ディベートと議論教育 ― ディベート教育国際研究会論集 2019 年 第 2 巻 pp. 55-63【研究ノート/Research Note】

Building Judging Quality in Newly Developing English
Parliamentary Debate Communities
Joshua Park(SolBridge International School of Business)

As English parliamentary debate becomes more popular around the world, building judging quality
is a challenge that new and developing communities inevitably face. As such communities sufferfrom a lack of experienced judges, they must find a way to both ensure an acceptable level ofquality in adjudication at tournaments and build judging quality. This article surveys this issue byidentifying three key areas of focus: (1) employing a balanced judging rubric, (2) adopting aconferral judging process, and (3) implementing a system of training and evaluating judges. For
each area, an authoritative Worlds-level tournament’s implementation along with a national orregional circuit’s adaptation is discussed, in order to identify implementable benchmarks. Basedon this analysis of best practices, this article provides practical recommendations for refining thequality of judging and tournament experience within nascent and developing English
parliamentary debating communities.
Debate and Argumentation Education - The Journal of the International Society for Teaching Debate
2019, Vol. 2, pp. 55-63.

1. Introduction

Debating has long received broad recognition as a valuable educational tool for developinga wide variety of essential skills, such as critical thinking (Allen, Berkowitz, Hunt, & Louden, A,1999; Colbert, 1995), reading and writing abilities (Green & Klug, 1990), communication andsocial competence (Darby, 2007; Park, Kim, & Kim, 2016), argumentation skills (Simonneaux,2001), confidence (Jerome & Algarra, 2005), and academic attainment (Collier, 2004; Mezuk,552009). But amongst these, English parliamentary debating style has recently enjoyed the greatest
amount of international distribution, having been adopted, in slightly different formulations, as thedebating style of choice in the two “Worlds-level” tournaments (World Universities DebatingChampionship and World Schools Debating Championships), as well as many of the highlyattended regional and international tournaments around the world. As such, both communities thathave relatively recently introduced English debate into their curriculum and/or extra-curricular
activities (e.g. Vietnam, Cambodia) as well as those that have already had a history of teaching
English debate and running English debate tournaments (e.g. United States, Japan) have adopted
parliamentary debating as either the primary or one of the major debating styles.
While the choice of style may matter less in the classroom, where teachers both plan andexecute debates according to the educational purpose they set, the choice of style affects
tournaments a great deal, as it has implications on how students prepare, deliver speeches, and are
evaluated by judges. In order for tournaments to have educational value by providing students theopportunity to showcase and refine skills while seeking to win a competition as in team sports(Warren, 1983), ensuring a high quality of judging is essential. But communities that newly
incorporate English parliamentary debate inevitably suffer from a dearth of quality judges andmust turn to inexperienced judges (usually judges who have experience in non-parliamentary
debating styles or judges without any judging experience altogether) when hosting tournaments.
While time and experience will help mitigate such issues, and turning to external help (i.e. inviting
quality judges from more established circuits) can help hasten the process of development, it isalso important for such communities to approach the issue of developing a judge pool with a clear
plan. The following analysis is intended to provide some guidelines for doing so, by identifying
three key areas of focus: (1) employing a balanced judging rubric, (2) implementing a “conferraljudging” process, and (3) adopting a system of training and evaluating judges. After a discussionof each area of focus, an example of an authoritative, Worlds-level tournament and a national orregional circuit’s adaptation is provided as a benchmark that can be followed.

