Strategies to Help Students Discuss Issues with Civility

            In this article in Educational Leadership, Kristina Doubet (James Madison University) and consultant Jessica Hockett describe three ways to teach students how to engage in civil discourse in uncivil times, developing empathy and discernment in formats that allow all students to participate and be heard:

            • Adopting roles – One example for elementary classrooms is assigning students four different “listening lenses” as the teacher reads from a novel:

-   Matchmaker: making connections to parts of the story;

-   Fortune teller: predicting what might happen next;

-   Detective: hunting for clues that help figure out how to solve a problem;

-   Defender: advocating for the choices a character made.

The teacher pauses at strategic points and has students reflect and then share perceptions in “like-lens” pairs, then discuss as a whole class. (This kind of discussion depends on some prior work on democratic discussion norms – staying on topic, listening respectfully, and asking politely for details.)

            A high-school teacher used a more sophisticated version for a discussion of Lord of the Flies, with assigned role cards for:

-   Director: notes the scenes, passages, or dialogue that shed light on power dynamics;

-   Philosopher: relates the book’s events to the assertion, People are inherently savage;

-   Detective: searches for clues about which characters will survive and why;

-   Lawyer: gathers evidence that supports or refutes the claim that Ralph is a hero.

After recording key ideas and textual evidence in same-role groups, students shift to quads with all four roles, present their findings, and debate the question, Does power corrupt?

            • Examining issues from multiple perspectives – Using the Six Thinking Hats approach developed in the business world, middle-school students are assigned different “hats” to debate whether the Electoral College should be abolished:

-   White hat (factual): The evidence suggests… One fact we don’t know is…

-   Red hat (emotional): I feel that…  At first glance, this seems…

-   Yellow hat (positives): This is promising because…  I like the idea of…

-   Black hat (weaknesses): One problem I see is… What about…?  In real life…

-   Green hat (possibilities): Here’s a new thought…  I can imagine…

-   Blue hat (zooming out): I see a connection between… Overall, it seems…

Like-hat students do research, brainstorm, and bounce ideas off each other. The class then meets together to discuss findings, eventually donning the blue hat to reach a conclusion, then the green hat to propose a plan for electing presidents.

            • Articulating a counter-claim – In Debate-Team Carousel, the teacher poses an issue (for example, Should recycling be mandatory for all residents?), puts students in groups of four, and has each student fold a piece of paper into four boxes. The papers are passed around, with students following the instructions for each box:

-   Box 1: Make a claim and provide reasons and evidence for it.

-   Box 2: Support the claim in Box 1, making it stronger (whether you agree or not).

-   Box 3: Argue against the claim from Boxes 1 and 2.

-   Box 4: Wrap up and bring the discussion to a satisfying conclusion.

The papers return to their original owners, who read and comment on their peers’ responses. Debate Team Carousel can be used as a lesson or unit launch to hook interest and/or surface misconceptions.

            “These strategies… harness passion while fostering compassion and empathy,” conclude Doubet and Hockett. “They turn controversy into conversation and prepare students to use the language of civil disagreement in a democracy.”

“Classroom Discourse as Civil Discourse” by Kristina Doubet and Jessica Hockett in Educational Leadership, November 2017 (Vol. 74, #3, p. 56-60), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/2AfotZT; the authors can be reached at doubetj@jmu.edu and jessicahockett@me.com. 

(The summary above is reprinted by permission from issue #713 of The Marshall Memo - a FABULOUS resource for educators.)