The Skillful Teacher

What Stops Students from Participating in
Discussion?
Why won’t students say anything even when they have ideas to
express or when the teacher has done her best to create a safe climate
Getting Students to Participate
in Discussion
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KILLFUL
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EACHER
for conversation? Generally the problem can be traced to one or more
of the following factors.
Crippling Personal Introversion
Some students are so shy and introverted that nothing short of ther-
apeutic intervention will embolden them to speak. There’s proba-
bly not much that teachers can do about this, since a class that
meets for one or two hours a week over three or four months hardly
provides much scope for substantial developmental change. How-
ever, two small steps are possible. One thing you can do is make
clear at the outset of the course that talking is not the only way stu-
dents contribute to discussion and that if students choose to stay
silent they will not be penalized or viewed as mentally negligent.
An example of this is the speech policy mentioned in Chapter One.
The relief induced on hearing this announcement sometimes
emboldens very shy students to speak. If students still feel too shy
to speak after such a declaration, at least they don’t feel so inade-
quate and ashamed about their silence.
The other possibility is to make sure that some sort of electronic
discussion is part of the course. Students who are too shy to speak
up in groups may find it much easier to make their point on a class
listserv or in a course chat room. The Internet allows students the
time and privacy (though not always the anonymity) to say what
they want to say in the way, and at the pace, they want to say it.
Broadening discussion to include e-mail discourse can bring highly
introverted students into the conversation.