2. Employing a balanced judging rubric

Judging rubric (also referred to as “judge sheet”, “mark sheet,” “ballot,” etc.) identifies
what a judge must pay attention to during the course of a debate, and as such, determines the56mechanism utilized by a judge to reach a decision (Ulrich, 1986). Judging rubrics can run the range
from being extremely detailed and numbers-oriented to being vague and comments-oriented.
At one side of the range, detailed, number-oriented rubrics provides a specific list ofelements for judges to consider (“checklist judging), requiring judges to look out for and markeach item as it appears during the course of the debate. Such items may include role fulfilment(how a speaker performed their given role), how many arguments or pieces of evidence wereprovided, how their verbal/nonverbal style rated, etc. This method is often adopted in newcommunities, because it makes the job of judges far easier, which makes it especially attractive
for tournaments that must employ inexperienced judges. However, this method leads to lesssophisticated and comprehensive evaluation of debates because judges are focusing on just theitems on the checklist without being able to compare and evaluate the main issues of clash in thedebate. For example, they may focus on the number of arguments provided rather than the impactof those arguments. They may also award wins based on role fulfillment technicality (e.g. whethera team had speakers exceeding the time limit, whether a speaker accepted points of information,etc.) without weighing the impact of role fulfillment on overall persuasion. This leads to amismatch between what average reasonable individuals versus judges employing a checklist
consider to be a winning case. This not only means decisions and feedbacks will be less satisfactory
to students, it also harms the educational impact of hosting debate tournaments.
On the other end of the spectrum are broad, comment-based rubrics, perhaps without any
scores or only a single, cumulative score for each team. This, combined with an inexperienced
judging pool, means that each judge will employ their own judging standard, potentially leading
to more decisions that are perceived to be illegitimate or interventionist. Not having a clear judging
standard means that result of a round is determined more based on what a judge wants to hear as
opposed to an objective evaluation of the quality of arguments. This incentivizes debaters to spend
less time developing their knowledge base and skills as debaters and more time worrying about
who will judge them.
What is preferable to the two extremes described above is to adopt a more balanced judging
rubric. Such rubrics provide clear guidelines for what is an effective speech while guiding judges
to focus on key issues and clashes that take place in the debate. Discussed below are someexamples of key parliamentary debate tournaments that employ a more balanced rubric, which
newly developing parliamentary debating communities can benchmark.
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World Schools Debating Championships (WSDC): World Schools (WSDC) requires judges toconsider three elements: style, content, and strategy. While the rubric provides explanations for
how to score each of these elements, judges are provided with a level of flexibility, with the marksheet providing just a guideline to view the debate. In fact, in cases where scores do not reflect awin-loss result that the judge believes justified, judges are encouraged to correct the mark sheet,as opposed to correcting their decision to match the points indicated in the mark sheet (WSDC
Tournament Committee, 2017).

Canadian National Debate Format (CNDF): CNDF looks at five elements: content andevidence, argument and reasoning, organization, presentation and delivery, and refutation andrebuttal. (Canadian National Debate, 2012). Similar to WSDC, the ballot is designed to provide aguideline on how to evaluate the debate. As such, they are encouraged to provide a holistic scoreof the debate before filling out each section of the ballot, rather than filling out each section, thenadding them up to deliver a total score.

3. Adopting a conferral judging process“Conferral judging” refers to a process (implemented in British Parliamentary circuits)
whereby at the conclusion of a debate, the panel of judges spends a set period of time discussing(or “conferring”) the round between themselves as a process of decision making. This can bedistinguished from “independent judging,” (implemented in WSDC and Asian Parliamentary
circuits) where judges are required to reach a decision without having any discussions with othermembers of the panel. Since nascent communities tend to have only a small number of skilled andexperienced judges, it is recommended that tournaments adopt conferral judging as opposed toindependent judging. Because independent judging provides every member of the judging panel
with equal weight, with no member of the panel influencing each member’s decision, this processfunctions well when quality of all members of the panel can be reasonably assured. However, thisprocess functions less effectively when there is a small number of experienced judges, as they areprovided with the same weight as inexperienced judges. Furthermore, because discussion is largely
forbidden among the judges, there is little room for educational exchange and growth as a resultof judging together in panels. On the other hand, conferral judging encourages judges to discuss
the debate as they each saw it, going over key clashes, assuring that each member of the panel is58

applying the rules properly, and going over the rationale for the decision critically. This usuallyleads to more well-reasoned decisions and better feedbacks for debaters. The interaction betweenexperienced and inexperienced adjudicators means that each round can be a clinic whereinexperienced adjudicators can learn from their more experienced counterparts. And even in a casewhere a panel is wholly made up of inexperienced adjudicators, they can still share their own
insights and feed off each other, developing their skillsets as a result.

World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC): World Universities DebatingChampionship is the most prestigious debate tournament at the university level. It employs
conferral judging, as is the case for all other tournaments that follow the British Parliamentary
format (WUDC Debating and Judging Manual, 2018). The conferral process is led by the chair ofthe panel, with each member being asked to provide their initial rankings (there are four teams inBP debates) with justifications. During the conferral process, judges talk about the round and arestrongly encouraged to reach consensus on team rankings, as well as speaker points, with votes
only being reserved for situations where judges cannot reach a consensus.
Canadian National Debate Format (CNDF): CNDF allows tournaments to implement
independent or conferral judging (or both). Conferral judging in CNDF encourages judges toremind each other of the key points in the debate and discuss views and has less emphasis onreaching a consensus. CNDF has adopted this choice-mechanism, being a circuit that has a mixtureof regions, where some regions may have a strong majority of experienced judges while otherregions may have a smaller number of experienced judges.
4. Implementing a system of training and evaluating judges

