Website: Instructional Strategies
Guidelines for Discussing Difficult or High-Stakes Topics
University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Teaching & Learning
Rick’s
Recommendation
While this resource isn't on turbulent times per se, it offers useful advice for discussing any potentially challenging topic in the classroom. I appreciate the emphasis on laying the groundwork for these conversations before they start, which is doubly important when times become turbulent.
Class discussions can become difficult for many reasons: Your course topics focus on sensitive or even controversial issues; learning activities ask students to make personal connections to the class materials; or you wonder about how to bring up current difficult issues in your class when these arise. Regardless of why, how, or when difficult class discussions happen, there are practices and strategies that you can use to help you and your students talk in ways that support positive engagement and minimize harm and unproductive conflict.
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