In my first year of teaching back in 2016, I had the privilege of handling senior high school students in the course Practical Research 1. Looking back, it was probably not the most ideal situation: a new teacher with a brand-new curriculum; but my students eventually did well so all is well! Anyway, since there weren’t a lot of source materials back then, I mostly relied on strategies I found online, which were often based on Western contexts. Still, I was clear about the main skill I wanted my students to develop: the ability to build solid arguments backed up by evidence, not just personal opinions or beliefs. And with a three-hour class, I had to be creative. I couldn’t simply lecture for that long or force them to write nonstop. One thing I noticed, though: that majority of the students were outspoken and that they were a very close-knit group. So I decided to use that to my advantage.. enter classroom debates.
My goal was to get them to challenge each other’s ideas, even if it felt unnatural because of their friendships, and to create some healthy competition inside the classroom. To make it work, I added a few twists: offering incentives, choosing debate topics I knew they would be passionate about, and keeping the atmosphere engaging. Looking back, even as a novice teacher, I felt reassured when my students later shared that the debates were among the activities they enjoyed most in class.
Fast forward to 2025, I am now teaching research methods to undergraduates preparing for thesis writing. The goal remains the same: I want them to understand that research is built on argumentation. As I always emphasize in class, the whole research paper is essentially one big argument. We already begin our argumentation when we form our research questions: we have to justify that we are asking the right questions, that these questions matter, and that they are worth investigating.
That was one of the motivations behind the activity I shared in my previous post. What I may not have shared there is the important role of the teacher as facilitator. Rather than simply pointing out when students commit fallacies or draw weak conclusions, the teacher should act like a navigator, marking possible paths but giving the students the space to choose their own route. And part of that process is to encourage the students to look beyond their own answers and consider that they may be wrong.
For example, when two groups presented identical root cause using the same reasoning, I asked the rest of the class if they agreed. Unsurprisingly, most said yes. I thought that they were starting to “groupthink.” So, I asked them to pause and reflect: do they really agree with everything? Surely there were parts they could view differently. I also had to repeatedly tell them that our class is a “safe space” and that disagreements are not only welcome, but highly encouraged. After a few moments of silence and some hesitant glances, a few students began to speak up and things started heating up.
Before long, students were sharing opposing views, acknowledging points they agreed but pointing out the points where they do not. The debate grew more animated, and some became so passionate (and possibly comfortable because they are friends with each other) that they began to argue with phrases like, “Of course that’s the way you think because…” That was my cue to step in and remind them that in this classroom: we “attack the argument, not the person.” Jokingly, I said something along the lines.. “we didn’t want our classroom to turn into most common sections we see on social media”.
Later that week, I heard in a podcast that while we are often taught how to get along, we are rarely taught how to disagree, which I actually agree. We see these in activities like graded recitations, or forum boards that when you ask students to comment on another classmates’ post, they would often say how much they agree on what was said.
So what are ways that we can disagree productively? In the same podcast, American academic and psychologist Angela Duckworth shared that one way to have healthy disagreements is to first begin with what you agree on before pointing out where you differ. Hearing that honestly made me feel good as I was reminded of what I told the class. That they may agree on some parts their classmate said, but surely not everything. And in this age of social media, where unhealthy disagreement often escalates into conflict, this feels especially important for educators to model and encourage.
As teachers, we have the responsibility to create classrooms where students feel safe to share their opinions and to guide them toward disagreeing in ways that are respectful, constructive, and ultimately, more meaningful.
So… do you agree with me, or do you not?
She teaches and she writes 