Educational Leadership - September 2009

different perspectives who hesitate to express them because of the apparent uniformity of their classroom. Role-plays in which students are assigned to present contrasting views are one way to lay a foundation for broad discussion.

Another strategy for bringing in multiple perspectives is to use technology to bring together students from different communities. The Choices Program, for example, sponsors student forums on international public policy issues that engage students from multiple schools in a community, across a state, or throughout a region. Students who participate in the forums report that they provide a valuable opportunity to talk about substantive issues with peers who have different life experiences and different views. A kind of magic often happens when students from the suburbs, the farms, and the inner city mingle in a forum on immigration or economics or war. As two students participating in a forum in Illinois put it recently, “I learned how to respect other people’s opinions even when they are different from mine,” and “It showed me how to be more open to people’s views without judging them.”

Give Students the Floor

Students will rise to the occasion when given the opportunity to engage in serious discussions in which their views take center stage. In this environment, civic learning takes place. To make room for this kind of student-owned discussion, teachers must put students at the center.

“I’m amazed at how many students never knew their best friend’s view on an issue until we discussed it in class,” says Kevin Zupin, a teacher at Winamac Community High School in Winamac, Indiana. Zupin has been working with deliberation practices in his own classroom and exploring with other Indiana teachers a range of pedagogical approaches to create space for all students in classroom discussions. He

and his colleagues have been particularly successful using fishbowls, in which students hold a discussion in a small group of 5 to 8 while other students observe, take notes on the discussion, and have the opportunity to think without the pressure of participation. Students rotate roles until all have been in the fishbowl. This structure gets the teacher off the stage and establishes the expectation that all students will interact with peers. Without a carefully struc-

“I learned how to
respect other people’s
opinions even when
they are different
from mine.”

tured format like the fishbowl process, some reticent students who are new to the idea of discussion may be silenced because more confident students take the floor.

We often view critical thinking, public speaking, and problem solving as the domains of high-achieving students. But engagement in student-centered discussion of complex public issues need not be limited to our top students. Students with a wide range of abilities and learning styles can participate in discussions of controversial issues if the resources and teaching approaches are appropriately scaffolded.

Expanding the
Circle of Democracy
The new administration in Washington
is making efforts to encourage respon-
sible public dialogue, expand the circle
of democratic participation, and invite
citizens to provide guidance to elected
officials so that they make the best

choices. This is an invitation that educators should accept.

Students have opinions on public issues, and those opinions are important to them. As educators, it is our job to awaken student voice and to enable students to enter the public dialogue on important policy decisions about immigration, economic policy, environmental stewardship, or war and peace. But our responsibility does not stop there. We need to teach students how to share their thinking with policymakers at every level of society. Structuring discussion of controversial issues in the classroom is a first step in encouraging our students to move beyond the classroom, to bring their knowledge to bear on the world in which they live. EL

1The Choices Program develops teaching resources on historical and current international issues, provides professional development for classroom teachers, and sponsors programs that engage students beyond the classroom. The curriculum units described in this article—U.S. Immigration Policy in an Unsettled World; Conflict in Iraq: Searching for Solutions; and International Trade: Competition and Cooperation in a Globalized World—as well as about 30 others dealing with both current and historical issues—are available for purchase at www.choices.edu/resources. Additional resources are available at no cost.

References

Carnegie Corporation of New York & CIRCLE (2003). The civic mission of schools. New York: Authors.

Hess, D. (2009). Controversy in the classroom: The democratic power of discussion. New York: Routledge.

Otlin, J. (n.d.). The Socratic seminar: A method for teaching deliberation [Online]. Providence, RI: Choices. Available: www.choices.edu/pd/dialog_1.php

Susan Graseck is Director of the Choices Program at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island ( www.choices .edu) and a Senior Fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies; susan_graseck@brown.edu.