A study of the relationship between active participation in interscholastic debating and the development of critical thinking skills with implications for school administrators and instructional leaders

Intense pressure to teach critical thinking skills has made educators and administrators carefully examine programs purporting to produce these skills. One technique long claiming such capabilities is debating. Unfortunately, studies tying debate to these skills are somewhat ambiguous. Moreover, no studies describe administrative perception of the value of such instruction or of the assumed relationship between academic debating and acquisition of these skills.;Three null hypotheses addressed these deficiencies: (1) There shall be no significant difference in gains in critical thinking skills of high school students with two or more years of active participation in a highly competitive inter-scholastic high school debate program as measured by reading comprehension scores on the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) when compared with students who do not participate in such a program. (2) There shall be no significant difference in gains in cumulative GPAs of high school students with two or more years of active participation in a highly competitive high school debate when compared with students who do not participate in such programs. (3) There shall be no significant difference in perceptions of a relationship between debating and development of critical thinking skills between principals, superintendents, and other instructional leaders who serve systems that have active, highly competitive interscholastic debate programs and administrative personnel in systems with non-competitive or non-existent debate programs.;All three null hypotheses were rejected.;Pre- and post-reading comprehension scores for 155 debaters and 155 non-debaters in three private high schools were compared using a correlated-samples t-Test. Pre- and post-GPAs for 120 debaters and 120 non-debaters were also compared. A 23-item questionnaire, using a 5-point Likert scale, provided data for a series of ANOVAs measuring differences in administrative perceptions.;Differences in gains in reading comprehension scores for students with at least two years of active debating (10 tournaments per year) were statistically significant at the.01 level as were the differences in student GPAs.;Responses from 155 administrators revealed administrators from schools with debate programs are more strongly supportive of critical thinking and are more likely to perceive a link between debate and critical thinking skills.