The Skillful Teacher

participation, to promote continuity of conversation, and to give
people some experience of the effort required in respectful listen-
ing. It was developed by Eduard Lindeman (Brookfield, 1988) as
part of his efforts to democratize conversation amongst community
groups and to help community groups focus on two or three shared
concerns instead of trying to pursue multiple agendas.
As with the circle of voices, the exercise begins with participants
having a minute or so to think about their response to a discussion
question or topic assigned to them. Participants form into circles of
six to eight, and the conversation begins with a volunteer who takes
up to a minute to say whatever she thinks about the topic con-
cerned. After the minute is up, the first discussant yields the floor,
and the person sitting to the discussant’s left speaks for a minute or
so. The second speaker is not free, however, to say anything she
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wants. She must incorporate into her remarks some reference to the
preceding speaker’s message and then use this as a springboard for
her own comments. This doesn’t have to be an agreement—it can
be an expression of dissent from the previous opinion. It can also be
an expression of confusion where the second discussant identifies
some aspect of the first speaker’s remarks that she finds difficult to
understand. The second speaker could also talk about how the first
speaker’s comments cover such unfamiliar ground that she is left
with no conversational opening.
After a minute or so, the second discussant stops speaking, and
the person to her left becomes the third discussant who follows the
same ground rule to refer to some aspect of the preceding speaker’s
message as the springboard for her own comments. Following this
pattern the discussion moves all the way around the circle. Each
discussant must ground her comments in reference to something the
previous speaker has said. After everyone has had a turn to speak,
the floor is opened for general conversation, and the previous
ground rules are no longer in force.
The interesting thing about this exercise is that the seventh or
eighth person to speak has no inherent advantage over the first or
second contributor. This is because the eighth person cannot sit in
reflective luxury rehearsing a perfect contribution because she has
no idea what the seventh person is going to say until that person
speaks. Indeed, the first person to speak has the easiest task of all
because she does not have to use a previous speaker’s comments as
the springboard for her remarks.