From Discussion as a Way of Teaching by Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1999. Pages 64-84.

Getting Discussion Started

The first few minutes of any new discussion are often somewhat uncomfortable, particularly if the group members don't know each other very well or if there has been a contentious atmosphere in the previous session. In this chapter we want to focus on ways of opening up conversation that concentrate on participants' attention on the theme at hand and that model democratic process at the outset…

But what to do if you've modeled democratic talk in your lectures, held unscripted discussion with colleagues in front of students, helped students draft their own guidelines for conversation, organized provocative preparatory reading, and clarified your expectations -- and still silence descends on the group in the first few minutes?

Mistakes to avoid at the Start of a Discussion

We have noticed, in ourselves and others, five things that teachers sometimes do at the start of discussion that we feel kill the spirit of democratic talk. So here are our five "don’t's" to discussion leaders regarding the opening moments of the class.

1. Don't Lecture. Don't start the discussion by giving a minilecture in which you summarize salient points, outline different perspectives, and introduce your own concerns. You have already shown students what you think is important through your introductory lectures, your choice or preparatory reading material, and your previous assignments. Even the most judiciously evenhanded prologue conveys subtle messages about what you want or expect students to say once the discussion starts.
2. Don't be Vague. Don't always open the discussion by posing vague, general questions like "What do you think?" or "Would anyone like to react?" or "Who wants to start us off?" This opening works only when two conditions are in place: when participants know and trust each other and are used to talking easily and democratically and when they are so immersed in and provoked by the topic or preparatory reading that they are bursting to speak.
3. Don't Play Favorites. Don't allow a pecking order of opening contributors to develop. Every teacher knows the one or two students who are so committed to learning (or to impressing the teacher) that they can be relied on to speak up and get the discussion going. Since the two of us [the authors] are introverts, we have often been grateful for the presence of extroverted, garrulous students in our classes and have sighed with relief when they've saved us from embarrassment by responding to our opening questions. This is misplaced gratitude. After watching this happen two or three times at the start of the discussion, the others in the group lose their desire to participate because they can predict that the usual suspects will speak up. The majority of students can then mentally dose off.
4. Don't Fear Silence. Don't panic at silence. At the start of the discussion, there maybe long periods of silence as people settle into the new intellectual project that the conversation represents. Something we both struggle with is letting silence exist without panicking. Like many teachers we know, we tend to assume that silence means things aren't going well. This is an erroneous inference. As Palmer (1993) points out, "We need to abandon the notion that 'nothing is happening' when it is silent, to see how much new clarity a silence often brings." A typical conversational dynamic in discussion is for teachers to start the session by asking a provocative question designed to spark some fruitful responses. Sometimes, though, students choose not to say anything, and in panic, the teachers start to answer their own question. Do this even once and you let students know they can rely on you to answer the question and do their thinking for them.
5. Don't Misinterpret Silence. Don't mistake students' silence for mental inertia or disengagement. Conversation is halting, tentative, and circuitous, filled with hesitations and awkward attempts at reformulating thoughts even as we speak them. In a culture in which talk shows advance the idea that talk consists of a string of inoffensive, humorous, and seamless anecdotes or vicious and theatrical attacks on other peoples' beliefs or integrity, it is sometimes hard to insist on the value of reflective silence. Silence is the condition the media dread above all else -- they even call it "dead air" -- but real-life discussion is not a talk show! Effective discussion leaders take steps to ensure that periods of reflective silence become accepted as a normal and necessary element of peoples' deliberations.

Now that we've covered what not to do at the start of a discussion, let's look at some of the things you should do.

Declaring a Classroom Speech Policy. We have noted that students will often look to you to start off a discussion session rather than take the responsibility for doing this themselves. They will assume that their silence will impel you into speech. If this is the case, a good way to get things going is to make an opening statement regarding the value of silence. It may seem strange to suggest that you launch a discussion by advocating silence, but our experience has been that this puts diffident or introverted students at their ease.

