Stephen Brookfield’s “Discussion as a Way of Teaching”

I’d love to say that discussion methods were always used by my teachers in junior high and high school.  But that’s just not so.  In that time and place, hearing opinions from the students during discussions simply wasn’t done.  The teachers used a sort of “top-down” way of learning.  The teachers were at the top, and they spoke down to the students who were expected to gather their pearls of wisdom.  Although it was a common practice, it wasn’t a good practice.  When I entered the teacher-education program, I learned there were new ways to promote student learning.  Discussion was one of them.

On page three, Brookfield listed five reasons why discussions fail:

Unrealistic expectations

Unprepared students

No ground rules

Reward systems askew

No teacher modeling

A former professor from my undergraduate degree—Dr. L.—offered another reason: No participation from students.  I witnessed this phenomenon last quarter in an English class.  The class was small—only 11 students—most of which were quiet and shy and did not participate in discussions.  To counter this problem, Dr. L. had suggested that teachers make participation worth a grade.  The teacher of my English class did that very thing, making participation count enough to hurt if they didn’t do it.   It worked.  After a reminder about the participation grade, the students more readily participated in discussions.

I appreciated Brookfield’s suggestion about making a T-Chart of what respectful behavior sounds like and looks like (5).  Modeling appropriate behavior leaves less to chance.  Depending on the class demographic, perhaps a T-Chart outlining bad behavior would be valuable as well.  That way it’s specified what to expect as well as behaviors to avoid.

Also on page five was a reference that made me long for more specific examples in the entire article.  Brookfield stated, “You’re going to see two 5 minute [sic] excerpts of different discussions” (5).  I understand it is simply a script for what the teacher could say to the students, but I really wanted examples to help me understand all of Brookfield’s concepts and ideas.  I, like many people, appreciate examples to envision what I’m supposed to do.  Similar to a recipe... if I’m to make a chocolate cake, show me a picture of what the end product should look like.