students having a contructive conversation

Constructive Conversations

Strategies for Facilitating Conversations on Challenging Topics

At a Glance

  • Topics may be challenging when students disagree on a subject or discomfort surfaces. These topics can be varied: from politics and religion to disagreements on the basis of perspective.
  • Topics can also become challenging throughout the course of the semester and year, especially during occasions of notable events or anniversaries, e.g., the U.S. presidential election.
  • Pedagogy that doesn’t turn away from discomfort often brings new perspectives into the conversation and allows for more rigorous and brave intellectual explorations.
  • This page offers a variety of strategies that instructors can use for planned discussions and spontaneous conversation on challenging topics. This handout also includes the recommendations and examples of facilitation moves discussed below, in case you prefer to access them in document format. 

What Makes a Topic Challenging

Benefits

Recommendations

Examples

References and Resources

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, Black Lives Matter (BLM), national politics, and the ongoing conflicts around the world. Tension and discomfort about these events and many others can affect both students and instructors in and out of the classroom. While leaning into and working through discomfort can be an important pedagogical skill, there are natural boundaries to what constitutes productive discomfort (Brown, 2024). Being proactive and responsive means developing your ability to help process and understand these feeling to 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 your values statement with students at the beginning of the semester. You can also return to it throughout the semester to help students understand what is guiding your teaching decisions. 
  • If time, consider co-creating community 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.)

  • 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).

  • Apply the critical and expansive methods of inquiry within one’s discipline: discuss their benefits and limitations.
  • Incorporate and 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 topic in a rigorous and nuanced way.

  • 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 the topic further.
  • Establish an anonymous way for students to provide feedback on the strengths and areas for improvement of the facilitated conversation.

Examples of Facilitation Moves

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 both of those tasks. Note that multiple moves may be used in one moment (e.g., You can support risk-taking and curiosity).

  • “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.” 
  • “I’m noticing a pattern that ….Can we pause to unpack what seems to be a misconception?”

  • “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?”

  • “I want to thank you for X, and I want to emphasize that there are some policies and practices that lead to inequities that we need to surface.”
  • “That is one mainstream perspective on this topic. Are there other perspectives that we want to highlight?”

  • “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…”

  • “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?”

References & Resources

  • Adapted from Suzanne Young, Difficult Conversations in the Classroom,  Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning

  • Brown, D. S. (2024). Discomfort Is the Point: Why ‘Safe Spaces’ Do a Disservice to Students. Liberal Education: AAC&U, Winter, 2024.

  • Landis, K., Jenkins, P., Roderick, L., Banchero, P., & Dede, J. (2008). Start talking: A handbook for engaging difficult dialogues in higher education. University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University. 

  • Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed.

  • Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Navigating Difficult Moments. The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.