CONTENTS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brookfield, Stephen.
Discussion as a way of teaching : tools and techniques for democratic classrooms / Stephen D. Brookfield, Stephen Preskill.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-10: 0-7879-7808-6 (alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-7808-2 (alk. paper)
1. College teaching. 2. Discussion—Study and teaching. 3. Forums (Discussion and debate) I. Preskill, Stephen, 1950- II. Title.
LB2331.B679 2005
378.1’2—dc22
2005008307
The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Since the first edition of Discussion as a Way of Teaching appeared in 1999 we have received continuous feedback on its benefits and omissions. The benefits seem to be those we had hoped for; readers have told us that the book is a comprehensive “soup to nuts” guide to planning and conducting exercises that is full of helpful exercises and practical suggestions. However, two omissions have been brought to our attention. The first concerns the explosion of online learning that has occurred in the first few years of the twenty-first century. We alluded to this development in the first edition but that analysis was clearly insufficient given developments in this area since 1999. Consequently, Chapters Eleven and Twelve have been added to explore this new phenomenon. Chapter Eleven examines the underlying dynamics of online discussion and concludes that although they are not that startlingly dissimilar to those of face-to-face discussion they do suggest specific practices and approaches uniquely suited to an online environment. Chapter Twelve suggests how the online environment can be adapted to discussion as a way of teaching. We explore how to increase participation, assign students to small groups, link interaction to content modules, and evolve ground rules for discussion. The other omission readers noted was the lack of attention to contemporary theoretical positions such as structuralism and post-structuralism and their relevance for understanding and practicing discussion-based teaching. To remedy this omission we have written Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen. These two chapters explore a number of theoretical concepts—cultural capital, disciplinary power, teachers as judges of normality, repressive tolerance, and the discourse theory of democracy—and describe the discussion practices and exercises that these different ideas call forth.
August, 2005
St. Paul, Minnesota
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Stephen Brookfield
Stephen Preskill
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
This book is born of friendship, curiosity, anxiety, and service.
The two of us became friends while we were both faculty members at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Our friendship was fostered by a common passion for many things—the films of Woody Allen figured prominently in our early conversations—but what we kept returning to as we talked was the joyful yet contradictory experience of teaching through discussion. In coffee shops, at home, in university corridors, and on the street, we spent hours celebrating the glorious unpredictability of discussion and exploring its purpose and value. Usually our conversations ended with us giving each other advice on the problems we faced as we used the method in our own practice.
During these conversations we often remarked how we’d love to have a book available to us that laid out a rationale for using discussion, guided us through its different configurations, and suggested various resolutions to the problems that arose in its use. What would the authors say about guided discussion (a topic about which we talked heatedly and repeatedly)? How would they conceive of the teacher’s role in discussion? What would be their thoughts on using discussion in groups characterized by racial, class, and gender diversity? How would they deal with students who dominated conversation or those who never spoke? As we considered these and other questions, we would often say, “You know, we ought to write a book about this.” An idea that was first mentioned lightly and jokingly became a serious possibility when Steve Preskill accepted a position at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. We realized that distance threatened our friendship but it stood a better chance of remaining strong if we worked on a common project. The project we chose is the book you now hold in your hands.
What kept us going as we coauthored this book was curiosity about what would end up on its pages. We asked ourselves a series of questions that essentially became the book’s chapters. We wanted to know how we would justify the use of discussion to colleagues who saw no connections between how students talked to each other in class and promoting democracy in the wider society. How would we respond to the charge that discussion was a time-wasting distraction from teachers’ primary work of transmitting content to students? What advice would we give on how to prepare students to participate in discussion? What were the best ways we knew to get discussion started and keep it going? What were the most creative adaptations we’d seen that kept routine and ennui from creeping into the conversation? How did factors of race, class, and gender play out in discussions? What advice would we give to each other about how to ensure that all students felt their voices were heard and respected? We were intrigued to know what we would say in response to these and other questions. Writing this book became our way of finding out.
