What makes a topic challenging? 

What qualifies as a “challenging” topic varies among individuals and may or may not directly relate to course content. When topics arise in the classroom that shift the mood or noticeably cause some students discomfort, determining how to continue a generative discussion can be stressful. Often, the best way forward is to center empathy and promote the classroom as a space for academic risk-taking and mutual understanding. Preparing a plan for care before, during, and after classroom discussion — whether one anticipates conversation on challenging topics or not — allows you to feel more confident in your ability to facilitate constructive discussion.  

Benefits

Thinking about your strategy for facilitating constructive conversations on challenging topics is essential, especially amidst fraught issues in the wake of #Metoo, BLM, national politics, and the ongoing conflicts around the world. Tension and discomfort inhibit both teaching and learning. Being proactive and responsive means developing your ability to mitigate these feelings and promote student safety, understanding, and trust.  By facilitating these conversations effectively, instructors can foster a classroom community of care, support student well-being and belonging, build skills to communicate across differences, and teach students to apply disciplinary lenses to critically consider current issues.  

Recommendations

Share and discuss an inclusivity statement and community agreements to support discussion 

• If time, consider co-creating additional agreements that align with the strengths and needs of the class. 
• If time, set goals for the discussion, emphasizing that there are many ways to reach those goals and navigate the discussion effectively.

 Invite students to pause and process emotions

• Ask students to write a minute reflection paper or to reflect silently on how they feel about the topic/events that have transpired, its implications, and/or questions they have.
• Organize a think-pair-share or trio conversations, which give everyone opportunities to verbally reflect and process the topic/event with peers.
• Allow students to step away from the conversation if they need to and make sure there is a clear route to do so.

Help re-center a constructive conversation

• Refer to the community agreements to maintain a constructive discussion.
• Consider inviting others into the discussion when only a few people are speaking (e.g. warm call technique). 
• Ask students how they want to proceed (e.g. transition to new subtopic, reflect, short break, etc.)

Maintain accountability while providing space for a diverse set of viewpoints

• Describe harm to social groups in an active voice, clearly identifying who is causing the harm and their rationales.
• Address comments that are grounded in oppressive views and practice (e.g. Holocaust denial) without ostracizing anyone in the group.
• Make space for students to reflect on their prior knowledge and how other viewpoints might contradict and/or align with their perspectives and lived experiences (e.g. cognitive dissonance vs. validation).

Explore the topic through the class’ disciplinary lens and the process of inquiry

• Explore the critical and expansive method of inquiry within one’s discipline: discuss their benefits and limitations.
• Incorporate (explicitly ask for) intersectional perspectives in relation to the topics and discuss the benefits without tokenizing individuals in the group.
• Identify additional information needed to understand and address the issues in a rigorous and nuanced way.

Summarize discussion & gather feedback

• Have students reflect on their main takeaways and how they may impact their individual and collective learning goals for the course.
• Identify unanswered and/or clarifying questions that can help address issues related to the challenge.
• Establish an anonymous way for students to provide feedback on the strengths and areas for improvement of the facilitated conversation.

Examples of Facilitation Moves²

During constructive conversations on challenging topics, consider yourself an instructor who is an active facilitator with the responsibility to (a) help keep the discussion focused and moving toward your learning goals, and (b) intervene when necessary (e.g. correcting misinformation, asking for clarification, etc). Below is a list of suggested facilitation moves to help with the aforementioned tasks. Note that multiple moves may be used in one moment (e.g. You can support risk-taking and curiosity).  

Clarify Misconceptions

• “I want to take a moment to talk about that idea. Thank you for raising it because it’s a common belief in our field and yet embedded in it is a misperception.” 
• “Thank you for raising that perspective. You provide us an opportunity to talk about it since there are some assumptions underlying that perspective that we should unpack.”

Use Curiosity

• “Can I ask you to say a bit more about what you mean?”
• “Can you tell me more about why you think that? What led you to that belief/conclusion?”

Support Risk-Taking 

• “I know that was probably hard to share, so thank you for trusting us with that experience.”
• “I appreciate your willingness to put that out there for us to think about…”

Make a Plan for Future Engagement

• “I think the challenge we are wrestling with is really important, and I am not sure we can give it justice now. I want us to return to this next time, and I will make sure that we do.”
• “What goals do we want to set for next time when we discuss these challenges?”

 

1. Adapted from materials created by Suzanne Young 2. Adapted from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education’s Teaching and Learning Lab: Facilitating HOT Moments in Discussion