Cultivating the Environment

Putting effort into preparing students for potentially provocative or personally challenging academic inquiry and dialogue sets the stage for productive learning. Ensuring students feel empowered to share and partake in these dialogues will be a key to how productive these conversations can be. The focus here is not on training students to be polite or to avoid saying anything inflammatory. Instead, this work involves empowering students to engage conscientiously and with confidence that the learning community can hold together even when difficulties and disagreements arise. Preparing our students involves, first, setting expectations and fostering a conducive classroom environment for these interactions.

Articulating learning goals for the inquiry process—giving that process meaning—will help students understand the importance of engaging with challenging and potentially uncomfortable ideas and topics (Audette et al., 2023; McNair, 2016; Porto & Zembylas, 2024; Smith, 2021). Put another way, “If students are to trust a process through which they experience even minimal harm, they must understand that some harms are morally justified (for example, inoculating babies); that any harm they experience is not intended; and that the process will produce something of equal or greater value to what has been lost” (Barre et al., 2023).

Include course-level learning goals about productive tensions on your syllabus (e.g., “You will confront and understand unfamiliar and ethically challenging ideas in order to broaden your understanding of the topic”; you can find other examples in the Preparing Yourself section of this Toolkit)
Create specific learning goals for challenging sessions (e.g., “You will practice defending an idea with which you deeply disagree”), and share these goals and the motivation behind them with students
Consider involving students in crafting goals for these experiences, a skill that they can learn

Help students understand the meaning and value of open discourse

Students may not always know what’s meant by terms like “freedom of expression,” “open discourse,” and “dialogue,” and they also may need to be convinced of the value of such concepts (Deutchman & Yap, 2022). Significant learning happens when working outside of one’s comfort zone, an idea captured in Tom Senninger’s Learning Zone model.

Explain why open academic exploration and conversation matters to you, to the course, and to the students
Familiarize yourself with and share the scholarship on the role of discomfort in learning, including information on the Learning Zone model
Share the scholarship in this toolkit that explains the importance of diverse viewpoints, open conversation, engagement with difficult ideas, and so on
Emphasize the ways that freedom of expression and inquiry works with other values, like inclusion and belonging
Emphasize the course values underlying the process of inquiry: openness, curiosity, reflection, comfort with ambiguity, risk-taking, collaborative knowledge-building, empathy, cultural humility, etc.
Encourage students to articulate for themselves the value of collaborative thinking
Help students appreciate the role of diverse perspectives in good decision-making
Expect that students will have questions about this (and lots of other things, too); fielding their questions with interest and seriousness is a great way to model the open discourse you’re hoping to see

Normalize discomfort, ambiguity, and lack of closure in the classroom

Interacting across difference, encountering new ideas, and ideas you might disagree with, is uncomfortable (Carey et al., 2022; Clancy & Bauer, 2018), but learning to tolerate ambiguity is an essential skill for “for active participation in a democratic society” (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2014), and it’s essential to learning, as long as students are made to feel “safe enough” to participate (Cavanagh, 2016; Hogan & Sathy, 2022). Further, interaction across difference can increase a sense of inclusion as well as better academic performance in students from minoritized groups (Carey et al., 2022).

Give students experience early with milder forms of relevant discomfort (e.g., encountering flaws in widely-held arguments, reflecting critically on their own beliefs and knowledge, debating issues on which students disagree mildly) (Example assignment from MC Chan that can complicate student understanding of the people behind science)
Share the scholarship on the role of discomfort in learning, including information on the Learning Zone model. Ask students for examples from their own lives of when pushing through discomfort led to growth
Give students opportunities to practice engaging with and accepting contradiction
Give students practice talking about dilemmas that lack obvious right answers
Give students practice seeing how even good solutions can have complex consequences

Foster a sense of responsibility in students for productive conversations

Competition has been shown to decrease academic creativity and intrinsic motivation to learn (cf. Hennessey, 2018), whereas a felt sense of connectedness between students predicts more student participation, greater investment in the course, and even increased learning (MacLeod et al., 2019). Including a wide range of perspectives, meanwhile, makes it more likely that the group will reach creative, effective, and accurate conclusions (Day and Beard, 2019). Collaboration is essential to engaging difficult problems (Brammer & Morton, 2014). Involving students in creating the rules for these kinds of interactions can lead to improvements in their classroom behavior and perceptions of the professor (DiClementi and Handelsman, 2005).

