5/20/2024 164. "How Should We Live Together?" Designing Deliberations with Dr. Diana Hess & Dr. Paula McAvoyRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy discuss the importance of political classrooms that engage students in critical discussions about societal issues. They emphasize the necessity for educational spaces to be inclusive, allowing for diverse ideological perspectives and the cultivation of political literacy. They also share strategies for how you can prepare for and facilitate these conversations in your educational context.
Diana E. Hess is the dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and holds the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education. Dr. Hess’s research focuses on civic and democratic education. Formerly, Dr. Hess was the senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school social studies teacher, a teachers’ union president, and the associate executive director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. Paula McAvoy earned her PhD in philosophy of education in 2010 at UW-Madison’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the Director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW-Madison. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the Foothill Middle College Program in Los Altos, California. The Big Dream Both Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy share a big dream for education centered on equity and justice. Dr. McAvoy envisions accessible strategies for all students to engage in meaningful classroom discussions, while Dean Hess dreams of leveraging the diversity present in educational settings to foster conversations across differing views. As Dr. McAvoy puts it, the aim is for students to have real discussions that model democratic political equality, tolerance, and the consideration of the common good. Mindset Shifts Required Discussions are not time-fillers but intentional academic exercises with democratic aims. As Dr. McAvoy explains, students should be seen as political equals whose voices are all deserving of respect and consideration in the conversation.
Dean Hess explains you might ask: “How has the idea about paying for college tuition either affected someone that you know or is potentially going to affect you in the future? And so that you can share out, ‘This is where I am on this position personally,’ and that helps the discussion, because now I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not, and so everyone benefits from knowing that information and that you treat each other differently when you feel, when you first know where everyone stands personally, and so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition.” Administrative Support: Ask: “Do we want to be a place where there is good discussion? What does that discussion look like?” Then, provide access to professional development focused on facilitating those discussions. Also consider creating school or district-based (non-classroom-based) “purple spaces” for conversation. Dean Hess is doing this now with Deliberation Dinners. She says participants can take the Pew Ideology Quiz. They will be placed in one of nine groups across the ideological spectrum. Then build 12 tables of 10 students to ensure ideological diversity and also other differences (e.g., grade, stakeholder groups, demographic identities). This can help people with different points of view learn how to talk to each other about really important issues! One Step to Get Started Identify topics that reflect diversity in student perspectives. Create “purple spaces”! Tip: You can survey your students to see where their ideas lie on particular issues to see if there is a diversity of viewpoints and competing good values around an issue. You may want to use the above Pew Ideology Quiz as well. Stay Connected You can connect with this week’s guest Dean Diana Hess via email at [email protected] and Dr. Paula McAvoy via email at [email protected]. To help you think more deeply about this topic, we’re linking the Social Education journal’s special issue on “Teaching Social Studies in Polarized Times”, some of which is open source, so you can read them for free without a scholarly account. And, if you’re looking for more details on the– ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 164 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
00:00:00Edit Hello, my name is Leah and I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. In today's episode, we are talking with Doctor Diana Hess and Doctor Paula mcavoy. Doctor Diana Hess is the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin Madison and holds the care and Falk distinguished chair of education. Doctor Hess's research focuses on civic and democratic education. Her first book Controversy in the Classroom won the exemplary research award from the National Council for Social Studies. Formerly Doctor Hess was the senior Vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school study. So social studies teacher, a teachers union president and the Associate Executive Director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Chicago Hess is finishing her ninth and final year as dean this May and will be writing a book with her colleague Lynn Gleick about the importance of deliberation of political issues in higher education. Next year, Paula mcavoy earned her phd in philosophy of Education in 2010 at UW Medicine's Department of Educational Policy Studies. TRANSCRIPT 00:01:12 Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an Associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW Medicine. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the foothill middle College program in Los Altos, California. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor Diana Hat. Doctor Paul mcelvoy. Welcome to the Time for Teacher podcast. 