The Teaching–Learning of Community Social Work: Debating as an Instrument to Acquire Transversal Competences

Abstract

Debating represents an active teaching–learning method in higher education. Engaging in debates helps to acquire and develop transversal skills, which are essential to successfully function in personal, academic, and professional spheres. In this quantitative, descriptive, and explanatory study, we analyse how attitudes included within transversal competences were acquired through a debate activity conducted as a part of the social work programme at the University of Alicante. A total of 74 students participated, with an average age of 22.34 years, the majority of which were women. The students were divided into two evaluation groups: a peer evaluation group and a teacher evaluation group. Using an ad hoc questionnaire, three categories of variables were studied: sociodemographic variables; organisational and activity evaluation variables; and variables relating to the acquisition of attitudes. The results indicated that debating favoured communication, innovation and entrepreneurship, social commitment, critical thinking, information management, autonomy and self-regulation, as well as teamwork. Variations were also found according to the university admission modality and the evaluation agent. These results highlight not only how useful debating can be as a pedagogical tool, but also the need to consider different contextual factors when implementing debate activities in the context of university studies.

Keywords

• higher education
• community social work
• active learning
• debate
• transversal competences