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Conference on New Ideas for Experienced Teachers
June 9–13, 2001
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Mark Weisberg, Faculty of Law
Queen’s University
For this demonstration of what Gerry Hess calls “mouth shut teaching” I am drawing on two strategies: Pyramids and Line-ups. A pyramid begins with students working alone, then moving to pairs, and often progressing to fours or sixes. Along with the increasing numbers can come tasks of increasing intellectual complexity. Line-ups ask students to commit themselves to identifying where they stand on an issue by inviting them to do just that: to stand on a position on a line which represents their views.
Pyramids. A typical pyramid might ask students to read a passage or think about a question or problem or case, spend some time writing about it, then discuss their responses with a colleague. The pair might then be asked, say, to identify their best two responses to the question, or solutions to the problem or to one or two of the issues raised by the case. Then they’d join with one or two other pairs, share their responses or solutions, and select one they find most promising or worth discussing further. Their task would be to prepare to present this response or solution to the whole class, identifying its strengths and weaknesses and/or the questions that still remain unanswered. This process could be done in part or all of a single class or continued over several classes or as an out of class assignment.
Advantages/strengths. In both its individual moments and its overall structure and movement, a pyramid offers a variety of learning opportunities.
Silent reading or thinking. These activities provide space in an otherwise busy and noisy classroom. They model for all of us that the best thinking often isn’t done in split seconds, under pressure, with the questioner standing in front of you waiting for an answer. These strategies allow us to explore what it might mean to take seriously educator Parker Palmer’s suggestion that, “[t]o teach is to create a space,” rather than our more usual conception that to teach is to fill space. And they allow students to listen to themselves.
Writing. Many students forget that writing is a form of thinking. When given time and space to write, when invited to write for a while in an unstructured way, many of us find that once we get going, ideas bubble up that we couldn’t summon on the spot: imaginative, original ideas. Starting class with a few minutes of freewriting - unstructured, or structured by a topic or prompt - often helps people get their thinking muscles warmed up and creates some intellectual energy. Peter Elbow calls this type of writing/thinking “first order thinking.” It’s thinking that is “intuitive, creative and doesn’t call for conscious direction or control. We use it when we get hunches or see gestalts...sense analogies or arrange the pieces in a collage, (or let our) words lead us to associations we hadn’t foreseen.” Elbow distinguishes it from “second-order thinking, conscious, directed, controlled thinking” (that is) “committed to accuracy and strives for logic and control.” [Teaching Thinking by Teaching Two Kinds of Writing, in Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching (Oxford 1986).] He argues that in our work we need both kinds of thinking, and I think that in our classrooms we usually ignore the first kind. Freewriting is one way to encourage it.
Writing also is a commitment. When people have written something, it’s tangible; they own it in a way that they often don’t do with fleeting thoughts, and consequently, they’re often more willing to contribute to a discussion. And we know that people learn best when they can connect who they are and what they care about with what they’re learning. Writing can encourage those connections.
Sharing in Diads or Triads. Many students are reluctant to speak in large groups, and the more often they don’t speak, the more distanced they can become. Many blame themselves as inadequate; they don’t experience the power of their own voices; and everyone else loses the benefit of their contributions. Small group discussions encourage everyone to participate. The buzz in a classroom when everyone is participating can be exhilarating. Because they’re not consistently monitored by their teacher, people often feel less inhibited to offer their own views rather than those they feel (often incorrectly) they’re expected to hold. And because the group is working toward a shared goal, participants are encouraged to listen to and learn from each other, to appreciate each other’s strengths and contributions. In law school, where students often are suspicious and mistrustful of each other, this can be a liberating discovery, not to mention a practical one; after all, much of the work done in law firms is collaborative.
Theme and variations. Educational research has taught us that students have extremely short attention spans. Varying the activities in which we ask students to engage during a class, as the pyramid does, is an effective way of responding to this problem. It also offers several other benefits. It shifts attention away from the teacher to the subject, putting it in the center. Because s/he’s not in the center but on the sidelines, a teacher has more chance to observe her students at work, to discover what they know, what they haven’t understood, where they need help. And it allows her to discover this before it’s too late in the term to do anything about it.
Designing an intellectual experience. Pyramids offer a scaffold on which to construct a sequenced intellectual experience. For two thoughtful accounts of how this could work, see Finkel and Monk, Contexts for Learning: A Teachers Guide to the Design of Intellectual Experience, available from the Washington Center for the Improvement of Undergraduate Education, at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and Experiences that Teach, in Don Finkel’s provocative and challenging book, Teaching With Your Mouth Shut, (Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2000).
Potential problems. I’ve found some people reluctant to take up the invitation to write. Although I wonder why they might not be writing, I’ve accepted that it might not be for everyone. And I’ve learned that for some who initially resist, when they see that I’m committed to using in class writing regularly, they begin to engage.
Small groups work at different paces and with differing intensity and commitment. But most do work. Clear, doable but meaningful tasks with firm time limits help keep people focused.
I’ve found plenaries the most problematic. In a large class, having all groups report will quickly become boring. Inviting reports from 2 or 3 groups and then asking whether any group has something to add is preferable. Asking groups to report their results on flip chart paper and post around the room also works well. I think the most helpful strategy for effective plenaries would be to hold a discussion about ground rules for constructive conversation early in the term. I’ve included below one model for doing that, from Stephen Brookfield’s helpful book, Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (Jossey-Bass 1995).