00:02:18Edit It's great to be here. I'm so excited to have you both here today. I want to start with an opening question that I ask everyone and feels really big, feel free to answer it. I'd love to hear from each of you in whatever way you want to respond. So I love this idea of freedom dreaming, which many folks talk about. Dr Bettina loves specifically talk about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice which I love. And so with that in mind, what is the big dream that each of you holds for education? Paula, would you like to start? I'll start, this is Paula. Um So I gave this some thought before. And um one thing that I've done since the book is Command Diana has done also is uh professional development with teachers around how to engage students in discussions of controversial political issues. And one thing that I've noticed is that at the end of, you know, I teach a variety of strategies and then teachers will often say this is so great. I'm gonna teach it to my A P students and it just breaks my heart because I want, um you know, the strategies that we talk about we're gonna talk about today are accessible to everybody. 00:03:31Edit And so, and it's just so important to give all students the opportunities to have real discussion in the classroom. And so I think that that would be my opener. Yeah. Well, ditto to that. Um you know, I've had that experience to Paul and I always find it, uh you know, really disappointing. And I also feel like it means that all the things that I had done in the PD, no one apparently was paying attention to because, you know, the, the content of the PD is the antithesis of that. Um But relatedly, um my, my dream is that we can use high quality discussion in both uh K 12. And in higher ed, increasingly, I've been doing a lot of work in Higher Ed to uh take advantage of the diversity that we have in so many settings that I think right now we are at best not taking advantage of and at worst, we're kind of actively putting barriers up that would allow students to be able to engage in meaningful conversation with people who have both similar views and very dissimilar views. 00:04:48Edit So, um that is my dream. I love both of those, those are so good and, and I love that equity and justice are really at the core of each of those responses. So I, I wanna just get right into it. I have just recently read the Political Classroom, which is published a while back, I think 2018. And I just want all the listeners and leaders and educators who listen to this to know about it as well because I think a lot of people are wondering, you know, what does it look like in practice to do this well. And so the first thing I'd love to know it and I think Paula, maybe we could start with you with this one. I think with the six possible aims of a political classroom that you list in the book. I think this is fascinating and something that I had never thought of as like a particular aim that you would have as you know, entering a classroom conversation. Do you wanna take us through those? Sure, thank you. I think I'll start before going through that list with the idea of the political classroom, which is sort of a, a complicated idea or not complicated, but it, it sounds um like maybe what you shouldn't be doing in the classroom, which is making the classroom political. 00:05:55Edit And so we intentionally use the term in the title of political classroom and we defined it as a classroom in which young people are um having opportunities to discuss questions about how we should live together. And so how should we live together is the essential question of a democratic society. Um And so, how should we live together? Questions can be everything from public policy questions to rules of the classroom, questions to, you know, et cetera. And so, um so when we talk about the political classroom, we're talking about moments in which young people are getting to have authentic and real discussion about issues about how we should live together. Um And we were primarily in the book looking at public policy questions. Um But so why do that in the first place is that's an idea that's kind of grounded in deliberative theory, which is a democratic theory. And so, and the idea that discussion and engagement across our differences is good for democracy. 00:06:58Edit And so, um we said that so a lot of people see, I think teachers can often think of treat discussion in the classroom as a little bit of a time filler rather than um this is something we're intentionally doing um for academic purposes. And so, um so we've identified six aims. So what you might sort of think about is the, why should we do this in the first place? An the answer to the question, why should we do this? So one is that when we discuss with others, we necessarily, or we should be treating them as political equals. And so it models a type of democratic political equality in the classroom that says everybody has a right to their an opinion and has should have the opportunity to discuss and contribute. Uh The second aim is that it um it promotes tolerance and tolerance. Here often means just being respectful to people who are different but political tolerance. Um And in the form of deliberation and discussion is that we should learn to have the idea that I shouldn't use the state to just get my way. 00:08:01Edit Um So I need to be taller. I need to be, I need to check myself a little bit um in the democratic process that I'm not trying to, as Danielle Allen says, um uh uh to use a winner, take all approach to democracy. Um And then we're helping young people through discussion to develop autonomy, meaning. So their develop their own ideas about how they want to live that demo um deliberation models a type of political fairness and that we model for students or encourage students to think about solutions that promote the common good. So the a deliberation is different than a debate. So you're not trying to win, but you're trying to come up with a good solution. Um then deliberation and discussion, um hopefully motivate students to become more engaged in public decision making because you've and do modeling and that you're modeling that with them in the classroom. And then last we set an aim is um helping young people develop the political literacy of understanding. 