Many students from working-class backgrounds, female students, or students from underrepresented ethnic groups will approach discussion sessions with a justifiable sense of distrust. They will feel, sometimes accurately, that success in academe is often correlated with a glib facility to spring confidently into speech at the earliest possible opportunity, thus impressing the teacher. You can do a great deal to destroy this perception at the outset if you acknowledge the power of silence and students' right not to speak. What follows is an example of a declaration to students that not only expresses the teacher's tolerance of silence but also informs students that participation in class discussions is entirely voluntary and should never be used to curry favor with the instructor:

I know that speaking in discussion is a nerve-racking thing and that your fear of making public fools or yourselves can inhibit you to the point of nonparticipation. I, myself, feel very nervous as a discussion participant and waste a lot of my time carefully rehearsing my contributions so as not to look foolish when I finally speak. So please don't feel that you have to speak in order to gain my approval or to show me that you're a diligent student. It's quite acceptable to say nothing in the session, and there'll be no presumption of failure on your part. I don't equate silence with mental inertia. Obviously, I hope you will want to say something and speak up, but I don't want you to do this just for the sake of appearances. So let's be comfortable with a prolonged period of silence that might or might not be broken. When anyone feels like saying something, just speak up.

We believe in the power of this kind of early declaration because we've seen how well it works. Students will often come up to us afterward and say that by granting them public permission not to say anything, we actually emboldened them to speak. By deliberately destroying the link between student speech and teacher approval, we reduce the pressure on students to "look smart" in front of us.

Debriefing Preparatory Work

1. Frame the discussion around student questions. We believe that it's best for students when discussion topics are framed as questions. There are two ways such questions can be generated. First, teachers can assign questions themselves and then structure students' prereading around them. The subsequent discussion would then be an analysis of students' responses to the questions…Another approach is to ask students to generate the questions themselves. The first approach is probably more appropriate at the beginning of students' acquaintance with a subject, the second one when students have some familiarity.

With this second approach, we like to assign the task of generating questions as homework. One way to do this is to say to students, "Imagine that the author of the chapter, article, or book you've been assigned to read as preparation for the discussion next week will be visiting the class. What are the top three questions you'd like to ask the author about the work?" Another is to provide some guidelines regarding the kinds of questions they might ask that are less detailed than the questions outlined…in chapter three. For example, students could be asked to look for questions prompted by omissions, contradictions, ambiguities, unsupported assumptions, or unacknowledged ethical dilemmas they discover in the text.

Whichever of these options they choose, students bring their questions to class, share them in small groups prioritize them in these groups, and post their favorites on large sheets of newsprint. These questions can also be posted on an electronic bulletin board or listserv before the class meets. We then ask students to wander around the real or virtual classroom looking for common categories of questions they have posted. We also ask them to look for striking differences. Our intention is to ground the discussion in the exploration of these questions so that students feel the conversation originates in their own efforts and interests. Usually three or four clusters of questions emerge that provide provocative starting points for the discussion.

A more intensive approach is to ask students to suggest the most pressing questions that need to be explored regarding a particular idea, area of knowledge, or piece of work. Here students are given no guidance as to what these questions might be. Their task is to come to class with one or more questions that they feel need to be asked in the course. By prioritizing these questions in small groups or by posting them on newsprint around the room, the individual concern students have about the course become a public agenda around which discussion can be framed. Sometimes these questions are posed within the boundaries of already established discourse -- for example, why a particular view prevails, why certain skills are deemed so crucial, or why a particular author's ideas are so influential. Occasionally, however, students pose questions that challenge the power and authority of teachers and curricular decision makers. They will ask, "Why do we need to study this?" and "Why is it necessary to know or do this before we're licensed to practice in this field?"

E-mail lends itself particularly well to these activities, provided that all class members have an e-mail address. You can then create a class listserv, bulletin board, or chat room that allows students to come to class already having had a chance to look for clusters in the questions posed electronically and to think about their responses. In effect, e-mail allows you to do electronically what was previously accomplished by posting questions on newsprint in class.