Anxiety and service also played their parts. As teachers committed to discussion, we are alarmed that so many of our students and colleagues appear to have lost hope in the moral, political, and pedagogical promises of discussion. To many students, discussion seems like busy work, designed to fill up time or give the teacher a break. Students frequently claim that discussions wander so far off track that what is spoken about bears little relation to the curriculum being studied. Others complain that the experience of discussion is distinctly unpleasant—a time for a few students to dominate or to talk in racist, sexist, or demeaning ways without any control or opposition. We are also concerned that many teachers who continue to use discussion do so in an uncritical, unexamined way that only serves to bring the method further into disrepute. We know, too, that teachers who are committed to using discussion and who use it thoughtfully are constrained by economic forces. Colleges are increasingly held hostage by market forces that force them to run as businesses. Institutional budgets are cut, faculty and staff are reduced, yet student numbers rise. Colleges and universities are forced to demonstrate their profitability and utility by showing how they can serve more and more people. A belief that increased class size equals increased profitability or greater community-mindedness undermines discussion-oriented teaching.
We want to offer this book as a service to educators struggling to preserve their commitment to discussion. We have tried to make the book as practical and helpful as we can. Although we argue strongly for the moral, political, and pedagogical importance of discussion, we are not much concerned with rhetorical exhortation. We want Discussion as a Way of Teaching to be a book full of ideas, techniques, and usable suggestions. Our hope is that teachers who feel pressure to abandon discussion in the face of students’ complaints or institutional constraints will read our book and find their commitment to discussion renewed. We hope also that they will find many new exercises and approaches to try that will convince students that participating in discussion is worth the effort. And we want teachers to feel that they can experiment with the methods and techniques we suggest without falling behind, sacrificing content, or losing control of the curriculum.
However, we want to stress that we are not out to proselytize. We are not trying to convert skeptics into taking the method seriously. Indeed, our experience has been that this is fruitless. Teachers who resolutely dismiss discussion as time-wasting, touchy-feely, experiential mush only come to take it seriously when they are so dissatisfied with what they’re doing that they’ll try something new or when they are irresistibly intrigued by the sense of joyful engagement they witness in their own colleagues’ experimentations with the method. But we do think there are many college teachers out there who are interested in introducing more discussion activities into their classrooms but who aren’t sure how to do this. We also believe that many teachers are trying to use the method but are having difficulties doing so. In some ways we count ourselves among both these groups. So we have written this book for ourselves as well as for them.
Before a word of the manuscript was written, we had planned its layout. The opening two chapters make what we hope is a strong and convincing case for using discussion. Chapter One focuses on its moral and political justifications, particularly the experience it provides of democratic process. In that chapter we describe what differentiates discussion from conversation and dialogue, and we blend elements of these ideas into the concept of critical discussion. The chapter ends with an outline of the dispositions—the attitudes and habits—necessary for democratic discussion. Chapter Two focuses on the benefits of discussion for learning and teaching. We make fifteen claims for the ways in which discussion helps learning and enlivens classrooms (for example, it helps students explore diversity and complexity, it sharpens intellectual agility, and it endorses collaborative ways of working and the collective generation of knowledge). The chapter concludes by summarizing the five most common reasons why teachers lose heart (in our view, prematurely) in their commitment to discussion.
Chapters Three and Four deal with the early stages of discussion. One reason why teachers give up on discussion is that students often seem unprepared to engage in conversation. How to ensure that they come to class able to talk about the discussion topic is the focus of Chapter Three. We show how teachers can use lectures to demonstrate the dispositions of discussion; how to model their own commitment to the method; how to set structured, critical prereading assignments; and how to evolve or clarify ground rules, expectations, and purposes. Getting the discussion started is the theme of Chapter Four. We point out a few of the common mistakes teachers make at the start that can kill discussion. Then we provide some specific exercises that we’ve found useful in prompting students to talk. We also suggest several ways that students’ prior reading or writing can be debriefed.
Chapters Five and Six both deal with how to maintain the momentum of discussion. Chapter Five reviews the different types of questions teachers can ask in discussion and the benefit and purpose of each type. We propose three exercises to improve students’ ability to listen carefully and three ways teachers can respond to students’ contributions. Chapter Six examines the dynamics of breaking students into small discussion groups. We suggest different ways of bringing small group deliberations back into the larger class and offer some variations on the conduct of small group discussions that we have found useful. The chapter ends with a brief exploration of how e-mail communication can improve classroom discourse.
