Reading and Writing with a Public Purpose: Fostering Middle School Students' Academic and Critical Community Literacies through Debate.

Abstract

Middle school is a crucial transition period for adolescents; in addition to beginning to grapple with the academic literacy demands of college and career readiness, they are working to find their place in public life and developing opinions about civic issues. This article presents debate as a literacy practice that is uniquely suited to helping middle school students increase their academic reading comprehension skills while also honing their critical literacy skills and capitalizing on their developing civic identities. Our study extends the established body of literature about the benefits of classroom debate by focusing on the impact of extracurricular, community-based debate among students in a large northeastern public school district. We use a critical literacy framework and mixed methods approach including analysis of standardized test scores of 179 debaters, as well as 34 interviews with students, teachers, and administrators, in order to explore the impacts of voluntary, community debate participation. Our findings demonstrate how debate encourages students to analyze complex texts, take multiple perspectives on controversial issues, and use their voices to advocate for social justice. Our findings speak to the power of community literacy initiatives to support academic development and foster critical literacies.

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