Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Most political science educators agree that the preparation of literate and interested citizens is an important teaching and learning objective. The syllabi of political science courses describe the goals of developing higher order cognitive skills, fostering intellectual and moral growth, and instilling affective values, such as intellectual empathy, fair-mindedness, tolerance, and fascination with the subject.There is often a mismatch between the objectives of curricula, on the one side, and activities and assessment tools utilized for the attainment of goals, on the other. Lectures as an instructional tool, and tests, quizzes, and papers as tools of students? evaluation remain the predominant mode of teaching and gauging the learning outcomes. Classroom debates are an excellent teaching and learning strategy aligned with the goals of development of critical thinking and intellectual independence. In addition, debates offer excellent performance assessment opportunities for both instructors and students. Despite many virtues and simplicity in use, debates have not been frequently used in political science courses, in general, or international relations courses, in particular.In my essay, I advocate the use of classroom debates as superior tools of learning, instruction, and evaluation for teaching about different areas of international relations or world politics. The discussion of debates is grounded in psychological theories that explicate how the features of debates can promote abstract thinking, engagement in learning, citizenship and etiquette, clarity, organization, persuasion, public speaking, research, and teamwork and cooperation. I emphasize the evaluative purposes of debates and discuss how they can be used to measure students? achievement, diagnose learning problems, assess the entire instruction process, and even determine student attitudes toward the content of the course and the quality of the instruction. The essay includes concrete examples of classroom debates accompanied by recommendations on debate preparation, presentation, evaluation, and sources for debates.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Most political science educators agree that the preparation of literate citizens able and willing to engage in democratic practices is an important teaching and learning objective. The syllabi of political science courses describe the goals of developing higher order cognitive skills, fostering intellectual and moral growth, and instilling affective values, such as intellectual empathy, fair-mindedness, tolerance, and fascination with the subject.
There is often a mismatch between the objectives of curricula, on the one side, and activities and assessment tools utilized for the attainment of goals, on the other. Lectures as an instructional tool, and tests, quizzes, and papers as tools of students� evaluation remain the predominant mode of teaching and gauging the learning outcomes. Classroom debates are an excellent teaching and learning strategy aligned with the goals of development of critical thinking and intellectual independence. In addition, debates offer excellent performance assessment opportunities for both instructors and students. Despite many virtues and simplicity in use, debates have not been frequently used in political science courses.
In my essay, I advocate the use of classroom debates as superior tools of learning, instruction, and evaluation. The discussion of debates is grounded in psychological theories that explicate how the features of debates can promote abstract thinking, engagement in learning, citizenship and etiquette, clarity, organization, persuasion, public speaking, research, and teamwork and cooperation. I emphasize the evaluative purposes of debates and discuss how they can be used to measure students� achievement, diagnose learning problems, assess the entire instruction process, and even determine student attitudes toward the content of the course and the quality of the instruction.
The essay includes concrete examples of classroom debates accompanied by recommendations on debate preparation, presentation, evaluation, and sources for debates.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The goal of the paper is to examine the relevance and insights from the classic debate over power within American politics in the 50s and 60s to the recent theoretical literature on American hegemony and the question of balancing. My goal was to bridge the gap between the highly abatarct, philosophic "power deates" and the recent literature mainly on issues such as American hegemony (as reflected, for example, in a journal like International Security) by focusing on a few of the central debates in the “power debate” and see to what extent they are/not reflected in the current IR.More specifically I focus on three issues: •Viewing power as a resource or as a relations.•The three faces of power and their application to current debates regarding the use of institutions, the issue of forced democratization, the concept of soft power, the relevance of structure-based power, and the challenges to American hegemony in light of the 3 faces.and finally •The common assertion that power is “an essentially contested concept".

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examined whether a debater�s background nonverbal behavior affected audience perceptions of her and her opponent�s likeability. Students watched one of four versions of a televised debate. In each, while the speaking debater appeared on the main screen, subscreens displayed her nonspeaking opponent�s background nonverbal behavior. In one version, the non-speaking debater displayed a neutral expression during her opponent�s speech, while in the other three she nonverbally displayed occasional disagreement, nearly constant disagreement, or both agreement and disagreement. After viewing the debates, students rated the debaters� likeability. Analysis indicated that background nonverbal behavior influenced audience perceptions of the nonverbal communicator but not of the speaking debater. These results and their implications are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Despite the large body of research on televised debates, some fundamental questions have remained unanswered so far. This is especially true for the way, in which viewers react to different kinds of statements during a debate and the degree to which these short-term reactions influence post debate opinions. Taking the second televised debate in the 2002 national German election as an example, we address both of these questions in this paper. By means of a real-time response measurement, we first identify those statements that were most successful in the audience as a whole and those that polarized supporters and opponents of the candidates. Then, we analyse the content, style and rhetorical means of those statements. In a third step, we investigate the effects of short-term reactions upon post-debate opinions. Our analysis shows that emotionally packaged commonplaces were most successful in the audience as a whole. On the other hand, statements in which the candidates presented factual evidence, specified their political plans or criticised their opponent, tended to polarize supporters and opponents of the candidates. Moreover, short-term reactions did in fact influence viewers' post-debate opinions. This means that it is most effective for candidates in a televised debate not to deal with controversial topics but to address in an emotional way questions in which most of the audience agrees with them. It is very unlikely, though, that this strategy serves democracy.