In Chapters Seven and Eight we move to consider how issues of race, class, and gender affect what happens in discussion. Chapter Seven focuses mostly on race and class. We argue that discussions in culturally diverse groups must begin by honoring and respecting differences. How this could happen is explained through a series of exercises. We offer some diverse formats, such as dramatizing and drawing discussion, and we consider how to introduce verve into conversation. The chapter also proposes ways of monitoring racist speech and of creating outlets for anger and grief. We end with a discussion of middle- and working-class speech codes, and the disproportionate representation they have in discussion. Chapter Eight, written with our friend and colleague Eleni Roulis, looks at how male and female speech patterns manifest themselves in conversation. It begins by offering four vignettes that illustrate the complicated intersections between discussion and gender. The importance of acknowledging relational and rapport talk and the contributions of feminist pedagogy inform the exercises this chapter offers to help clarify the role gender plays in shaping how we talk to each other.
How to keep students’ and teachers’ voices in some kind of balance and what happens when they are drastically out of balance are the concerns of Chapters Nine and Ten. In Chapter Nine we look at why some students talk too much and others talk too little. We offer suggestions on how to curb those who are overly garrulous and how to bring into speech students who are reluctant to participate. Chapter Ten considers how to keep the discussion leader’s voice in balance. We look at the most common reasons why teachers say too much or too little and then offer ways for them to avoid either extreme. The chapter ends with three scenarios that illustrate what happens when the teacher intervenes too much, too little, or just the right amount.
The dynamics and conditions of online discussion are considered in Chapters Eleven and Twelve. In Chapter Eleven we examine the architecture of online courses and lay out the four R’s of effective online teaching—research, responsiveness, respect, and relationships. Chapter Twelve reviews how we can create the conditions for effective online discussion—discussion that is participatory, thoughtful, and disciplined. We explore how to increase participation, assign students to small groups, link interaction to content modules, and evolve ground rules for discussion. The next two chapters view discussion through various theoretical perspectives. Chapter Thirteen examines stucturalism, post-structuralism, and repressive tolerance as three perspectives that have considerable implications for how we run discussions. We outline each of these ideas and then consider how they inform the practice of discussion leaders. Chapter Fourteen explores in some detail the work of Jurgen Habermas, the German critical theorist. Habermas believes that a society is more or less democratic according to the discussion processes its members use to come to decisions about matters that affect their lives. We examine his ideas on the way we learn communicative action, practice what he calls the validity claims of discussion, and use standards of discourse to judge whether or not we are behaving democratically.
Chapter Fifteen deals with the thorny question of how to evaluate discussion. We argue against the imposition of a standardized, “objective” evaluative protocol, believing that such an approach ignores the contextuality of most classroom conversations. We favor instead grounding evaluations in the multiple subjectivities of students’ perceptions. How these perceptions might be recorded is described through such instruments as discussion audits and logs, course portfolios, and mandatory evaluation forms. The book ends with suggestions on how we might judge the extent to which discussions meet the fifteen claims for discussion advanced in Chapter Two.
As you read this book, you may find that your interest in experimenting with some of the techniques it contains is contending with some predictable reservations about how realistic this is. We want to acknowledge these reservations and to provide our thoughts on them.
The concern about having insufficient time to cover content is felt by teachers who believe that the material they want students to learn is too important to be left to chance. If they lecture, so their argument goes, at least this ensures that the material is aired in students’ presence. We share this same concern. We want our students to engage seriously with ideas and information we think important. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that we think discussion is worth considering. As we argue in Chapter Two, building connections—personal and intellectual—is at the heart of discussion. Ideas that seem disconnected when heard in a lecture come alive when explored in speech. Arguments that seem wholly abstract when read in a homework assignment force themselves on our attention when spoken by a peer. There is no point in covering content for content’s sake—the point is to cover content in a way that ensures that students engage with it. It is because we take content so seriously and want students to understand certain key ideas accurately and thoroughly that we feel discussion is indispensable.
