In today’s rapidly changing social landscape, we need new sets of skills for competitiveness and success. Dialogy focuses on cultivating these all-important 21st-century skills.
Critical Thinking
Debate participation is a powerful essential cultivator of thinking skills. The core of debate requires students to assess multiple forms of information critically. They must put forth a persuasive case on a particular topic and also critically engage with an opposing persuasive argument from others. They also must do so with limited time and under pressure. Debate participation instills a critical lens and enables students to weigh and assess competing knowledge claims.
Creativity
Creativity cultivated at all levels of the debate education process. Students learn how to construct a case and utilize rhetoric to emphasize their persuasive points. Students also master a problem/solution framework. They must conjure creative solutions to pressing social problems.
Collaboration
Debate is fundamentally a group activity. Students must learn how to interact with and negotiate with others about strategic questions, division of labor. They must accurately assess their strengths relative to their peers and assign responsibilities accordingly. In the space of debate, students themselves are in control of the process, and they must work together to pursue the best outcome.
Communication
Debate powerfully brings together the critical modes of communication: speaking and writing. There are few activities where students have an opportunity to practice communication and also receive feedback on the effectiveness of communication.
Information Literacy
In today’s world, information from a multitude of sources inundates us. Young people must possess the ability to filter this information, identify biases, and critically assess the information that they encounter. Debate participation is, in many ways, an information management activity. Students learn to do research, distinguish between the reliability of various sources, and marshal the most compelling evidence to support their positions.
Media Literacy
A foundation of the Dialogy approach is an emphasis on media literacy. Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication. The purpose of being media literate is to engage in a digital society; one needs to be able to understand, inquire, create, communicate, and think critically. It is vital to effectively access, organize, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms. We do this at Dialogy by exploring and analyzing a wide range of persuasive and informational media.
Global Citizenship
A Global Citizen is someone aware of the world and has a sense of their role as a world citizen. Global citizens respect and value diversity. They understand how the world works and they participate in the community at multiple levels, from the local to the global. Global citizens are willing to act to make the world a more equitable and sustainable place. To be active global citizens, young people need to be flexible, creative, and proactive. They need to be able to solve problems, make decisions, think critically, communicate ideas effectively, and work well within teams and groups. These skills and attributes are essential to success in other areas of 21st-century life. These skills and qualities develop with active learning methods through which students learn by doing and by collaborating with others.