The Project 'A suon di parole - Il gioco del contraddittorio'. An Educational Game to Disseminate the Culture of Contradictory Opposition in Italian High School Debates

This paper introduces the educational project for debate in high schools called ‘A Suon di Parole’. The project started in 2010 following a collaboration between the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento, IPRASE (Provincial Institute of Research and Didactic Experimentation of the Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy), the city of Trento and the city of Rovereto. In the present essay, some learning models are briefly discussed and analysed to introduce the theoretical framework on which this project was built. We especially highlight how dialectical confrontation, experienced as a sportive competition, promotes the desire and the ability to compare reasoning with others and promotes autonomy. The aim of this ‘educational game’, indeed, is not to impose specific rules of thinking or speaking, but rather to develop the students’ autonomous thinking and, at the same time, increase their ability to compare their reasoning with others to self-evaluate and to increase their interaction and social cohesion.