Both of us use lectures, simulations, independent study, video, intensive reading, and any other method that works to engage students in learning. We believe that kinesthetic movement needs to be introduced into classrooms to engage the body as well as the mind. For us, anything goes as long as it assists learning. For example, both of us love to lecture and both of us believe that lecturing is often necessary to introduce difficult ideas and to model critical inquiry. But we do believe that discussion can serve many important purposes (which we outline in Chapters One and Two) and that teachers sometimes abandon discussion too early simply for lack of some creative ideas for implementation.
We have taught core courses in laboratories or auditoriums with one hundred or more students present. We accept that these are important constraints and that they make experimentation with some of the exercises we suggest virtually impossible. But even under these conditions, we have usually found that it’s possible to do some small, though not insignificant, things. For example, as we argue in Chapter Three, a lecture in an auditorium can incorporate two- to three-minute buzz groups or reflection pairs, followed by two minutes of random responses from students. Doing these things stops students from falling into a deep reverie while you’re talking and forces them to engage with the ideas you think are important. It also allows you to make reference to students’ reflections during the next segment of the lecture, which is one way to keep their attention high.
We couldn’t agree more with this point. Both of us now find ourselves working in graduate education, and though our experience covers high schools, community development, vocational institutes, community colleges, and adult education centers, our current situations and responsibilities as university professors undoubtedly shape what we write. So we expect that any ideas that you find potentially useful here will be adapted, altered, abandoned, or completely reshaped as you think through how they might work in your own practice with your own students.
One short response to this, of course, is that the only way to get experience of leading discussion is to do it! Another is to acknowledge that the two of us fail all the time—things don’t work out as we anticipate, students respond less enthusiastically than we had hoped, and so on. Indeed, some of the exercises we propose—particularly those in Chapters Seven and Eight dealing with race, class, and gender—are quite risky. If you feel so uncomfortable about an exercise that you’re overwhelmed with anxiety, don’t bother with it. Instead, try to find colleagues who are experimenting creatively with discussion and ask if you can sit in on one or two of their classes, perhaps offering to be a sounding board, resource person, or cofacilitator. Observing their practice might give you a better sense of what to expect when you decide to work this way.
There is probably a minimum amount of time needed for a deep engagement with discussion. Serious consideration of ideas needs time for these ideas to be stated, heard, restated, questioned, challenged, refined, and stated again. Listening and responding take up at least as much time as exposition. Also, the time it takes to build the degree of trust among members that is such an important feature of good discussion cannot be rushed. If you take discussion seriously, you could experiment with the timing of classes (for example, canceling class one week and doubling up the next), if that’s possible. Or you could try short buzz groups and paired listening exercises. But it may be that you’re currently working in a teacher-centered situation where discussion is impossible. That’s fine. At the very least, you can try to model through your actions as a teacher some of the dispositions of discussion that we propose in Chapter One.
We would have to disagree with this contention. For us a commitment to discussion and an honoring of the democratic experience are inseparable. We realize we may have a philosophical difference here with some readers, who see discussion as a method disconnected from any political significance. But for us the respectful engagement with others that lies at the heart of discussion encapsulates a form of living and association that we regard as a model for civil society that has undeniable political implications. Discussion is a way of talking that emphasizes the inclusion of the widest variety of perspectives and a self-critical willingness to change what we believe if convinced by the arguments of others. We believe that most political decisions boil down to choices about who gets what, about how the limited resources available in any social group are used or allocated. The conversations informing such decisions must, in our view, be characterized by the same respectful hearing of the widest possible range of perspectives and the same self-critical openness to changing ideas after encountering these perspectives that undergird discussions held in college classrooms. These classrooms may be one of the few arenas in which students can reasonably experience how democratic conversation feels. Taking discussion seriously moves the center of power away from the teacher and displaces it in continuously shifting ways among group members. It parallels how we think a democratic system should work in the wider society. In this sense, classroom discussions always have a democratic dimension.
