The Skillful Teacher

Emotional Purposes
To Help Students Become Connected to a Topic
When you introduce students to a new discussion topic, it’s usually a
mistake to assume that any inherent emotional connection exists
between the topic and students’ concerns or enthusiasms. However,
it is possible to work at creating such a connection by asking students
to play certain predefined conversational roles as they discuss the
topic. Some can be provocateurs, arguing in the strongest and most
controversial terms a certain line of analysis. Others can be devil’s
advocates, with a charge to counter every element in a particular line
of argument. Still others can be intellectual detectives concerned
to point out certain biases that keep recurring in the discussion, or to
bring the group’s attention to areas of inquiry it keeps approaching
and then steering away from. As students begin to adopt these roles,
Preparing Students for Discussion
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there is often a sense of playfulness, a feeling that this is just a game
of artful pretense (which, of course, it is). However, after a while this
sense of artificiality starts to diminish, and students find they actually
care about what others think and say about the topic being discussed.
To Show Respect for Students’ Experiences
An important element of good discussion is encouraging students
to analyze their experience and to help them understand that indi-
vidual experience is socially formed. Discussion shows students
that while formal knowledge and theoretical understanding are
necessary it is also important to dignify (in a critical way) partic-
ipants’ experiences. Yet, students often dismiss their own experi-
ences as anecdotal and idiosyncratic. They denigrate personal
experience in contrast to “book” knowledge that is codified, legit-
imate, and seen as existing above and beyond individual stories.
Good discussions affirm that personal experience is an important
object of study, and they take the analysis of experience beyond
individual storytelling to an analysis of the generic, recognizable
elements that are embedded in particular tales. In discussion we
often realize that our individual stories have shared elements and
are shaped by common economic and political forces existing in
the larger society.