00:09:06Edit Um not just what you think about tax policy or something like that, but why tax policy has an underlying the tax policy you choose has an underlying ideological value to it. And so to help young people, I see, we see we saw in the book and continue to see a lot of teachers willing to engage issues, but they're not really wanting to touch like what is it, what is the, what, why would that position be conservative or liberal or what? So when that gets at the bigger purpose of what sort of democracy or society do you want in the first place? And so helping young people kind of engage those bigger values? Thank you so much. That's brilliant. Yeah, and, and so you can choose any combination of aims, right? You don't have to do all six or you don't have to do just one. Is that right? I mean, discussions in general a political, I mean, democratic education, I would say in general is aiming towards all of those. It doesn't mean that in every moment you get, those are all getting equal weight and attention. But you could, uh you know, a particular discussion strategy might really emphasize fairness by encouraging students to find um a point of consensus, for example. 00:10:18Edit Um But in a different strategy might not promote that as much. Hm, excellent. Thank you for, for sharing that. And then I think the next piece for me is how do you decide, right? What issue you're gonna put up for deliberation? I appreciate that you distinguish between a debate, right? And a deliberation. They are not the theme. How do we uh really select those? And so Diana, did you want to share a little bit about the framework that you have for determining how to select those issues? Sure. So I think the most important thing is to determine whether an issue is actually an issue, meaning that are there multiple and competing points of view that you want students to learn about and to literally deliberate, you know, deliberate means to weigh or to balance. And so one of the things that we explored in the book was the challenges that people often have, determining what's actually an issue. And one of the issues is about what's an issue, you know, whether something is an open issue or a more settled issue is a matter of, of great debate. 00:11:28Edit But we really took this on in the book by looking at a variety of different um criteria that teachers could use when they're trying to determine if something is uh an issue or not. And, uh, one of the things that Paul and I have done both uh together and separately in professional development is to really help, uh, teachers wrestle with that. One thing that I've came, come away with is to say the, the question about whether something is an issue or not is a question that itself is best deliberated professionally with other teachers. I think, you know, if possible, making solo decisions on that, uh oftentimes those decisions aren't, aren't quite as good. But as we know from uh what we've done in the book, we've distinguished between empirical issues and policy issues uh by empirical issues, we simply mean, this is a question that either has been or could be answered imper empirically. 00:12:35Edit So uh does uh human behavior cause climate change? You know, that that's an empirical question we argued in the book when it was when we were first writing it, which was, you know, quite some time ago that the answer to that question was yes and therefore to deliberate that question as an open question wouldn't make a lot of sense. You know, later the next generation science standards said the same thing and we both felt very good about that uh to be validated uh that way, um Policy questions are questions by definition, uh where you would have, you know, multiple and, and competing views and there's a relationship between empirical questions and policy questions. You know, and we listen to, to people deliberate, for example, whether we should have a flat tax, you know, they're often talking about, well, what effect might that have on this or on that? And it's not like we don't know anything about those. Um I think the most important thing that we talk about in the book is the need to make sure that the issues that you select are are issues that have a content win. 00:13:42Edit You know, Paula was talking before about the aims that we've laid out in the book and one of the aims is political literacy. And so we, I think generally believe that it's important for students to learn uh very important content through the discussion of political issues. And I always use that as uh something that I rely on when I'm trying to select. But I also think that the more important thing is to make sure that you've got a tension between competing good values. So, you know, good issue questions are not clearly. Well, there's a good and a bad. It's there may be two goods you're trying to achieve. So you may be trying to achieve equal opportunity and inclusion and free speech. Those are both goods. And there's a whole bunch of policy questions that bring those two goods into 10. And my favorite issues are those that help students explore tension between competing uh good values because I think those good value tensions are perennial and even if there is a resolution to a particular issue, doesn't mean that you're not gonna have issues that come up in the future that involve those same tensions. 