We agree that discussion should be used only when appropriate. In the teaching of unambiguous factual information (for example, the population of Baltimore in 1850, the chemical composition of sodium chloride, or Boyle’s law) or inculcation of specific skills (how to load software or how to give an injection), there seems to be little scope for using the method. However, things are not always as simple as they seem. The exact figure given for Baltimore’s 1850 population is actually a human construct, dependent on the data-gathering techniques and modes of classification statisticians decide to use, as well as on the learned behaviors of the data gatherers themselves. The hypothetico-deductive method that lies at the heart of intellectual inquiry in the natural sciences is actually a human system of thought, developed at a particular moment and place by a particular person (Francis Bacon) and refined over time by philosophical advances in the logic of the scientific method (for example, Karl Popper’s principle of falsifiability). What seem to be standardized, objective, and unambiguous skills of computer usage or nursing care are actually protocols developed by particular groups and individuals. Which program or protocol becomes accepted as professionally dominant, as representing common sense or the norm, depends on which group has the power to promote its way of interpreting good practice over other contenders.
So we would argue that there is no knowledge that is unambiguous or reified (that is, that exists in a dimension beyond human intervention). The seemingly immutable laws of physics are always applied within a certain range, and the boundaries of that range shift according to research and according to who has the power to define standards for acceptable scientific inquiry. It is salutary to reflect on how many intellectual advances have been initiated by thinkers who were ostracized and vilified as dangerous or crazy at the time they were working.
However, we would also acknowledge that there are times when discussion is not the best way to help students learn something. When we attend workshops to learn how to use the World Wide Web, we don’t want to spend the first hour problematizing computer technology. Rather than consider how access to this technology is stratified by class, gender, and race and how it reproduces existing inequities, we want to know which search engine to use. Instead of questioning whether or not this technology privatizes people and, by reducing the chance for people to gather physically in public places, thus prevents new social movements that challenge the status quo from forming, we want to know which button to press to display graphics. Of course, we would argue that the best teachers start with learners’ needs (such as which search engine to use and which button to press) and then nudge them to question the social organization of the technology they are using.
We would also point to the example of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where medical students spend three years working in small groups. Ferrier, Marrin, and Seidman (1988) report that according to their supervisors, graduates of the program performed better in their first year of practice than graduates from other universities. When taking the exams of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the first-attempt pass rate of McMaster students is higher than the national average. Palmer (1998) describes a large research university he visited where students (under the guidance of a mentor) work in small circles to diagnose and treat real patients. In the words of the dean of the medical school concerned, “Not only did the test scores not decline, but they actually started going up, and during the time we have been teaching this way, they have continued, slowly, to rise. In this approach to medical education, our students not only become more caring but also seem to be getting smarter, faster” (p. 127).
The general audience for this book is all teachers and leaders who use discussion to help people learn. Our primary audience is college and university teachers, but we hope that some of the exercises, techniques, and approaches we suggest can be used, or adapted, in secondary schools, adult and continuing education, training and human resource units, community groups, and other areas of learning.
We write out of our experiences working in a variety of settings. Stephen Brookfield has worked with discussion in technical, adult, and higher education, and in community development, in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. Stephen Preskill has experience using discussion in public schools, colleges, and universities in the United States. Our diverse backgrounds mean that we write about discussion as a method with broad application to any situation in which people gather to learn, whether or not these are officially designated as “education.”
We wanted this book to be practical, usable, and accessible. Although our understanding of discussion has been strongly influenced by various traditions and philosophies, we didn’t want to add to the already voluminous interpretations of the meanings of discourse and dialogue. Instead, we wanted to write a book we could turn to for help on creating the kinds of conversations we desired. We also wanted the book to be immediately understandable to teachers across disciplines who decide, for whatever reason, to give discussion a try.
So the book is written in a deliberately colloquial tone, one that we believe mirrors the conversational way in which teachers give advice to each other. We took to heart George Orwell’s injunction in his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946) that writers should never use a complicated word where a simple one will do. But this doesn’t mean that we’ve tried to write a gray, utilitarian manual. On the contrary, we’ve tried to write our own personal experiences as discussion participants directly into the text in the belief that you would appreciate knowing how we try to live the democratic process through group talk. We hope our belief is right.