Highlight the collaborative nature of the work
Refer back to the learning goals
Emphasize and demonstrate the future academic and professional importance of these skills
Jigsaw activities can help students appreciate the value of making sure that the learning process incorporates a breadth and diversity of voices
Help students articulate what “community” means to them
Involve students in the co-creation of community norms
Invite students to reflect on how they typically prefer to engage in discussion and collaborative work. This raises self-awareness of students’ own strengths and weaknesses, and it can demonstrate the distinct and important contributions each member of the community has the potential to make

Set and reiterate guidelines for classroom interaction and inquiry into difficult topics

Establishing classroom guidelines, or co-creating community norms, with the students creates an opportunity to develop shared expectations and collective buy-in to norms of participation and engagement in the classroom in ways that will contribute to student learning and support students if conflict arises (Barre et al., 2023; Hogan & Sathy, 2022, Verschelden, 2017). Guidelines can be important for helping students to develop skills for constructively engaging in challenging conversations and turning challenging moments in a class into teachable moments (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2014; Cavanagh, 2016). Ongoing maintenance of expectations and norms then allows these to function as guardrails when challenges arise. Such guidelines are also an opportunity for faculty to express and model for students the value of constructive disagreement and the potential for academic dialogue to tackle challenging issues (Brookfield and Preskill, 2005).

On the specific point concerning treating individuals as individuals rather than as representatives of identity groups: the value of cura personalis demands that we attend to the “unique gifts, challenges, needs and possibilities” of each member of our community. Doing so also sharpens our understandings of people; knowing people as individuals reduces the likelihood of viewing them with bias and stereotypes based on their identities (Rubenstein et al., 2018), and is associated with better classroom experiences and more student success, even beyond graduation (Dewsbury, 2019; Gallup, 2014). And, as we know from intersectional thinking (cf. Jones and Wijeyesinghe, 2011), every student has a variety of dynamically interacting dimensions of identity, and so cannot in any accurate way be reduced to membership in a single group.

Create guidelines (some call these community norms)
- for how students should engage with course material: do you have particular ways that want them to study it, respond to it, or use it?
- for how students should interact with one another in class
- Consider involving students in the co-creation of community guidelines, possibly using a structured exercise
- Guidelines can also be pre-set by the teacher and included on the syllabus.
Possible conversational guidelines might include:
- All viewpoints are welcome, outside of direct abuse
- Listen respectfully to classmates and professor, even when their viewpoint does not align with your own
- Separate the statement from the speaker—evaluate ideas rather than the community member who is expressing them
- Chatham House rule: Community can share, outside of class, ideas expressed in class, but cannot share the identity of the individuals who expressed those ideas
- No name-calling
- Individuals should share as individuals, not as stand-ins for entire identity groups, and they should be heard therefore as individuals
- Remind students to use ‘I’ statements when expressing their opinions
- The Ignatian Presupposition: Default to assuming the best intentions for all community members
- Examples
  - Doireann Renzi
  - David Ebenbach (see Thoughtful Conversation section)
  - From the syllabus of Georgetown professor Chandra Manning: “The Ignatian Presupposition: In this class we operate on the Ignatian principle of the Presupposition, which means we presuppose good will and good intent on the part of all class members and we respond with good will or good intent. Even Red Sox fans and Yankees fans need to presume the best of each other. Someone might say something that you don’t like, but assume that they are speaking from a good-hearted place, unless and until they prove the opposite (in which case, it becomes the responsibility of the professor to intervene). Spirited discussion is encouraged, as is respectful disagreement, but I will expect you to express disagreement and engage in discussion by backing your ideas up with evidence and treating the ideas of others (as well as the holders of those ideas) with respect and good will even when you disagree.”
Make guidelines visible—on Canvas, in the classroom, in the syllabus etc.
Post reminders of those norms and guidelines before sessions you know may be potentially charged
For particularly sensitive or upsetting content, share reminders of campus resources and best practices for self care ahead of time
Tell students that you may need to intervene if things become unproductive, and that this won’t be a negative reflection on any individual student

Build community and trust while recognizing individuality

Rapport with and between students predicts more active participation and learning (Audette et al., 2023; Frisby and Martin, 2010; Frisby et al., 2014; Stanton, 2016). Collaboration is essential to engaging difficult problems (Brammer & Morton, 2014). Further, making it clear that you support and respect students makes it possible to move them productively out of their comfort zones (Hogan & Sathy, 2022). Sometimes this is referred to as establishing your “presence” in the learning environment—“To be present is to come into relation, into connection, with students, their learning, subject matter and oneself,” with enormous benefits to learning (Rodgers & Raider‐Roth, 2006).

Put explicit effort into forming trust and mutual respect
Be explicit about how important trust and respect are in this context
Begin with low stakes conversations that draw out points of commonality and connections before moving towards heavier issues
- Icebreakers can be a first step in the early days and gradually escalate the stakes; Cornell University and the Ohio State University have good examples
- Get students involved in an activity that requires movement around the room. This has the effect of shifting bubbles and eliciting micro congenial interactions between individuals (e.g. “excuse me;” “after you.”)
- Name the escalation while still in the medium-stakes territory
- Don’t rush progression toward more serious topics. Paying attention to the energy of the room and readiness of students is key