Early in the Term

Well-suited for:

• Recognizing the reasoning and motivations behind an ethical claim or theory.

• Recognizing the reasoning and motivations behind their own personal values, principles, virtues, or choices.

Strengths

• Builds students’ confidence. By first presenting their answers to a small group of peers, and then getting feedback and advice from those peers, students come to feel more comfortable presenting their own thinking in a larger class setting.

• Allows students to practice giving and receiving feedback in a low-stakes setting. Having productive discussions about complex or charged issues (as ethical issues often are) requires a number of learned skills, including the ability to receive and give feedback directed at a view (as opposed to at a person). This format allows students to practice that ability at a small scale, before applying it to the larger scale of a full class discussion.

• Allows students to take charge of the discussion. While you set the parameters of the discussion with your question, the substantive content of the discussion is provided by students. This can allow students to have a more direct, personal connection to the material and a more direct stake in the discussion.

• Great for discussions early in the term. The Think-Pair-Share format has an innate social element built into it, so organizing discussion this way can help students get to know one another. Vary who students are paired with to help students become familiar with all their discussion partners. Building a sense of section-wide familiarity early on in the term will help students feel comfortable collaboratively tackling (sometimes quite difficult) ethical topics throughout the term.

Potential Challenges and Solutions

• I feel like I don’t have control of the discussion; we are getting off-topic. Because the substantive content of the discussion is generated by students (first on their own, then in groups), you may find that you have less opportunities to intervene and manage the focus of class discussion (both when students are discussing in small groups, and when they are sharing with the class).

  • Listen in to small-group discussions. When students break apart into small groups, work your way around the class and listen to their discussions. If these discussions get significantly confused or off-topic, gently intervene (ask a helpful question, clarify a relevant concept, etc.). If you can keep the small group discussions focused and productive, your reconvened full-class discussion will likely also be focused and productive.

  • Provide a framework. The questions you provide students with at the start of this format provide a framework for all the discussion to follow, so be thoughtful about the questions you ask students to answer and how you ask them to answer. Be explicit about what topics or material, if any, you want students to consider in answering the questions, and make clear what a strong, thoughtful answer involves (perhaps even give an example).

  • Let go. As noted, one of the strengths of this activity is that it puts students more in control of the discussion. By relinquishing some of this control, you invariably allow for a little more unpredictability and possibility of error. That’s OK. Students can learn a lot from their mistakes, and a discussion section can be a great, safe place to make such mistakes. Moreover, by giving students that control, you also allow for the possibility of viewpoints that you hadn’t considered (and that your students perhaps didn’t know counted as legitimate viewpoints), as well as the possibility of having discussions on relevant topics that students know better (fields outside of your own, personal values, etc.).

• In the full-class discussion, students are just stating their answers and not discussing them. After reconvening from their small groups, students may proceed to only report their answers and the outcomes of their small groups’ discussions, rather than engaging in a new, full-class discussion.

  • Give and repeat clear instructions. In any multi-step activity, there is a chance students will fail to understand or lose track of the functions of the activity. As you reconvene for the full-class discussion, make clear that students need to continue to discuss the views on hand.

  • Model responding. When an individual student gives their answers, ask appropriate questions and make relevant suggestions (after giving time for students to jump in of their own accord). Encourage students to follow up. As the teacher, students implicitly look to you to model behavior.

Well-suited for:

• Practicing identifying ethical claims.

• Practicing identifying components of arguments for ethical claims.

Strengths

• Makes explicit value and function of assigned readings. Students often don’t see the value in doing assigned readings, as opposed to just relying on information presented to them in lecture or section. Academic texts can be dense and inaccessible, especially relative to lectures and sections put together with an undergraduate audience in mind. By working through the text in section, you not only encourage students to spend time on text they might otherwise not, but you also help them develop the skills needed to see and use those texts as the valuable resources they are.

• Develops good reading habits. As much as we encourage to read texts carefully and repeatedly, we have little guarantee that they will actually do so once they leave class. By dedicating section time to close reading, you can both ensure that students have at least some time to spend on (specific parts of) readings. Moreover, by providing guidance during these close readings, you can help students practice good reading habits (rereading difficult passages, asking questions as your read, reading in a group, and so on).

• Great for early reading assignments. DIfferent academic disciplines can have very different expectations and practices around readings. Going through early reading assignments together is a good way to introduce new students to discipline-specific reading approaches and make explicit otherwise implicit reading norms (perhaps even some which you have already completely internalized).

Potential Challenges and Solutions

• Some students comprehend selected passages immediately, while others struggle. Different students will be able to process texts at different speeds. This can lead to sections where only relatively quick readers are able to participate.

  • Distribute selected passages ahead of time. Let students know what passages you will be reading in section, and make sure those passages are easily accessible ahead of section.

  • Slow down. While some students will likely find the relevant passages more immediately accessible and comprehensible than other students, academic texts don’t always (or even often) reward speed. Make sure you give students time to think about the text being worked through. Stop to ask follow-up questions, write up distinction on the board, or ask students to diagram out arguments being presented in the text.

• Students struggle to have open, flowing dialogue when narrowly focused on the text. While specific ethical hard cases or broader ethical theories and concepts can often easily motivate active, enthusiastic discussions, students can feel limited when conversation is focused on specific passages from specific texts.

• • Draw students' attention to specific interpretative or exegetical questions. Academics rarely (if ever) treat text as transparent, straightforward transcriptions of information. Rather, academics are always asking questions about the texts they read: investigating points of ambiguity, debating varying interpretations, and so on. These sorts of questions can be (and are) sources of lively discussion, but they are discussion that can only be accessed once one is made aware of the relevant questions. Really learning a text often involves coming to learn such questions.

  • Provide relevant context. Often times, students don’t feel like they have much to say about a given reading because they don’t understand the significance of that text. You can help remove this barrier to discussion by providing social, historical, theoretical, and even personal context for the readings. If students are struggling to connect with a reading, it can be useful to openly have a discussion about the significance of the work. Why do these readings (these passages) matter?