2. Ask Students to Choose a Concrete Image. For students who are visual rather than auditory learners, Frederick (1986) and Van Ments (1990) suggest asking students to choose a specific image that is actually contained in the text or suggested by something they have read. Frederick puts it like this: "Go around the table and ask each student to state one concrete image/scene/event/moment from the text that stands out. No analysis is necessary - just recollections and brief description. As each student reports, the collective images are listed on the board, thus providing a visual record of selected content from the text as a backdrop to the discussion. Usually the recall of concrete scenes prompts further recollections, and a flood of images flows from the students."
3. Debrief the Last Week's CIQs. Another approach is to ground the discussion in a debriefing of the critical incident questionnaire responses to the last session. As described in chapter three, the CIQ requires that teachers begin the first class each week by summarizing students' anonymous responses to the previous week's class. If you've given a lecture on a topic the week before it's going to be discussed, many of the CIQ responses will refer to the content of the lecture. It's particularly useful to read the responses to the second, fourth, and fifth questions (on most distancing moments, most puzzling actions, and most surprising aspects, respectively). Responses to the "most distancing moment" question tend to identify elements in the topic that are particularly problematic. Responses to the "most puzzling action" question often describe comments that student or teacher made that another student found contentious. Responses to the "what surprised you most" question tend to bring to the surface ideas and perspectives that students had not considered before. All these responses tend to be somewhat open-ended, and this openness can be used to generate some good conversation.
4. Start with a Sentence Completion Exercise. Another way to focus students on the topic at hand and to ensure that what gets talked about is in some way connected to their own concerns is to start the discussion session with a sentence completion exercise. We have found that the brief time we spend on this exercise is very worthwhile in terms of generating some enthusiasm and drawing participants into speech. Here's how it works.

Students are asked to complete whichever of the following sentences seems appropriate:

What most struck me about the text we read to prepare for the discussion today is…

The question that I'd most like to ask the author of the text is…

The idea I most take issue with in the text is…

The most crucial point in last week's lecture was…

The part of the lecture (or text) that I felt made the most sense to me was…

The part of the lecture (or text) that I felt was the most confusing was…

After students have written down their responses, they share them with one another. If the class is large, we put students into groups of four or five and have them read their sentences to one another. If the class is fairly small, this can be done in a whole-class group. As students hear one another's responses, they jot down the ones they would most like to hear more about. After all responses have been read, students begin the discussion by asking other students about the responses they wanted to hear more about.

5. State and Respond to Contentious Opening Statements. Sometimes a strongly worded statement -- spoken or written -- is a good way to get a conversation going. It can be taken from the public domain or created by the teacher or a student. The statement should be provocative, even inflammatory. It should challenge assumptions that students take for granted or cling to fiercely. It's important to tell the class not to assume that the person introducing the opinion agrees with its sentiments. The statement is being made only to generate conversation.

We have found that this technique works especially well with statements uttered by authority figures. The credibility students tend to invest in authority figures ensures that the statement cannot be dismissed out of hand as the ravings of a crank. Also, students can often more easily criticize a controversial statement made by an authority than they can one made by a peer. Some students will be reluctant to state a contentious view, no matter how much they are assured that no one assumes they agree with that view. Other students will be unwilling to criticize the words uttered by a peer in front of a teacher, no matter how much that teacher strives to create a safe atmosphere.

Here are a couple of contentious opening statements that one of us has used to stimulate discussion in courses on adult education: "To talk about a theory of adult learning is empirical and conceptual nonsense. Children learn in ways that are very similar to adults. The only reason a field of study called adult learning exists is because professors of adult education need to justify their own existence." Or "Paulo Friere's ideas are nothing more than Marxist agitation dressed up as educational philosophy. Moreover, their context-specific genesis in Latin America means they have absolutely no relevance for Western Europe or North America."

After the statement has been made, the conversation opens with group members trying to understand the reasoning and circumstances that frame the statement. Why would someone hold these views? What in the author's experience led to such ideas? What possible grounds could we advance to support the making of such an argument? For a while students are asked to be devil's advocates, coming up with evidence and rationales that are completely outside their usual frames of reference. This kind of perspective taking is cognitive warm-up. It serves the same function in discussion as stretching does at the start of an aerobic workout. By examining the grounds for a view that is contrary to their own, students engage in a form of intellectual muscle flexing. Moreover, being forced to take seriously opinions that one strongly disagrees with guarantees that students are drawn into the discussion at an emotional level.

