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The Discussion

Facilitating the Discussion

Once you have established community guidelines for your course and sufficiently prepared for having challenging conversations, you are ready to start facilitating discussions of contentious topics! Below, we outline strategies that you can employ when facilitating discussions including having students write out their responses first, using small groups, embracing the silence, and organizing debates.

As you review each of these strategies below, please complete “Section 5: Facilitating the Discussion” of your Teaching Contentious Topics worksheet by answering the following questions:

  1. What strategies will you incorporate into your teaching practice and how?
  2. What questions do you have for your instructor about facilitating discussions on contentious topics?

Responding to Hot Moments

Sometimes, despite our best efforts to prevent classroom conflicts and ensure an inclusive learning experience for our students, we may encounter a “stuck conversation” or “hot moment” that gets out of hand.

As an instructor, it is critical that you take ACTION to respond to challenging moments in the classroom. Souza’s (2018) ACTION model below outlines steps you can take to respond to challenging or inflammatory comments that students make in class to maintain a respectful learning environment and turn a problematic situation into a teachable moment.

As you review the ACTION model below, please complete “Section 6: Managing Hot Moments” of your Teaching Contentious Topics worksheet by answering the following questions:

  1. What approach(es) will you take when faced when a challenging or hot moment? What questions can you ask your student(s) to model the ACTION approach?
  2. What questions do you have for your instructor about managing and responding to challenging or hot moments in the classroom?
  • Ask clarifying questions to help you better understand the student’s intention. For example, you might say “I want to make sure that I understand what you were saying.  Were you saying that…?”
  • Come from a place of curiosity, not judgment. Listen actively and openly to the student’s response, and explore their intent behind making the comment. For example, you might ask them to explain what they were hoping to communicate with their comment.
  • Tell what you observed as problematic in a factual manner. Position your observations with “I” statements (e.g., “I noticed that…”) and refer to the specific wording that the student used as needed.
  • Impact exploration: ask for or state the potential impact of such a statement or action on others. For example, you might ask the student to consider what others may feel when they hear comments like those made by the student or ask what the impact could be for their fellow learners.
  • Own your feelings and thoughts on the potential impact. Position your reflections as “I” statements. For example, you might start by saying “When I hear your comment, I feel…”.
  • Next steps: request that the student take appropriate actions in the future. You can redirect the student to your discussion guidelines or classroom code of conduct and request that they avoid making such comments in the future as they deter from student learning and are harmful to others.

Importantly, if a classroom discussion goes off-track and threatens student learning or is potentially harmful to students, share this with your instructor as soon as possible and complete any required documentation (e.g., an Incident Report Form).

Concluding the Discussion

Regardless of how the discussion goes (or does not go!), how you conclude the discussion can have a lasting impact on students’ learning. When concluding the discussion, you can debrief and collect feedback to summarize and confirm important takeaways, revisit the intended learning outcomes to re-position the discussion as a learning tool, and follow up with individual students or documentation as required.

As you review each of these strategies below, please complete “Section 7: Conclude the Discussion” of your Teaching Contentious Topics worksheet by answering the following questions:

  1. What strategies will you incorporate into your teaching practice and how?
  2. What questions do you have for your instructor about concluding discussions on contentious topics?