00:14:58Edit Yeah. Oh my gosh, I am so interested in this. So I think that one of the things that you had named was like the professional judgment framework that and integrates a bunch of the things that you each have already said to make that decision for your class. Do either of you want to kind of talk a little bit about, about that piece. And I don't know if you have an example, friends of mine that's like here's how this would work or that you've seen a teacher in practice kind of work through to make a decision like that just to illuminate for folks how that might work. I can talk that one. The so part of the, the book does three things. It presents this, the findings from this very large study of high school teachers who are engaging students in discussion. Um And it also presents cases of teachers practicing in very different contexts. So we have a teacher who's in a very blue bubble, a red bubble and then kind of a suburban purple school context. And then there we found that there are these questions that teachers often struggle with one being. Should I share my views in the classroom? 00:16:00Edit For example, or which issues as we just discussed. Should I treat as controversial? And there's not really a clear cut answer to these questions. And what we found and argue in the book is that you really um that, that teachers need to be weighing what is, what, what is my school context here? What am I trying to do in the first place? And what evidence can help me um answer the uh answer this question. So for example, on a, should I share my views with the classroom? Uh We have lots that we could say about this. But the, the one way to think about it is if you in the context of my class, if I'm a liberal teacher in a conservative area, and I'm having students discuss something and they turn to me and ask, well, what do you think about this issue? So that context matters, what is, what is my identity to them? Um How are they gonna hear me if I tell my views? And then also, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to actually have them do the discussion? 00:17:03Edit Then maybe I don't need to share my views in that moment because I'm trying to nurture the discussion in that moment. And maybe I think that my views will derail it in some way. And so thinking about not just in principle, should teachers ever share their views, but what is the, that you should share your views if you think it furthers your furthers, your aims. And so um rather than thinking, you know, with the professional judgment, we're trying to not make rules for teachers or the set, the this is the answer. But to really say so, what are the things that you should be thinking about when you face difficult choices in the classroom? Yeah, I love that in, in the book that you had really focused on that as like a key thing or is it advancing discussion? Is it in the best interest of the students not? Do I want to share or not? Does it make me feel good as, as the educator? I really appreciated that very much because I think it can be so challenging to, to make that that particular choice. So the other thing, it might at times be good. Oh, sorry to interrupt. It might at times to be the right thing to do for the discussion, you know, so it's um that it might be that they really trust and like you and if you share your view, they say, oh wow, I didn't realize that that was a, I never thought of it that way before and that can be really valuable. 00:18:15Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping in to share this episode's Freebie an article by Paula mcavoy title discussing politics in polarized times. You can find it at the blog post for this episode, www dot Lindsay, Beth lions.com/one 64. Check it out now back to the show. Absolutely. I think that vulnerability, when you're asking students to be vulnerable, it can be a big trust builder and foundation builder with you as the educator are also willing to go there with them. I Yeah, totally. I, I think there's so, so much I could honestly talk to you guys forever about this. But one of the pieces that I'm really interested in your thoughts on and I after reading the book is that you mentioned several critiques of cele of theory and, and Sanders, I think talks about like it really advantages and privileges like the white middle class way of talking in the book. I mean, you bring in Daniel Allen's work and talking about like that emotion can't really be disentangled from the political deliberation, which I really appreciated. And, and she talks about like the, the uh revelation of what fellow citizens are worth to them in these spaces, like it really opens up that. 00:19:20Edit And so I, I was thinking about this idea of like there the value of being able to have individual stories shared, to put like a face behind an issue. But that also, so that's beautiful and right, it also sometimes positions individual students in the classroom to take on that responsibility that might have some emotional weights. And so I'm just wondering like, is that something that happens in more of like I'm thinking of like indigenous circles and community circles of like, I'm just sharing experiences versus like an actual deliberation of a policy issue and, and kind of like how do we balance that tension of the students who are potentially taking on the load of? Like this has a lot of weight for me when we talk about a particular issue and me being vulnerable enough to share my story might have a bigger emotional weight on me as the sharer than like the people around me that are benefiting from that sharing. Does that make sense, Paul? You want to start? And now China? So, so a few things. 