January 1999
St. Paul, Minnesota
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Stephen D. Brookfield
Stephen Preskill
GRATITUDES
We wish to thank Eleni Roulis for joining us in this project. Her intelligence and spirit were crucial to its completion, and her contributions to Chapter Eight were irreplaceable. We also want to thank the seven reviewers in the United States, Australia, Scotland, and England who read and critiqued the first draft of this manuscript. David Boud of the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and Gary Cale of Jackson Community College, Jackson, Michigan, were good enough to identify themselves to us. Gary also gave willingly of his valuable time to help us decide how best to title the book. As always, Gale Erlandson, David Brightman, and John Skelton served as thoughtful, supportive, and constructively critical editors.
Stephen Brookfield wants to thank Stephen Preskill for his friendship and dedicates this book to him. In the preface to his book, Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (1995), Stephen described Steve as “an inspirational colleague who in his actions embodies much of the critically reflective spirit that this book has tried to convey” (p. xix). Working collaboratively on Discussion as a Way of Teaching has only deepened Stephen’s admiration for Steve’s intelligence and authenticity. It took eight books before Stephen found a coauthor, but the wait was worth it.
Stephen also wants to thank the students and faculty at the School of Education of the University of St. Thomas for many hours of conversation that illuminated the joys and contradictions of discussion. He particularly wants to acknowledge his colleagues in the School of Education—Gene Audette, Bill Carter, Kay Egan, Cathy Guggigsberg, Bruce Kramer, Freddy Kustaa, Don La Magdeleine, and Scott Taylor—who helped him think through the purpose, organization, and format of this book during one of the School’s regular “Work in Progress” sessions. He also benefited greatly from the critiques of students and faculty—particularly Tom Heaney, Scipio Colin III, Craig Mealman, Randee Lawrence, Ian Baptiste, Elizabeth Tisdell, Carol Eckerman, and Martha Casazza—of the National Louis University doctoral program in adult education. Finally, Stephen wants to thank his wife, Kim, and his children, Molly and Colin (The 99ers) for, well, everything.
Stephen Preskill wants to thank Stephen Brookfield for his friendship and generosity. Steve is also grateful to Stephen for lingering in assorted coffee shops for protracted periods whilst painstakingly revising multiple drafts of the new chapters that have been added to this second edition. Steve once again dedicates this volume to Stephen with affection, appreciation, and deep respect.
THE AUTHORS
The father of Molly and Colin, and the husband of Kim, Stephen D. Brookfield is currently Distinguished University Professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. He also serves as consultant to the adult education doctoral program at National Louis University in Chicago. Prior to moving to Minnesota, he spent ten years as professor in the Department of Higher and Adult Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he is still adjunct professor. He received his B.A. degree (1970) from Coventry University in modern studies, his M.A. degree (1974) from the University of Reading in sociology, and his Ph.D. degree (1980) from the University of Leicester in adult education. He also holds a postgraduate diploma (1971) from the University of London, Chelsea College, in modern social and cultural studies and a postgraduate diploma (1977) from the University of Nottingham in adult education. In 1991 he was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University System of New Hampshire for his contributions to understanding adult learning. In 2003 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Concordia University for his contributions to adult education practice.
Brookfield began his teaching career in 1970 and has held appointments at colleges of further, technical, adult, and higher education in the United Kingdom and at universities in Canada (University of British Columbia) and the United States (Columbia University, Teachers College and the University of St. Thomas). In 1989 he was visiting fellow at the Institute for Technical and Adult Teacher Education in what is now the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. In 2002 he was visiting professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. In 2003–2004 he was the Helen Le Baron Hilton Chair at Iowa State University. He has run numerous workshops on teaching, adult learning, and critical thinking around the world and delivered many keynote addresses at regional, national, and international education conferences. In 2001 he received the Leadership Award from the Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) for “extraordinary contributions to the general field of continuing education on a national and international level.”