6. Generate Truth Statements. One task that Frederick and Van Ments suggest for the start of a discussion is to ask students to generate what they call "truth statements." (Frederick, 1986) or "statements worth making" (Van Ments, 1990) based on their preparatory reading. Students are split into small groups, and each group is asked to generate three or four statements that group members believe to be true on the basis of their reading. Frederick observes that "I have found this strategy useful in introducing a new topic -- slavery, for example -- where students may think they already know a great deal but the veracity of their assumptions demands examination. The complexity and ambiguity of knowledge is clearly revealed as students present their truth statements and other students raise questions about or refute them." The point of this exercise is not so much to produce undeniable facts or theories but to generate, and then prioritize, questions and issues around which further discussion and research are undertaken. The exercise helps participants develop an agenda of items for discussion ands suggests directions for future research they need to conduct if they are to be informed discussants.
7. Find Illustrative Quotes. Frederick (1986) and Van Ments (1990) also advocate asking students to find relevant quotes from a preparatory text as a way of focusing their attention on the topic at hand and of generating conversation. For example, students can be asked to spend the first ten minutes or so reading through the articles or chapters assigned as prereading to find one or two brief quotes that they especially liked or disliked. These might be quotes they found that best illustrate the major thesis of the text or that are the most difficult to understand. Students then read out their chosen passages as all class members follow the specific page and passage with them.

In addition to generating good conversation, this exercise has the virtue of respecting the text. One of the most frequent complaints from discussion participants regarding prereading is that the subsequent conversation does not draw explicitly enough on the text they have been asked to spend time reading. Asking students to find illustrative quotes underscores your own commitment to a careful reading of the text. Frederick (1986) observes of this exercise, "Lively and illuminating discussion is guaranteed because not all students will find the same quotations to illustrate various instructions, nor, probably, will they all interpret the same passages the same way. It is during this exercise that I have had the most new insights into texts I have read many times previously. And there may be no more exciting (or modeling) experience than for students to witness their teacher discovering a new insight and going through the process of refining a previously held interpretation."

8. Use Quotes to Affirm and Challenge. A variant on the illustrative quotes exercise that we have used is asking students to choose quotes from a text that they wish to affirm and quotes they wish to challenge. Students form small groups, and each member takes a turn to propose a quote to affirm and the reasons for wanting to do so. The quote does not have to be defended as empirically true. Sometimes a participant will propose a quote because it confirms a cherished point of view. Sometimes the person feels that the quote states the most important point in the text. At other times the quote is affirmed because it is rhetorically rousing or expressed so lyrically. When everyone in the small group has proposed a quote to affirm, the group chooses one to be presented to the entire class.

The choice of which quote to present to the whole class can be done randomly or though deliberation. Using the random approach, the small group members each type out their quote beforehand. At the end of the small group conversation, group members hand all pieces of paper to one person, who then randomly selects a quote. This quote is read out to the whole class with everyone (not just the student who originally chose the quote) trying to explain what it was about the quote that was so compelling. In contrast to this random approach, the small group can simply report that quote that drew the greatest support.

The "quote to challenge" activity follows the same procedure, only this time students choose a quote that they disagree with, find contradictory, believe to be inaccurate, or consider reprehensible or immoral. Each person proposes a quote to the small group, and group members choose one to present to the class. One thing that has surprised us in this full-class phase is the unexpected advantage of randomly choosing a small group quote. Because group members don't know which quote will be drawn out of the hat, they have to stay alert to hearing comments on all the quotes proposed. When a quote is chosen by consensus in the small group, groups often pick one quote early on and then spend their time rehearsing a presentation on all the reasons why it's terrific or appalling. This ensures an impressive small group report, but it also means that the opportunity for fruitful discussion of the merits of diverse and even contradictory quotes is lost.