00:20:22Edit So first, let's so Sanders, who's who you say there? Uh just to make one distinction is that she's talking about adults in deliberative spaces like juries. And so one peop one pro one issue, I, I don't know what we're to describe. One critique that gets raised about classroom deliberation is this one and we raise it in the book as a concern that some students aren't heard the same way as other students. And that makes a lot of teachers worried. Um And I think that when I, so I've been doing a couple of studies in the last year and I, and this is one thing that I've been kind of paying attention to. And one thing that you see is that classroom deliberations are deliberations among novices, first of all, and they are deliberations that are in many way, they are fabricated or they're, they're sort of attempts at deliberations. So they're not actually deciding a jury case, they're not actually deciding public policy, but it's got an educational value to it. Um And so in this way, they don't, they don't. 00:21:26Edit So when we might say in sort of, in theory, deliberation should play by these particular rules of rational exchange of ideas in practice with young people, they're naturally bringing up stories about the connecting stories to their lives. They are naturally, you know, engage, you know, they look at the materials that you provide them, but they're also, they're just bouncing it off of the their worlds, right? And that's just the way it is. Um And so what I've been playing with in the last few years is really trying to blend this idea of like, don't think of things as strictly deliberation, but you scaffold the deliberation in such a way that the first thing what I have to what I have groups do, especially if the groups don't know themselves very well is share, if we're gonna say we're gonna talk about uh should college tuition be free, for example, um Share out well, this is what among adults, but you could share it with high school students. How does the idea about paying for, you know, how does college, how is paying for college tuition, either affected someone that, you know, or potentially going to affect you in the future? 00:22:36Edit And so that you can share out this is where I am on this position personally. And that helps the discussion because now I know um I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not. And so everyone benefits from knowing that information and you, you treat each other differently when you feel when you first know where everyone stands personally. And so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition, deepening our learning, thinking about the public policy, thinking about the values and 10 and then move towards the liberation. So I think thinking of um you know that that classroom deliberation is a particular type of um you know, educational experience first and foremost, and that what we're trying to do is provide students with the skills to do that. And one of those skills is caring how other people feel about are are affected. Yeah, one of the things that I'm really interested in is the distinction between what Paula is describing, which I really like and asking students their views on the issue. 00:23:44Edit So Paula's question was how might this affect you? So you can imagine saying I am really going to be affected by free college tuition because it means I won't have to take out so much student loan. And I still might think that free college tuition is a bad policy choice, right? So, you know, I think one of the things we've that I've experienced is asking students at the beginning of a deliberation. What are your views on the policy? I don't like to do because I don't want people to take a public stand on. Here's what I think about X because my experience has been, once people do that, they don't wanna, they actually prematurely come to a position or they're not open to uh possibly changing their mind. But what Paul is talking about is helping people understand the connection between, you know, people's lives and specific issues. And quite frankly, it's not illegitimate or anti deliberative to have personal stories as part of a deliberation. 00:24:52Edit You know, one of my um most interesting deliberations that I've ever listened to was when the Senate was deliberating the Americans with Disabilities Act. And Bob Dole told the story of his wartime injury that according to at least some research had a huge effect on getting folks to support that landmark legislation who otherwise wouldn't. So, you know, every time I listen to a good deliberation, I hear someone talk about how something affects them. We just had a deliberation as part of our new program here at UW Madison called Deliberation Dinners on abortion a week ago. And one of the um students was talking about from her perspective. Now, this was not uh she was not generalizing it to everybody, but from her perspective, getting birth control was really easy now and much, much easier than it had been uh reported to be in the past. 00:25:55Edit So that was for her a reason that influenced what she thinks about abortion policy. And, you know, she told that story very authentically and it was absolutely appropriate for her to do it. So when people say, well, we don't want students telling personal stories when talking about policy issues. I'm like, well, how could you possibly have a good deliberation without hearing about how real people are affected by policy questions? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you both for sharing those specific examples as well. I think of um Doctor Shri Ridges Patrick and I had come up with uh it's a Juan Eels work we adapted to think about racial discourse. And one of the things that we talk about for generative dialogue is actually the connection of kind of the head and the heart and like the emotion and the intellectual pieces. And that often we're like overly intellectualizing when we divorce those emotional pieces from the stories from the discussions. And so I love that, that this can be that too that, that this deliberation can be that as well. You know, it also goes back to the aims that Paula was talking about at the beginning of the podcast. 00:27:03Edit You know, one of the things that we need to think about is both how do we advance our own self interest? There's nothing wrong with doing that. Um And how do we make decisions based on what might be good for a broader set of people and I've always thought of non novice or more expert decision making is when we can look outside of our own interest. And, you know, for that reason, I am always intrigued when I hear students say, well, my personal position on this is X, but I don't think the state should do why? Because I don't think the state should be telling other people what to do about X. You know, so I don't want people to think that what democratic decision making means is what is my interest and how do I best advance my own interest? I love that. You said that I just think about so many of I taught like a feminist course in high school and so many of my students would talk about abortion in that way. 00:28:07Edit Like, you know, like maybe I personally would choose acts. I think policy should be why. Like I thought it was a really interesting distinction that was, that came up a lot in that particular topic. But thank you for eliminating that for us because I think that's important to keep in mind for educators. Um One of the things that I think a as you know, leaders are supporting teachers to do this well, and teachers are kind of creating these spaces in their classrooms. I'm wondering if they're specific practices or action steps that you would suggest for either the teachers as well as the leaders who are kind of supporting teachers to create those spaces. Um and, and dealing with all of the things that are happening in the world that may um kind of impact that any, any thoughts for either group, teachers or leaders, one that I have is that I think in the diana kind of alluded to this point earlier is that it's, it would be valuable if teachers and administrators would sit down and talk about the question. What does a good discussion look like? And how should we get it? Um And I think discussion is a word that's used in, it's often misused or it's, you know, a, a person might actually be lecturing when they use the word discussion, like I'm discussing World War One. 00:29:19Edit And so we need to, I think in the public discourse, there's a lot of confusion about uh teacher talk right now versus student talk. And so what um I think if schools could sit down and think about, do we want to be a place where there is a good discussion? What kind of, what does that discussion look like? And I would say one answer is that the teach, the students should talk to each other? And um and then how do you, how do you cultivate that? And that's, that's a learned skill. People think, oh, everyone can talk, everyone can discuss. That's not, that's not the case that people need, they actually need scaffolded practice um on how to, on how to learn to have this sort of discussion. And so I think um having schools, school leaders and teachers stop and think about what is it that we actually want to do and, and how do, what and what supports do we as teachers on a school need to get that into place? Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, we often say in the discussion project that we want um students to learn how to discuss in the same way. 00:30:27Edit We want students to learn how to write and we want students to learn how to do mathematical uh thinking. We want students to learn how to discuss. And we know from, I think pretty solid research now that it's not like you are, are an innate uh discuss uh discussion is something that is can be learned and, and needs to be. But we also want people to discuss to learn. So the question to go back to how we started this, which is, well, why do this to begin with? Well, one reason to do this to begin with is because there's all sorts of things you can learn from having discussions that you're not gonna learn and you're not gonna learn as well absent them. That discussion is uh itself a really powerful pedagogical tool. And so if we care in schools about students learning, and I'm, I, I would vote for that. I always say yes to that, then we should see um discussion and deliberation as both powerful uh pedagogical tools, but back to the aims that Paula started this with, with uh really important democratic outcomes in their own. 00:31:41Edit Right? Yeah. One of the things that I had had written down too that I loved as a suggestion and just in addition to the ideas that you all just shared is that you could survey students to identify where there's diversity in the topics like perspectives on the topics that kind of a call to what you were all sharing before was making sure that you have that diversity of viewpoints. You decided as an issue, right? In context, I never would have thought of that. And I just really wanted to name that for listeners, but that's a really cool idea. And also just that you call out for leaders to make sure that teachers have that good PD so that we can build those discussion skills and students and and you need like a good facilitator to be able to help build those discussion skills and students. So making sure that teachers also have access to all of all of that PD um so that this can happen, right? So thank you for that. I think just to, to move to kind of close here, I don't want to take too much of your time. But I'm, I'm curious to know for folks who want to learn more about what you're doing now because I know you, this was an older book, this was published. 