While rubrics and process of judging have a large indirect influence in the development of
judging quality, there also needs to be a direct system of training and evaluating judges to build
judging quality more effectively. These can be broadly divided into measures to be implemented
before the tournament and during the tournament.
Before rounds begin, it is effective to have an educational workshop/briefing session anda pre-tournament test for judges. First, tournament briefings and/or workshops should be organized,
as these provide a direct opportunity for judges to be educated and calibrated. At such workshops

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or briefings, debaters should be invited to come as well, to provide clarity and transparency forboth groups of participants. Second, pre-tournament judge tests should be organized to provide a
pre-tournament analysis of the judge pool. This can be conducted by requiring judges to watch around (either a live debate onsite or a video recording of a debate), evaluate it, and give their oral
and/or written adjudication to the Chief Adjudicator(s). This may be supplemented with a multiplechoice test (with the ability to provide comments) to test for familiarity with debate rules. However,a test that involves actually judging a round tends to provide a truer elucidation of judging level inmost cases.
After educating and testing judges before the tournament, Chief Adjudicator(s) should also
implement a system of evaluating judges’ performance during the actual tournament itself. For
this, judge evaluations, both debater-to-judge and judge-to-judge, should be made mandatory.
Doing so provides several benefits. First, it provides debaters with a feedback mechanism in theevent they feel the decision was either inadequate or not reflective of the round. Second, it allows
for an evaluation that is not fueled by emotional debaters who have a vested interest in the decision,
providing a check against potentially emotional debater feedback. Third, it allows for moretransparency in the event there is a judge break, because the tournament should be able to releasea judge tab similar to the team tab. Fourth, it allows for the Chief Adjudicator(s) to track
performances of judges throughout the tournament and provide advice or educational feedback tojudges as necessary. Finally, it allows judges to objectively analyze their own performance
tournament after the tournament, providing them a key reflective opportunity to measure their own
development.

World Schools Debating Championships (WSDC): WSDC schedules mandatory full-day judge
training session prior to the beginning of rounds. It also requires all judges to take one or two pretournament test, using test results to determine whether a judge should be a Chair, Panelist, or aTrainee. During the tournament, teams are required to rate each member of the panel upon theconclusion of each round. Judges are also required to fill out feedback about each member of theirpanel at the end of each round (WSDC Tournament Committee, 2017). Scores collected from theseprocesses before and during the tournament are used (in combination with an awareness fordiversity needs) to determine judge breaks.

60United Asian Debating Championship (UADC): UADC is the regional championship for Asianuniversities that uses the Asian Parliamentary debating format. UADC provides a debater andjudge briefing prior to the beginning of rounds, which both debaters and judges are required toattend. It also implements a pre-tournament judge test, usually involving two sections, the firstbeing a test that examines a judge’s knowledge of rules and applications and the second being atest that requires judges to view a live and/or online debate and provide a decision withjustifications. During the tournament, UADC requires each member of the panel to deliver a 5
minutes oral adjudication to teams, with other members of the panel being required to stay outsideof the debating chamber. Communication between judges is strictly forbidden. Debaters arerequired to then fill in feedback about each judge. Judge to judge feedback does not exist, as judges
are not allowed to watch other judges provide feedback. Judge break is determined by a
combination of feedbacks, and the pre-tournament test score (UADC Tournament Rules, 2010).
This mechanism puts a premium on forcing each judge to deliver an independent oral adjudicationeach round and places the greatest amount of evaluative authority on debater-to-judge feedback.

5. Conclusion

Communities attempting to adopt English parliamentary debating will inevitably go
through growing pains. Finding a way to assure adequate quality and coming up with a system tonurture judges poses challenges that must be overcome in order to provide a satisfactory
experience for students participating in tournaments. Implementing some of the best practices atWorlds-level and adapting them at regional levels, developed through years of trial-and-error
processes, can hasten the development process for new parliamentary debating communities. By(1) employing a balanced judging rubric, (2) implementing a “conferral judging” process, and (3)adopting a system of training and evaluating judges, new and developing communities canestablish a uniform standard that can help improve the quality of judging immediately and provide
a mechanism where few numbers of experienced judges can train inexperienced judges, building
judging quality in the long term. By doing so, such communities can fully actualize the value ofEnglish parliamentary debating, benefitting from the variety of educational gains it has proven toprovide.

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