Although much research has previously addressed elements of classroom discourse and the practices of pupils’ debate and discussion, I argue there is a need to expand the framework for analysing the forms of such oral classroom activities, particularly regarding expressions of differences in opinion. Commonly applied analytical tools generally recognize just two forms, adversarial and deliberative. By operationalising a conceptual set of categories defining how differences in opinion are expressed within the classroom, I show that this is too narrow. A third form (agonistic) can be recognized based on Chantal Mouffe’s theory of democracy and politics, and another relativistic form that I call poststructuralist. Thus, in my presentation I propose an analytical framework with a set of four forms to address the nature of debate.

Mouffe (2005) distinguishes three forms of expressing differences of political opinions- As already mentioned above, these are the antagonistic, deliberative and agonistic forms, all of which I will use as analytical categories. Briefly, the antagonistic form is characterised by confrontation, the deliberative by efforts to reach harmonious unanimity, and the agonistic has neither of these features. My presentation also considers a fourth form identified in a previous the poststructuralist. Each form encompasses a particular view of conflicts, relations between the participants and probably linguistic characteristics.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. Thinking in Action. Routledge. Abingdon, UK.