00:32:43Edit Years and years ago, I'm curious to know, you know, what are you currently working on or where can people kind of learn from you in this moment or connect with you online spaces or, or any of that? Um For me, I, um I've been working on a couple of studies that are looking at different discussion strategies. And so, um and how students differently experience them, how that affects how their views change as a result of the discussion. And so looking at um really the structure of discussion, so a lot of people imagine that the best discussion is this like beautiful seminar style with people in a circle and everyone's participating, that's, it's so hard to get that discussion in a high school in a typical high school classroom. I mean, you can build towards it for sure. Um But there's a lot of different strategies that people that and structures that people can use and those structures model how to discuss, they actually teach the how of discussion and they, they help teachers maintain norms, they make sure that students are operating from a common uh sort of starting point of a base of knowledge, you know, there's materials involved. 00:33:53Edit And so I think, um and so what I've been looking at is how do the, how do different strategies affect either what students experience in the discussion and how their views um change as a result of this, you know, different strategies that is super interesting. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to read some of that. Yeah, Paul has got a really great article in the most recent issue of social education. I'm gonna hold it up and this is an, a special issue on teaching social studies in polarized times. Um, that was, uh, guest edited by Jeremy Stoddard who's a professor here at UW Madison and I worked with him as well and I would, I think there are a number of articles in this special issue that are really great. I would call out Paula's in particular. Um I've been working on two projects. One that Paula started uh here when she was at UW Madison, the discussion project that what we actually we started together. And then another one that we just started this year called Deliberation Dinners. 00:34:57Edit Um And that was based on a project that Paula had started at North Carolina State that was called I think Democracy Dinners. Um And both of those projects uh people can find online. The Deliberation Dinners is really new. We created ideologically diverse groups of students by having them take the pew ideology quiz, which for your listeners, I would, I would encourage them to go to the pew ideology quiz and they will answer uh a bunch of questions and then they will be placed in one of nine different groups. So it's not just left or right, but it's across the ideological spectrum. And then we built 12 tables of 10 students to ensure that we had ideological diversity and also different majors, different years in schools, et cetera. And we've been doing a lot of experimentation uh and piloting of, you know, how you help students who typically don't talk with people with different points of view, learn how to do that in the context of highly authentic and uh really important uh state based issues, legalizing marijuana, increasing nuclear capacity, abortion, et cetera. 00:36:16Edit And so, uh a lot of what Paul and I learned from the political classroom that we saw naturally occurring in these purple classrooms that you read about. Um what we're trying to figure out is how is there a way to d to create purple spaces, especially purple spaces when everyone believes that everybody has the same views. And, you know, one of the things we've learned is that there's always more diversity than you think. But so we've been having a lot of fun uh on that project. Um It's, you know, and, and I also think it probably has a lot of utility for high school uh teachers and students as well. I was, I gave a keynote to the Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies Conference this past Saturday and talked about it briefly and a whole bunch of teachers came up to me and said, you know, we really want the materials, which I thought was great because, you know, that's the other thing that we've learned is that, you know, if you think you have to stay up, you know, midnight every night, writing your own materials to have good discussions, you're not gonna be uh in it for the long haul. 00:37:25Edit What a fantastic last point that you just made. Yes, like sustainability I think is really an important thing to think about. And then also just thinking about the idea of creating purple spaces and the applicability in high schools. Yeah, I love that idea even even at like a multi stakeholder group, right? Like thinking about community events where you have teachers, family members of students, students like, oh how cool would it be to like mix them all up and get that ideological diversity going? Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. Thank you both so so much. I have so appreciated both your book and this conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today. Thank you so much for the invitation. Yeah. Thank you. It was really fun. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane sapper and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 70 5% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. 00:38:29Edit If you're smiling to yourself as you listen to right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about this curriculum audit tool:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
For transcripts of episodes (and the option to search for terms in transcripts), click here!
Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
August 2024
Categories |