Line-ups. As with pyramids, line-ups encourage people to commit to a position, but in this instance to do it with their bodies. They’re particularly useful when you’re discussing a controversial case or topic. They can be used on their own, at the beginning or end of a discussion, but I find them even more useful when combined with a “3 minutes each way” discussion. After people find their place on the line, the teacher invites everyone to find someone standing at a different place on the line from them. Each person, in turn, has 3 minutes to tell his interlocutor why he’s chosen his particular spot. The listener’s job is just that: to listen. No interrupting, no affirming, just listening. After 3 minutes and a prompt from the teacher, pairs switch roles. If there’s time after that, I might invite comments from the participants about the experience: what they learned, how it felt.
Advantages/strengths. Just having people move and express their commitment physically can be a powerful experience, and for most people it’s fun. I think the experience of listening also can be powerful. Although we probably all agree that active listening is an exceptionally important skill for a lawyer, I think most of us and most of our students don’t practice it very often. Most of the time, when someone else is talking, we either tune out or are so busy formulating our own response to what she’s saying that we don’t listen to her. Our heads are too full of noise to be able to hear. At least that’s my own experience and one my students confirm. The 3 minutes each way strategy encourages us to listen to our partners, as do the discussion strategies described above. And as I suggested, I think writing helps us listen to ourselves.
Potential problems. Aside from the logistical problem of managing a line-up with a large class (we’ll see how that works in our demonstration), I haven’t experienced any.
Developing Trust. I think one of the overriding challenges in teaching and learning is helping construct and environment in which people trust themselves and each other, and I’ve found these strategies helpful to me in doing that.
Creating Ground Rules for Critical Conversation from Brookfield, Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, 143-45
One of my assumptions that has been consistently called into question by my experiences is that adults -- in particular, teachers - know how to talk to each other in ways that are respectful, inclusive, and democratic. It shouldn't really surprise me that this belief is flawed. Given that we live in a culture infused with the dynamics of power and that we rarely (if ever) have the chance to participate in or witness egalitarian group talk, most people don't know how this happens or what it looks like. Even after using group conversation as a teaching method for over a quarter of a century, I am still astonished by the ease with which capable, well-intentioned, generous people can fall into domineering patterns of communication that reproduce inequities found in the outside society. If the power relationships in a college are allowed to shape early on what happens in a teacher conversation group, then the process may as well be shut down because little of value will happen.
So it's important to spend some time evolving ground rules that will frame how democratic talk between and among teachers might happen. As Burbules (1993) argues, "Once a dialogical relation has been established, an explicit discussion about, or reliance on, rules will be rare; but the question is, How do we get to that point? How do we learn from our previous failures and false starts, without an explicit structure of expectations against which to judge our efforts?" (p. 84). In setting expectations that will guide how teachers talk to each other, I like to use critical incidents in teachers' own professional autobiographies as the starting point. The instructions on how to do this are reproduced here:
Creating Ground Rules for Critical Conversation: A Critical Incident Approach
As a first step in setting up this critical conversation group, I suggest that we spend some time trying to create ground rules for our participation. To help us do this, I would like each of you to do the following:
1. Think of the best group conversations you've ever been involved in. What things happened that made these conversations so satisfying? Make a few notes on this by yourself.
2. Think of the worst group conversations you've ever been involved in. What things happened that made these conversations so unsatisfactory? Make a few notes on this by yourself.
3. Take turns in talking about what made conversation groups work so well for you. Listen for common themes, shared experiences, and features of conversation that a majority of you would like to see present in this group.
4. Take turns in talking about what made conversation groups work so badly for you. Listen for common themes, shared experiences, and features of group conversation that a majority of you would like to see avoided in this critical reflection group.
5. For each of the characteristics of good conversation you agree on, try to suggest three things the group could do to ensure, as far as possible, that these characteristics are present. Be as specific and concrete as you can. For example, if you feel that good conversation is cumulative and con- nected, with later themes building on and referring back to earlier ones, you could propose a rule whereby every new comment made by a partici- pant is prefaced with an explanation as to how it relates to, or springs from, an earlier comment.
6. For each of the characteristics of bad conversation you agree on, try to suggest three things the group could do to ensure, as far as possible, that these characteristics are avoided. Be as specific and concrete as you can. For example, if you feel that bad conversation happens when one person's voice dominates, you could propose a rule whereby no one is allowed to follow a comment they have made with another comment until at least three other people have spoken (unless another group member explicitly invites the participant to say something else).
7. Finish this exercise by trying to draft a charter for critical conversation incorporating the specific ground rules that you agree on. If less than a two-thirds majority support a particular rule, I suggest that you agree to re-examine this rule after no more than four meetings of the group. At that time, the group may decide to drop or affirm the rule or draft an additional one.
Here are some examples of ground rules that I have seen groups propose as a result of doing the exercise just presented:
1. That every time participants make general assertions about the nature of teaching or learning, they are required to give supportive evidence for these from their experience.
2. That after every twenty minutes of conversation, five minutes be set aside explicitly for anyone who has not contributed in the previous twenty minutes to say anything they want.
3. That participants not speak uninterruptedly for more than a certain number of minutes.
4. That every time a participant wishes to criticize or disagree with another person 's comments, that participant must first say what aspects of that person 's comments are meritorious.
5. That periods of mandated silence be included in the group's deliberations, during which participants reflect on unacknowledged biases, themes for further discussion, excluded perspectives, and points of significance.
6. That every conversation start with a reflective stocktaking of the group's process-what has worked well, what needs improvement, who feels shut out and unheard, and so on.
7. That participants take turns over the life of the group in having their experience constitute the focus of the meeting.
These rules have been proposed in response to groups' desires to ensure equal participation, to stop existing power relationships in the outside culture reproducing themselves inside the group (the "How do I get white men to shut up?" question), to ensure that ideas and not people are criticized and that people's experiences are respected, and to avoid the danger of the conversation becoming a vacuous exchange of cliches.