Recalling a Memorable Experience

One of the chief reasons people don't speak up in groups is their sense that the topic of the discussion is removed from their experience, that it has no meaning or relevance to their lives. Their prereading may convince them that the topic is one about which only experts have knowledge and opinions. Or they may feel that they are being asked to talk about a theory or concept that exists only as an abstraction. A useful way to combat this sense of distance is to start a discussion by getting students to talk about a memorable experience in their lives that somehow connects to the topic. Because most students think they are experts on their own experience, starting out with personal stories is often much less intimidating for them than launching straight into a discussion of the strength and weaknesses of a theory.

Starting with student's memorable experiences is much easier to do when the topic deals with familiar issues. Discussions on racism, for example, often begin with personal stories from participants of their experiences of this. If students seem to have no obvious personal connection to the topic (for example, a discussion of international economics), it is often possible to ground the conversation in people's reactions to a story told by a third party in writing or on video (for example, a worker's account of how she lost her job when her employer moved a factory to a country with cheap labor and no unions).

For discussions on topics that seem to have no personal dimensions whatever, people can still be drawn into the conversation by focusing on critical moments in their attempts to understand the topic. They can talk about the moment of greatest frustration or confusion they experienced during their preparatory reading. They can pick out the moment when they felt most connected to the content of a preparatory lecture or the moment when they felt completely and utterly distanced from the material.

If you choose to use this latter approach, it is often a good idea to start the ball rolling by speaking about your own struggles with the topic. When we have opened a session by talking about our difficulties in understanding the same reading we've asked students to grapple with, the effect is often very dramatic. Students are first puzzled and then enormously reassured that their teacher, too, can feel inadequate when reading difficult texts. In their learning journals or critical incident questionnaires, the most engaging moment is often reported to be the time when the teacher admitted to struggling with the same material that the students find difficult.

Because of the ascribed authority associated with titles such as "professor," "lecturer," or "college teacher," students sometimes assume that we have read everything and know everything. By talking about our struggles as learners, we make it possible for students to admit to the same confusions. Getting group members to identify the aspects of a discussion topic that produce the greatest confusion is a good way to get conversation going. If clear clusters of opinion emerge about the most obscure or inaccessible parts of the preassigned reading, the discussion can start with everyone giving personal reactions to the various ideas and passages concerned.

We don't want to leave this section without giving a warning. One of the dangers of getting students to talk about memorable experiences in their lives that connect to the topic is that of spending the whole class time in a storytelling mode. Both of us believe strongly in the power of narrative and use it in our own teaching, but both of us try also to critique the content of our narrative and the narrative method itself. The purpose of a discussion is not to celebrate personal experience in an uncritical way. A discussion that only affirms the experience of each participant is not a critical conversation.

In the early stages of a group's life, a great deal of time can be spent on hearing people's stories and letting them stand on their own with no critical commentary. Out of such storytelling often comes trust. But sooner or later, good teachers will start to encourage students to look at their stories from different perspectives. They will ask other members of the class to give their interpretations of the story or try to get the storyteller to scrutinize the assumptions underlying the framing of the story and the teller's own actions in it.

Events happen to us, but experiences we construct. How we live through events, how we interpret them, how we feel as they are happening to us, and the meanings we ascribe to them are human creations. In telling our stories, it's easy to distort our place in the narrative by presenting ourselves as heroes and by omitting or overlooking significant details. It's tempting to describe our experiences in ways that are self-serving and that reconfirm the accuracy of our prejudices. A critical discussion will open people to the possibility of seeing their stories from different perspectives and understanding their experiences in new ways.

Discussion in the Round: Hearing All Voices

A common room arrangement for discussion groups is the circle. Many discussion leaders place chairs in a circle as a way of showing students that no one individual is in a favored spot for catching the teacher's eye. The circle is regarded as a physical manifestation of democracy, a group of peers facing one another as respectful equals. Everyone has the same chance of being seen and heard, and everyone can see everyone else. That the teacher is not placed apart from the rest of the participants sends a clear message regarding the value of students' opinions and experiences. Their voices are front and center, and there is an obvious expectation that they will be active contributors to the session.

