Do you get hot under the collar when some ignorant fool fails to see things your way on topics you deem of great importance? Of course not. In academia, we pride ourselves on expressing carefully measured opinions rooted in logic and based on facts.
And yet, when I hear a colleague respond to students’ complaints about the quality of their teaching, or lack thereof, with an authoritative “Learn to teach? What for? I know everything there is to know in my discipline. The students are lucky to have me”, my measured opinion deserts me, in favour of a cutting response. A French proverb recommends that you twist your tongue seven times before speaking to avoid faux pas – a work in progress for many, including myself.
- Let’s teach students to disagree well
- Don’t fear conflict in the classroom: foster respectful discussion instead
- Four ways to help students develop critical thinking skills
It is easy to become polarised in any debate. We want our viewpoints to be heard, validated and reinforced because they make complete sense to us. We don’t mind them being challenged because, after all, isn’t this what debate is about? But when our conversation partners show no sign of understanding what we mean, we get grumpy. The multicultural classroom is a fertile environment for debate that can polarise unexpectedly and leave educators and students unsure how to react.
Debating respectfully is a skill. It is not innate. It can be acquired and honed. And that requires help and guidance.
In the multicultural classroom, many students will not have engaged with critical thinking in their home country, school culture or family environment. Or, more accurately, they have, but not in ways we as their teachers expect or understand. Educators too can struggle to reconcile their own culture with that of the country where they teach, as well as their students’ culture, especially when the end game is to take everyone’s opinion into account.
So, what can we do? Here are eight tips to help students and educators debate in a multicultural context.
1. Agree on what culture means
Culture should be considered in its widest sense. A multicultural class does not solely comprise international students. Many home students will have multicultural backgrounds, awareness of diverse cultural perspectives and multiple languages. Sonya Nieto and Patty Bode’s definition of culture as consisting of “the values, traditions, worldview and social and political relationships created, shared and transformed by a group of people bound together by a common history, geographic location, language, social class, religion or other shared identity” would be a great starting point for a discussion with your students.
2. Test your own bias
Reflect on how you view your discipline – its relevance, appeal and accessibility for students. We all have biases, conscious or unconscious, regarding the discipline we teach. Students will have them too. These often relate to culture.
Set up an activity for the class to discuss biased commonly held views on your discipline, such as “adulthood is too late to learn a language” or “learning Latin is useless”. This helps identify potential biases, informs your teaching and enhances students’ awareness of each other’s perceptions.
3. Challenge your assumptions about behaviours
Students are not universally in agreement on how a respectful debate should play out, and neither are educators. Avoid relying on assumptions about the students’ prior experience (ie, “they know the drill, they’ve done plenty of debates at school”) or maturity (“they are old enough to behave”). For many, there is nothing wrong with shouting or calling other people idiots. Again, this includes educators.
4. Encourage students to co-create a charter
Think back to a challenging experience you had with a class debate that went pear-shaped. Make a list of what went wrong and use this as a basis to establish guidelines with the class. Set up a group activity to write a charter for respectful debate. Provide a basic charter as an exemplar to help shape the document. Explain that the class will need to discuss the rules as a group to ensure that debate remains respectful and balanced. Highlight and discuss your institution’s values and ethos as part of the charter design.
5. Plan the debate
Prepare for debate as part of your lesson planning. Carefully craft your questions and reach out to colleagues for advice and inspiration. Think about what may cause friction – anticipated problems – and how you would deal with this – anticipated solutions.
We lead by example and students can learn from the way we manage a difficult situation. They can also benefit from seeing how educators can purposefully create opportunities for them to explore multiple perspectives, and express opinions in a safe and inclusive environment through careful lesson planning.
6. Define critical thinking and echo chambers as part of your teaching
Critical thinking can have very different meanings depending on your cultural background. In some cultures, critical thinking and echo chambers are cut from the same cloth, as questioning or disagreeing with established norms is discouraged. These terms need to be defined through class discussion to clarify course expectations.
Embed activities with a dedicated focus on critical thinking skills development in your teaching, rather than rely on students taking optional critical thinking modules or their prior experience.
7. Consider the effects of multilingualism on class communication
Language and culture walk hand in hand. When communicating in an additional language, as opposed to your native one, interaction can come across as polarised. Underneath the use of English as lingua franca is multilingual thinking.
For many speakers of languages other than English, a blunt “no, that’s wrong” or “absolutely not” are the appropriate answers to express disagreement, whereas the norm in the UK might be to say, “that’s interesting but I’m not sure I agree with that”. While both messages mean the same thing, one might be considered more confrontational or aggressive and therefore less respectful. The same applies to how loudly we speak and the body language we use.
8. Promote cultural competence
Many students and educators have first-hand and daily experience of intercultural communication, whereby they navigate diverse cultural norms. There are often exercises in respectful debate throughout the day! Encourage your class, and yourself, to draw on these experiences and share strategies everyone uses to remain respectful in the face of adversity.
Celebrate cultural competence and remind your students that it is a precious gift. It helps to develop empathy, creativity, adaptability, collaboration and conflict resolution (all desirable employability skills) and opens the door to global citizenship.
Daphne Vallas is senior lecturer in academic professional development at the University of Westminster.
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