Facilitating Social Issues Discussions in the Heterogeneous Classroom
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Sibbett, Lisa
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This dissertation is comprised of three papers, each drawing on a qualitative case study of experienced teachers’ social-justice-oriented discussion facilitation practice. The first paper, entitled “Facilitating Socially Just Discussions in Elite Schools: Practical Wisdom from an Experienced Teacher and Her Students,” describes how a teacher at an elite private school, facilitated a socially just classroom discussion of a speech by Malcolm X. I show how she supported her 8th grade Global Studies students to develop “activist ally” perspectives on the social world and to recognize one another – especially students with marginalized identities – as legitimate knowers. Drawing on Nancy’s model of wise practice, I conclude with recommendations for educators. The second paper is entitled “Mr. Crane’s Dilemma: From Injustice Threats to Responsive Social Issues Discussions.” This conceptual paper uses the case of a teacher’s instructional dilemma to accomplish three goals: to identify a vicious cycle that vexes social issues discussions; to surface the limitations of common pedagogical responses; and to propose an alternative approach I call responsive social issues discussions. In contrast to the rosy picture of egalitarian classroom discussion sometimes portrayed in democratic education literature, I show how polarization and inequality pose injustice threats in the form of, respectively, motivated reasoning and epistemic injustice. Together, I argue, these produce a vicious cycle of non-expressiblity and non-responsiveness that corrodes democracy. After surfacing Mr. Crane’s bad pedagogical options, I propose responsive social issues discussions as a way forward. The third paper is entitled “Critical Democratic Education in Practice: Experienced Teachers’ Adaptive Expertise.” While a growing body of democratic education research has expressed a critical turn, research has supplied little information about what educators with social justice commitments actually do as they attempt to enact democratic education in classrooms. This paper reports results of a qualitative case study depicting three experienced teachers’ efforts to enact critical democratic education in practice. Data from classroom observations and interviews with teacher-participants show how these teachers aimed to adapt their practice to students’ heterogeneous positionalities. I identify several practices teachers enacted, and highlight one, “critical micro-inquiry,” as offering particular affordances for critical democratic education in heterogeneous classrooms.
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- Education - Seattle [733]