Both of us regularly use circles for the reasons just stated. However, we know that tings are not quite as simple as we have made them seem. For confident, loquacious students, the circle is liberating. But many others, especially those who have suffered from sexism, racism, or class bias, find the circle an ambiguous and even humiliating experience. The circle strips students of the right to privacy. It denies them the chance to check from a distance before deciding whether or not the teacher is to be trusted. These students interpret the teacher's implicit invitation to speak as pressure to say something, anything, just to be noticed and to gain favor. As Gore (1993) and Usher and Edwards (1994) have pointed out, you don't remove power dynamics from the room merely by changing the seating arrangements, nor do you automatically cause students to relax and trust you. In fact, the circle can be experienced as a mechanism for forced disclosure as much as a chance for people to speak in an authentic voice.

So when we use the circle to kick off a discussion, we like to introduce some procedures to ensure that this arrangement has the effect we want. To help people feel that all voices are valued equally, we use two techniques: the circle of voices and the circular response method.

1. The Circle of Voices. The circle of voices is an activity revered in Native American, First Nation, and Aboriginal cultures. It describes the very simple procedure of giving each person an equal chance to contribute to the discussion. The circle of voices can be introduced in the middle of discussion to allow those who haven't yet spoken some time designated for their voices alone. When we use it to open a discussion, we do it in the following way.

Four or five students form a circle. They are allowed up to three minutes of silent time to organize their thoughts. During this time, they think about what they want to say on the topic once the circle of voices begins. Then the discussion opens, with each students having up to three minutes of uninterrupted time. During the three minutes each person is speaking, no one else is allowed to say anything.

Students can take their turns to speak by going around the circle in order or volunteering at random. Although the latter arrangement sounds relaxed and informal, we have found that the opposite is often the case. Moving sequentially around the circle removes the stress of having to decide whether or not to try to jump in after another students has finished speaking. An important benefit of using the circle of voices at the start of a discussion is that it prevents the development early on of a pecking order of contributors. Introverted or shy students, those whose experience has taught them to mistrust academe, or those who view discussion as another thinly veiled opportunity for teachers to oppress or offend will often stay silent at the beginning of a course. The longer this silence endures, the harder it is for these individuals to speak up. By contrast, in the circle of voices, everyone's voice is heard at least once at the start of the session.

After the circle of voices has been completed and everyone has had the chance to speak, the discussion opens out into a more free-flowing format. As this happens, a second ground rule comes into effect. Participants are allowed to talk only about other people's ideas that were expressed in the circle of voices. A student cannot jump into the conversation to expand on his own ideas; he can only talk about his reactions to what someone else has said. The only exception to this rule is if someone else asks him directly to expand on his ideas. We like this simple ground rule because it short-circuits the tendency toward "grandstanding" that sometimes afflicts a few articulate, confident individuals.

2. Circular Response Discussions. ...one of the habits students find most difficult to acquire is the habit of attentive listening. The circular response exercise is away to democratize participation, promote continuity, and give people some experience of the effort required in respectful listening. We learned this technique from David Stewart (1987), who in turn learned it from Eduard Lindeman (1987). In this process, students sit in a circle so that everyone can see everyone else, and each person in turn takes no more than three minutes to talk about an issue or question that the group has agreed to discuss.

Speakers are not free, however, to say anything they want. They must make a brief summary of the preceding speaker's message and then use this as a springboard for their own comments. In other words, what each speaker articulates depends on listening well to the preceding speaker as much as on generating new or unspoken ideas. We often tell students they must respect the following six ground rules:

1. No one may be interrupted while speaking.

2. No one may speak out of turn in the circle.

3. Each person is allowed only three minutes to speak.

4. Each person must begin by paraphrasing the comments of the previous discussant.

5. Each person, in all comments, must strive to show how his or her remarks relate to the comments of the previous discussant.

6. After each discussant has had a turn to speak, the floor is opened for general reactions, and the previous ground rules are no longer in force.

