"Discussion as a Way of Teaching" by Stephen Brookfield

The article “Discussion as a Way of Teaching” by Stephen Brookfield opened up by asking the reader to think about the group discussions they have been a part of, and what made them good or bad. I reflected back to former classes I have taken, both as a college student and a secondary student and was able to come up with some of the characteristics that I thought made the discussions good or bad.

                In some of the worst discussions I have sat through, some or most of the participants were unprepared, participants were generally unengaged and unwilling to voluntarily contribute. The discussion was dominated by a couple of voices and turned into a conversation between those parties. The leader/teacher either did not give enough guidance to the participants or was to domineering. Another aspect I noticed that led to poor discussions was too many participants; teachers or professors with large classes expecting whole classes to participate leading to the majority of students being too intimidated to participate.

                While there have been a handful of poor discussions I have been a part of, I can think of many great ones, mostly being from classes within my major. When students are prepared, engaged and show at least some interest in the content, course discussions can be a valuable asset. Ensuring that discussion groups were small enough that all participants had a chance to speak helped keep all students engaged. I believe that having a leader that provides sufficient guidance to keep the discussion on topic is also often necessary for a good classroom discussion.  

                As I continued reading the article, I found that many of the issues I personally observed in classroom discussions were addressed and given solutions to fix them. I have seen discussions get out of hand, as presented in the final case study, due to teachers and professors not wanting to discourage students from participating. One of my favorite solutions that Brookfield offered was requiring students to comment upon a former speaker’s contribution. This forces the participant to actually listen to other speakers and absorb that information rather than for waiting for a chance to vocalize an independent comment that does not effectively contribute to the ongoing discussion. Brookfield’s idea of “moves cards” offers good practice of how to be a good participant in a group discussion. When students are told what to do in the discussion, they can see multiple examples of what good participation looks like. I think this would be a good idea to do once or twice to demonstrate to the class expectations during a class discussion, but I do not think it should be used regularly as it doesn’t give the students an opportunity to always contribute in the ways they would like to or are best at.

                Brookfield suggests setting ground rules and uses a T-chart model in order to clear any ambiguity of how to respectfully participate in a discussion. One side of the chart reads “sounds like” the other “looks like.” This gives students the opportunity to think about how they can show they are meeting guidelines. Some students may not know how to show they are listening—or how to be a good listener at all— but the chart can provide examples such as referencing the former speakers ideas, maintaining eye contact with the speaker or using body language to show engagement, etc. Unlike the moves cards, the T-Chart provides guidelines that suggest what a student should do rather than making them take on a particular role.

                In section 5, Brookfield outlines the different roles played in a group discussion. The various definitions of roles helps to show the value in the each role a student may play. It does not exclude the students who may be too uncomfortable to speak up or vocalize their own opinions, rather it allows options such as the speculator, active listener, the appreciator or summarizer. The list of conversational roles shows that every student can contribute to the class discussion using their own strengths. I think this is important for shy students so they can find other ways in which they can contribute when they do not feel comfortable speaking to the class.

                Brookfield acknowledges that it can be counterproductive to force students to speak about the topic when they are uncomfortable with it. As an alternative, he recommends forcing the more shy students to speak by giving them portions to read instead of forcing them to vocalize opinions of a reading. The suggestion of using a hatful of quotes not only helps to give students a less intimidating way to contribute, but keeps the discussion guided so that it does not stray into too many tangents or leave students feeling like they don’t know how to contribute. The author also mentioned that letting the students know that speaking up is not necessary in order to gain favor with the teacher can help to embolden students to speak and I think that is a good method of helping the more shy students feel less insecure about how much or little they speak up in the discussion.

                Many class discussions I have been a part of have used snowballing as a method to get everyone involved and it is one of my favorites. A former professor of mine divided the class into groups of five at the beginning of the quarter and would have each group have their own discussions for a portion of the class. After each group had a chance to discuss a given topic, there would be a class discussion. It helped remove the intimidation of vocalizing ideas in front of the class before having the opportunity to really work them. I think the idea of rotating stations is somewhat similar to the snowballing method, but on a smaller scale. It is intended to help students get more perspectives from other groups without breaking the familiarity of each student’s regular group. I like this idea as it gives students the opportunity to build onto their own ideas—using the ideas of other students—without prematurely interrupting the small group’s discussion.

                As demonstrated in the final case study, it is easy for class discussions to get out of hand despite well-intentioned efforts from the teacher. Brookfield provides a lot of good advice for teachers to get the most out of class discussions they orchestrate.