He is a three-time winner of the Cyril O. Houle World Award for Literature in Adult Education: in 1986 for his book Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning: A Comprehensive Analysis of Principles and Effective Practices (1986), in 1989 for Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting (1987), and in 1996 for Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (1995). Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning also won the 1986 Imogene E. Okes Award for Outstanding Research in Adult Education. These awards were all presented by the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. His other books include Adult Learners, Adult Education, and the Community (1984), Self-Directed Learning: From Theory to Practice (1985), Learning Democracy: Eduard Lindeman on Adult Education and Social Change (1987), Training Educators of Adults: The Theory and Practice of Graduate Adult Education (1988), The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom (1990), and The Power of Critical Theory: Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching (2005).
Stephen Preskill is currently Regents Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Organizational Learning in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. For nine years he was an elementary and middle school teacher before earning his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984 in educational policy studies with an emphasis in the history of American education. From 1984 to 1989 he taught at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and from 1989 to 1994 he was a member of the educational leadership faculty at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has been teaching at the University of New Mexico since 1994.
He is the coauthor of two previous books. With Stephen Brookfield, he co-wrote the first edition of Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms (1999). With Robin Smith Jacobvitz, he coauthored Stories of Teaching: A Foundation for Educational Renewal. He is currently working on a book for Jossey-Bass in collaboration with Stephen Brookfield tentatively titled Learning as a Way of Leading: Lessons from the Struggle for Social Justice.
Preskill’s main research activities have focused on the history of American educational reform, leader and teacher narratives, the connections between learning leadership and democracy, and how discussion-based teaching supports democratic processes. He has published more than forty articles in a variety of social science journals.
Recently one of us led a discussion that confirmed for us why we value the discussion method so highly. Steve Preskill was teaching a course on educational ethics and had found a newspaper article describing a local school board’s refusal to honor a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) order. A DNR order is issued when a person is gravely ill. It is a legally binding document that is signed by the individual’s next of kin and a supervising physician. They declare that the patient’s medical condition is so fragile and grave that if the patient goes into cardiac arrest, no effort should be made to resuscitate. The article Steve found involved a schoolchild whose parents had signed a DNR order. The school board took the position that human life is unconditionally sacred. Because preserving life takes precedence over everything else, the board claimed, all efforts must be made to save a child’s life, regardless of circumstances or DNR orders.
Steve projected a summary of the article on an overhead screen for the whole class to read. Steve describes the experience in the following vignette.
I had brought this article into class that day to illustrate what it meant for an organization to take a principled stand on an issue. In previous classes we had been reading articles that took a highly principled view of the value of human life, so I expected that most students would support the school board’s position without much disagreement. I went into class believing that the school board’s decision was courageous and morally defensible.
The first students who spoke up after reading the summary supported the school board’s decision. As I heard their comments, I smiled and nodded in agreement, all the while quietly celebrating how much my students were learning from my lectures and the readings I had assigned. But as the group probed deeper and as more students spoke, more information as well as opinion emerged. A few students argued that the board showed a marked lack of respect for the parents’ carefully reasoned decision. I was taken aback by this dissenting view and was even more surprised by the students’ ability to defend it from the same uncompromising position on the sacredness of human life. One student who had had a lot of experience with DNR orders explained that they are written only after agonizing deliberation among parents, health care professionals, attorneys, and educators. They therefore should not be taken lightly. Others pointed out that despite the board’s good intentions, the members had acted out of ignorance of the legal, medical, and even ethical issues involved.
By now I was starting to realize that things were not nearly as simple as I’d imagined. What I’d thought would be a straightforward illustration of a principled stand was turning into a deep probing of a situation in which a single, seemingly unassailable principle was being employed to defend diametrically opposing views. This was disconcerting, surprising, and gratifying in equal measure. I felt pleased that things were taking an unexpected turn but uncertain that I could stay on top of the discussion and make some good connections between what students were saying and the concept of taking a principled stand. And at the back of my mind was the contrary thought that it wasn’t my duty always to make connections for students.
Despite my uncertainty, I was engaged by this exchange of views and asked someone to explain in what way the school board showed an ignorance of ethical issues. A different student explained that DNR orders are usually inspected by ethicists before they are issued. Another student noted that it wasn’t up to any one person or entity to defy such an order, that what to do in such situations was the responsibility of the community as a whole. Furthermore, this student argued, the DNR order was closer to being a reflection of broad community participation than the unilateral fiat of the board was.
