Lecture - Judging Paradigms - Andrej Schulcz - 3rd Better World Conference 2010

Lecture - Judging Paradigms - Andrej Schulcz - 3rd Better World Conference 2010 from Alfred Snider on Vimeo.

Judging paradigms, Andrej Schulcz, Slovak Debate Association

The paper will apply the concept of paradigms to the current practice of judging debates, with a special emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe. In general terms, paradigms are established ways of thinking about or dealing with certain situations. Paradigms of judging are an important, yet neglected, aspect of debate programs, because they have a significant impact on what debaters and coaches make of debating. Typically debate programs either do not have judging training developed to a level at which they would deal with conceptual issues, or they work within a single paradigm without being able to critically examine their approach to debating and compare it with the approaches of other debate programs. The concept of paradigms was introduced into debate judging training in Slovakia three years ago, and it has since proven to be a success. Perhaps if judges at international events approached differences among them through the prism of paradigms, there would be less confusion than what is nowadays characteristic of any larger tournament.

3rd International Conference on Argumentation, Rhetoric, Debate and the Pedagogy of Empowerment, October 2010, Maribor, Slovenia.

Further details can be found at the conference websites:
Basic information at debate.uvm.edu/​debateblog/​better/​Welcome.html
News blog at betterworldconference.blogspot.com/

The conference was organized by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor in Slovenia uni-mb.si/ , ZIP, Za in proti, zavod za kulturo dialoga/Pro et contra, institute for culture of dialogue zainproti.com/ , and the World Debate Institute of the University of Vermont debate.uvm.edu/​debateblog/​wdi/​Welcome.html .

The organizers are grateful for the support of our sponsor QatarDebate qatardebate.org/ .

Thanks to organizers Boris Vezjak, Alfred Snider and Bojana Skrt. Special thanks to Peter Mesarec, Monica Sobocan and Aljoša Polšak.