Through this exercise, all participants must demonstrate that they heard and understood what the preceding speaker said and that their own ideas are at least partly prompted by someone else's. In circular response, no one can prepare remarks ahead of time because what each person says depends on paying careful attention to the words of the preceding speaker. Everyone is under the same expectation to speak clearly and listen attentively. This activity gives students practice participating in discussions where collective and cumulative understanding is more important that the contribution of any one individual. The downside is that under the ground rules of circular response, there is really no obligation to absorb and review critically what anyone except the previous speaker has said or to keep track of the general direction of the discussion. So although this exercise is a valuable way to enhance listening skills, it has only limited value in fostering conversational continuity.

Circular response can be altered, however, to give at least a few students experience in tracking and summarizing the discussion and in identifying recurring themes. The adaptation is simple. The ground rules remain the same except that tow or three students are designated as summarizers before the exercise begins. Their job is to listen carefully to all participant contributions, taking notes where necessary, and to end the exercise with a synthesis of the discussion's highlights. They recount key points and recurring themes, giving everyone involved some sense of the whole.

Ensuring Participation Through the Hatful of Quotes

One question that invariably arises regarding exercises such as the circle of voices and circular response is whether or not teachers should require all students to participate. Mandating speech seems like an exercise of teacher power that violates the spirit of democratic conversation. However, we believe that there are occasions when it is justifiable to exercise power in this way. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks (1994) describes how she requires students to read out paragraphs from their journals in class so that no one feels invisible or silenced. To her, this is a responsible exercise of teacher power. We agree. Always allowing students the option to pass in discussion circles means that those who are shy and introverted, or uncomfortable because they perceive themselves as members of a minority race, gender, or class, end up not contributing. The longer this pattern of nonparticipation persists, the harder it is to break. So what seems like an empathetic, benign action by the leader - allowing students the right to silence -- serves to reinforce existing differences in status and power. Those who are used to holding forth will move automatically to speak, while those whose voices are rarely heard will be silenced.

One way through this dilemma is to make the required act of contributing as stress-free as possible. Such is the purpose of the "hatful of quotes" exercise. Three doctoral students at National Louis University -- Connie Huber, Kenneth Smith, and Jane Walsh -- demonstrated this idea for us. Prior to a discussion of a text, the leader types out sentences or passages from the text onto separate slips of paper. In class, she puts these into a hat and asks students to draw one of the slips out of the hat. Students are given a few minutes to think about their quote and then asked to read it out and comment on it. The order of contributions is up to the students. Those who feel more fearful about speaking go last and take more time to think about what they want to say. Because the same five or six quotes are used, students who go later will have heard their quote read out and commented on by those who spoke earlier. So even if they have little to say about their own interpretation of the quote, they can affirm, build on, or contradict a comment a peer has already made on that quote. This exercise is a good way to create a safe opportunity for everyone to speak. Those who are diffident get to say something, thus building confidence for subsequent contributions. They avoid the feelings of shame and anger that come from feeling excluded from the discussion while lacking the confidence to break the prevailing pattern and project their voice into the mix.

Conclusion

The ideas we've presented in this chapter...should decrease the likelihood that your attempts to start a discussion will be met with silence. But no matter how carefully you plan against this eventuality, it will happen. Remember, silence is not always indicative of hostility, confusion, or apathy. It could just as easily signal students' need to collect their thoughts on a complicated topic before they venture into speech. If, however, conversation refuses to catch fire and is desultory or nonexistent, a wider structural problem is probably manifesting itself. Perhaps the institutional culture and reward systems are working against your commitment to discussion. Perhaps differences of race, class, and gender between yourself and the group or between various group members are generating a silence born of mutual suspicion. Perhaps students' past experiences have taught them that participating in discussion is a waste of time, a chance for a teacher or peer to catch them out, trip them up, and put them down. In such situations, the best course of action is to place the problem before the group and seek reactions and advice, to rethink the dynamics of your pedagogy and how you use discussion, and to ask your colleagues (perhaps by getting them to sit in on a session) for their perceptions of the situation and recommendations on how to remedy it.