Teaching-Learning Academy
Study Group Highlights – Week of 21-24 October 2003
Discussion Topic: Critical Moments case study “On Being Heard Across the Table”
Some Group Observations:
Cultural issues: Story seems to highlight a tension between valuing a minority culture (Maicee’s) while also valuing the majority culture (Todd’s). At the same time, the situation suggests how prejudice results when silent assumptions about culture are simply never made explicit and never verified. Todd’s perspective suggests how whites often don’t consider themselves as having a culture, resulting in an inability to hear/empathize. Story also suggests something about our culture of higher education: that American (college) students seem to accept a cultural code that dictates they should obey authority and survive by keeping quiet.
Power relationships: Story points to silence as complicity: By silencing each other, we limit our individual and collective ability to act. Preexisting power relationships - between whites and non-whites, between students and professors (between administrators and faculty?) – serve as driving factors that set positions ahead of time. The classroom situation itself can pre-determine and structure power differences. In that classroom dynamic, students seem to have the most restraints on their ability to act and need support from others. Some were concerned with the “show” or stage model of classroom learning where the instructor performs, and students wait and listen. Story suggests the need for structures outside the classroom that enable students, as well as faculty and staff, to enhance their decision-making power.
Motives and actions: Story highlights the need to listen to one another and that silencing another’s perspective – whether on purpose or by accident – endangers intellectual and emotional vitality. Some felt that the instructor in the case was blatantly arrogant and “showing off” cultural knowledge in an abusive way; others thought he (and the facilitator) were uninformed and lacked the knowledge and skills to help students function in a multicultural world. Some thought that Todd was also insensitive and blinded by his own privilege; others thought he lacked adequate skills for listening openly and critically. Some thought that Maicee was constrained by her cultural and gender attitudes from speaking out; others thought she lacked adequate skills for speaking out and listening. There seemed to be wide consensus that regardless of motives, everyone in a learning environment is responsible for listening and attending to all perspectives. Yet there was a lingering sense that we are lacking adequate structures/venues/strategies for really attending to one another’s views. Suggestions ranged from having students help orient new faculty (so new profs would hear authentic student voices when they first come to Western) to doing something about the physical constraints to learning that exist inside and outside our classrooms.
Some Emergent Questions:
§ What are some of the Critical Moments for Western’s students, faculty, and staff?
(“turning points” where we have felt like leaving but had some experience that enabled us to address the dilemma and stay)
§ What are the consequences of faculty/staff/students not being heard?
§ How do we create and utilize Teachable Moments inside and outside the classroom?
§ When does discussion serve as action? When does discussion need to move to further action? What type(s) of action?
§ What do we want out of TLA? What “small wins” have we had? What are we going to do?
A total of 72 TLA members (27 students, 25 faculty, 8 staff, 11 administrators, and 1 alumna!) participated in the five study groups this week. ~ compiled by Carmen Werder