Spring 2016

The Reading:

This semester the group picked up where we left off in the fall with a discussion of “Democracy Lab” (see Session 3, Chapter 4, Fall 2015). This section of the chapter discusses how to involve students in Democracy Lab Forums. Though James Knauer presents the pedagogical construct as an online experience among students of diverse backgrounds, clearly, it can also be adapted in our own diverse classroom. Knauer focuses on how dialogic learning is structured and facilitated. The idea is that through student-to-student specific learning, opportunities arise—in tandem with structured teacher guidance. The article reminds us that students can find their way(s) to learning through a teacher’s framework if the latter is fluid. Students, guided by a trained facilitator who makes “announcements” and provides “instructional modules,” develop deliberate, intentional dialogue groups in order to lay out broad social issues and work to understand them from multiple lenses. James Knauer’s  project is one type of experiential learning involving: specific tasks, methods, practice, skills, process, metacognition/reflection, identifying action possibilities and taking action. (For specifics of the project and process, see James Knauer’s article, “Dialogue, Politics, and Pedagogy: Lessons from Democracy Lab.”

Questions Discussed:

1. Is all pedagogy political?
2. What do we assign and exclude in our courses?
3. Is it possible to be neutral instructors?
4. Do we as teachers listen, change our minds, and support ‘opposing’ viewpoints/multiple lenses?
5. What do we think and feel about what we teach?
6. Is the purpose of the classroom to develop community and reinforce democracy/democratic structures and beliefs? Is Democracy Lab a moral/ethical project?
7. How do we encourage/discourage student voice?
8. How to we empower students to stop thinking about being ‘sure’ or right and bifurcating language and thinking?

Comments:

The group discussed the importance of collaborative work but how difficult it is to relinquish  power in the classroom, especially if the students are not highly skilled at analytical work and ctitical thinking. This might be the case even for honors students at our community college. On the other hand, if students don’t practice the process of learninbg, how are they to develop skills?  Perhaps it is fair to admit that if we don’t think of projects as a product but a ‘messy’ experience we might be able to relinquish to students what they can so often take up themselves.  Are we product, time, text driven? Or, are we student driven? After all, a dialogic project, as well as all classroom activities, never  throws the teacher by the side of the road. Knauer call the instructor an “intentional, trained facilitator” who guides through “announcements and modules.”  The content of a course is important, but the emphasis lies on the “how” of learning; the instructor must be adept at content and pedagogy—pedagogy which shapes intentional students who can do metacognitive work. In the case of the Democracy Lab project, the work revolves around significant social issues and the taking up of action.