The Impact of a Debate Program on Adolescents’ Conflict Resolution Skills.

Abstract

Abstract   In addition to academic education, non-formal education is crucial for the development of communication skills among young people and, accordingly, for the formation of skills necessary for constructive debate, which is of the utmost importance for a modern citizen working in any field. Because of all this, in the XXI century, humanity is faced with the seemingly unimaginable challenge of lacking basic communication skills. In order to facilitate this, such kind of teachings are needed, which would be the best way for a modern human to adapt to the current environment. We investigated the significance of one of the most popular and effective training programs of informal education in this direction - formal debate techniques. The practice of teaching formal debates has been introduced in the world for many years and has already been actively implemented in Georgia and plays an important role in dealing with the challenges of modern digitalization. The research goal is to understand how a debate training program affects both short-term and long-term self-image parameters of youth and adults that change during personality development. By self-image we mean the following types of self-characteristics: self-esteem, self-presentation and self-control. In addition, the study addresses the impact of formal debates on constructive reasoning and, therefore, conflict management skills in the target audience; Since, in the current reality, conflict is one of the most urgent problems, both in everyday and professional life. The research hypothesis is to determine the effect on self-image in students who will undergo a full course of formal debate training and how this is reflected in changes in personality characteristics relevant to conflict management, such as self-esteem, self-presentation, self-control and conflict management skills. The members of the target group were students and teachers of those schools where debate teaching was successfully introduced and debate clubs are actively functioning. Both quantitative and qualitative studies were conducted, in which students of debate clubs and teachers (that were heads of debate clubs) from all regions of Georgia participated.