Skip to main content

Tips for Managing Difficult Discussions in the Classroom

Originally published in November 2024

The Promise and the Challenge of Classroom Discussions 

Social Interactions are vital in our classrooms for deep learning and academic achievement as well as skill development in civic dialogue (Schneider and Preckel, 2017; Hoidn and Klemencic, 2021; Davis and Arend, 2013; Bennion, 2024). Yet, students bring with them different backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences as well as different levels of self and social identity awareness, shaping unique classroom dynamics each semester (Ambrose et. al, 2010; Derek Bok Center, 2021). Student contributions to discussions can support each other in critical thinking, self-awareness, appreciation for diverse perspectives, and strengthen their interpersonal skills, but they can also be disruptive, uninformed, or harmful and produce a negative effect on the learning environment, including silencing or cooling the contributions of others (Souza et. al, 2016; Chike, 2021).   

While there are potential challenges that exist for all classroom interactions, it can feel particularly risky to hold ‘difficult discussions’, those involving materials or analysis of social inequities, dominant narratives, histories, politics, and power (Ahad-Legardy and Poon, 2018). Students may or may not be open to learning about opposing perspectives or new information, they may have strong emotions on particular topics, or they may have adopted powerful, singular narratives about Others (and ‘Us’) that frame how they interpret the world around them (Shalka, 2024). Knowing that our classrooms are not siloed from the wider political, social, historical conflicts and contexts, including polarization, it may feel difficult to prepare for and manage classroom discussions with heightened attention and strong perspectives. And yet, these are precisely the discussions that have the greatest potential for learning and transformation.  

Effective practices in preparing the classroom learning community for openness to engage with difference and difficult material tell us that we should start before the course begins with planning for discussions in our course design (Bell, Goodman, Oullett, 2017). However, it’s November – is there anything we can adopt at this point in the term? It’s not too late to approach your classroom discussion this term with new tools. We do hope that instructors see themselves or find something useful in the strategies below to use now or save for later and welcome further conversations to discuss ideas, concerns, contexts and supports. 

Setting up Classroom Discussion Guidelines

While it may be best placed as an exercise at the beginning of the term, if you have had a challenging classroom climate or are about to start ‘hot topics’ in your term, setting some classroom guidelines is an effective approach to achieve respectful learning through dialogue. These guidelines not only support students in thinking about how their social interactions may impact the learning community, they also give instructors a resource to remind students of this common opening understanding when discussions derail. 

Instructors may choose to set the guidelines themselves or begin with guidelines and invite students to co-construct with their perspectives and additions. For example, you may choose these starting guidelines:  

  • Listen respectfully, without interrupting.
  • Listen actively and with an ear to understanding others' views. (Don’t just think about what you are going to say while someone else is talking.)
  • Challenge ideas, not individuals.
  • Commit to learning, not debating. Comment in order to share information, not to persuade.
  • Avoid blame, speculation, and inflammatory language.
  • Allow everyone the chance to speak.
  • Avoid assumptions about any member of the class or generalizations about social groups. 
  • Do not ask individuals to speak for their (perceived) social group.

Instructors can then prompt students to share their perspectives using the following example questions in an Exit Ticket (a cue card, a Zoom poll, or a MyLS survey online) and discuss the comments and any revisions with students in the following class. This provides an opportunity for students to share their own values, thoughts, and concerns about learning through discussion in higher education at this moment.

  • What do I need to feel empowered, respected, and supported in the learning environment?
  • How do I show that I am open to learning from others?
  • How can I show that I have come prepared for learning with others?

Understanding Common Dialogue Blockers

One of the most common ways that discussions become challenging is through student contributions that act as dialogue blockers. A dialogue blocker is “the way some students block or divert dialogue as a defensive response to perspectives they find uncomfortable or challenging.” It can “function rhetorically to silence a perspective or divert the conversation away from a critical insight” (University of Michigan, 2022; informed by K. Obear). These include comments that: 

  • Deny, overgeneralize, minimize, universalize or invalidate perspectives and experiences
    • For eg: “yeah but…” or “But that happens to me/my group too” or “That’s not about [racism], that happens to everybody”)
  • Reproduce dominant or singular narratives as perfectly logical explanations
  • Defend good intentions instead of recognizing impact of what was said
  • Can also overlap with Microaggressions. 

Addressing Dialogue Blockers by Developing Your Facilitation Skills

Instructors can prepare for dialogue blockers by building their toolkit of approaches and responses to support learning in the discussion and manage the relationships in your classroom. Below are some options, phrasing, and strategies  for navigating difficult conversations that you might adopt depending on your teaching and learning context. 

  1. Clarify for meaning; Call in to reflect, explain, revise
    • “When you said this, I heard X. Is that what you intended to say? If not, how can your words better match your intent? Take some time to have a think about it and come back” 
    • “Can you share what informs your perspective?”
  2. Refer to the scholarship: 
    • “This is a commonly held belief, what does the evidence from our reading show?” 
    • “What does the literature demonstrate is the impact of this perspective?” 
    • “Later in the term, we will read about X and the impact that this has had on ….” 
  3. Invite critical thinking about simple stories and loaded assumptions: 
    • “What is “the danger of a single story”? (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2009); 
    • “We can see this view in the [media or public discourse] as well, who or what is outside the frame of the dominant narrative that we might not be noticing? How might this reproduce a narrative of deficit thinking (blaming groups for the challenges and inequities they face)? What is an alternative explanation?”
    • “When we are looking at the telling of histories, we ask ourselves, who benefits from framing the problem/this group in this way?  What effect does this have? What can we add that makes understanding more complex and nuanced?” 
  4. Recognize complexity: 
    • “Thanks for sharing, I know how hard this is to discuss”
    • “I recognize that this is challenging because it is complex, let’s take a few minutes of silence to write out what we’ve learned from this week’s materials.” 
    • Use an Exit Ticket to ask “What makes this so complex? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? How might we address this next class?”  
  5. Delay to collect thoughts: 
    • “I’m not sure what to say right now in response to this and I would like to collect my thoughts. I will come back to this in our next class because it’s important that we address it.”
  6. Learn about taking A.C.T.I.O.N. to respond to microaggressions in the classroom
  7. End class and reach out to campus resources:

 

Back to Top | Read more Teaching Together Bulletins

Unknown Spif - $key