Mid Sweden University

This study was an investigation into students’ reactions to the constructed disagreement needed in Oxford debating. Using both qualitative and quantative methods, the output of two classroom debates were studied in an attempt to understand how students dealt with the task of ‘agreeing to disagree’. What became apparent was that as suggested in Locher’s work, disagreement in constructed arguments in a classroom setting is dependent on factors in and outside the classroom (Kakava, 2003:98). As expected, disagreement can be for some students, uncomfortable and intolerable. This study has shown that getting through the task and showing off language skills in establishing a stance is favoured by some students over disagreeing in the rebuttal phase for fear of being impolite. However those students that occupied a space of play and collaboration, be it consciously or unconsciously, were able to be more involved in the task and in this way they worked with the disagreement to a greater extent than those students that avoided the disagreement altogether.

Even though disagreement is dispreferred and can be viewed as awkward and impolite, it is affected by the many factors around the exchange (Sifianou 2012). This study highlights that these factors affecting classroom communication should be acknowledged by teachers at class and group level to better prepare the students entering into classroom debates. In preparing the students, the teacher can look to scaffold students’ learning and help them feel more comfortable with disagreement, rather than getting stuck on the impolite preconceptions that can stop collaboration. Perhaps the more that disagreement has a place in the classroom the more useful it will become. The need for greater expression of differing perspectives in future workplaces is highlighted by the findings of a 2015 study into 12,000 computer game design teams. David Stark and Balazs Vedres discovered that teams with diverse backgrounds and conflicting perspectives were the most successful. The ability to constructively disagree is key to students’ future success in workplaces that seek to draw on conflicting perspectives and diversity for its creative potential. Fostering the right conditions to allow ‘micro-creativity’ (Sifianou 2012) to grow in classrooms is more important then ever.