This last view showed a sophisticated understanding of communitarianism (a view we hadn’t even covered yet!) and led to other students’ expressing the opinion that the school board’s decision could be defended only if certain conditions were met. The school board members needed to show that they had consulted with as many different people as the authors of the DNR order had, and they also needed to show that they had engaged in the same level of careful forethought as that displayed by the parents and physicians in arriving at their position. I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet, a bit shaken by this collective display of knowledge and wisdom. My initial conviction that the board was in the right had been thoroughly undermined, causing me to wonder how many more of my beliefs would be thrown into doubt if I exposed them to the consideration of this group. How humbling and disconcerting! And yet how inspiring to take part in a discussion that deepened understanding by allowing many points of view to emerge and to be carefully weighed by all involved.
This vignette demonstrates why we place such store in discussion as a teaching method. As Steve’s experience illustrates, discussion is a valuable and inspiring means for revealing the diversity of opinion that lies just below the surface of almost any complex issue. Although there are many ways to learn, discussion is a particularly wonderful way to explore supposedly settled questions and to develop a fuller appreciation for the multiplicity of human experience and knowledge. To see a topic come alive as diverse and complex views multiply is one of the most powerful experiences we can have as learners and teachers. In a discussion where participants feel their views are valued and welcomed, it is impossible to predict how many contrasting perspectives will emerge or how many unexpected opinions will arise.
In revealing and celebrating the multiplicity of perspectives possible, discussion at its best exemplifies the democratic process. All participants in a democratic discussion have the opportunity to voice a strongly felt view and the obligation to devote every ounce of their attention to each speaker’s words. In this minidemocracy, all have the right to express themselves as well as the responsibility to create spaces that encourage even the most reluctant speaker to participate.
Discussion and democracy are inseparable because both have the same root purpose—to nurture and promote human growth. By growth we mean roughly the same thing as John Dewey (1916) did: the development of an ever-increasing capacity for learning and an appreciation of and sensitivity to learning undertaken by others. Democracy and discussion imply a process of giving and taking, speaking and listening, describing and witnessing—all of which help expand horizons and foster mutual understanding. Discussion is one of the best ways to nurture growth because it is premised on the idea that only through collaboration and cooperation with others can we be exposed to new points of view. This exposure increases our understanding and renews our motivation to continue learning. In the process, our democratic instincts are confirmed: by giving the floor to as many different participants as possible, a collective wisdom emerges that would have been impossible for any of the participants to achieve on their own.
But we do not prize discussion solely because it helps us attain worthy democratic aims. We practice it eagerly simply because it’s so enjoyable and exciting. Unpredictable and risky, it is the pedagogical and educational equivalent of scaling a mountain or shooting dangerous rapids. Never sure what we’ll encounter as we push toward the top or as we careen around the next bend, our level of alertness and attentiveness remains high. Indeed, there is an exhilaration that we experience in the best of discussions that is not unlike the thrill we enjoy in the most challenging of outdoor activities. This is why we like teaching democratically. In remaining open to the unexpected, we feel engaged and alive. So our commitment to discussion is not just moral and philosophical but also deeply personal and importantly self-gratifying. Even if we lacked a principled rationale for favoring discussion, we would still keep the conversation going because it gives us so much pleasure.
Certain authors who agree about the potential of group talk have attempted to make distinctions among conversation, discussion, and dialogue. The philosopher Matthew Lipman (1991) argues that conversation seeks equilibrium, with each person in turn taking opportunities to speak and then listen but where little or no movement occurs. Conversation, Lipman claims, is an exchange of thoughts and feelings in which genial cooperation prevails, whereas dialogue aims at disequilibrium in which “each argument evokes a counterargument that pushes itself beyond the other and pushes the other beyond itself” (p. 232). Dialogue for Lipman is an exploration or inquiry in which the participants view themselves as collaborators intent on expeditiously resolving the problem or issue they face. Educational philosopher Nicholas Burbules (1993), while less inclined than Lipman to distinguish sharply between conversation and dialogue, suggests that conversation is more informal and less structured than dialogue and that dialogue focuses more on inquiry and increasing understanding and tends to be more exploratory and questioning than conversation.