievement on the SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section, the AP Language and Composition free-response questions, and the NWEA exam.  And it will end with an open discussion of the adaptable applications of argument pedagogy, along with possible impediments and solutional strategies.

The NDCA is interested in bringing in Argument-Centered Education because of the organization’s interest in helping their hundreds of HS and MS competitive debate coaches to apply their professional learning more intentionally into their regular classroom teaching.  NDCA Board Member Christina Tallungan states: “I am excited to have this session from Les Lynn, a recognized leader in the field of argument pedagogy and to its classroom use, to learn more about the ways and the reasons to believe that argument-centered curriculum can help students literacy growth and test scores. As an experienced debate coach, I have anecdotal experiences demonstrating this growth, but find that learning new techniques as well as affirmation of prior methods helps reinvigorate my creativity as a teacher and coach. Plus, I am hoping to take some of these resources and research back to my school and parent community to better explain why students should be engaging in argument across the curriculum.”

Information about registration for the NDCA Annual Conference can be found here.

The NDCA presentation marks Argument-Centered Education’s third address to a national or regional education association this school year, after those to the National Council of Teachers of English in November and to the Illinois Association of the Teachers of English in October.