Abstract
These two volumes summarize a fascinating and ambitious collaboration between multidisciplinary faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) and Alaska Pacific University (APU). UAA is the largest multi-campus university in the state of Alaska while APU is a small, private, (once Methodologist) independent institution. The two campuses sit side by side just east of midtown Anchorage and share a library. In the early 2000s, the faculty members found that they also shared a common concern for improving the learning environment on their campuses and in their classrooms. In particular, they wanted to make these spaces more inclusive of minority voices and safer for the exchange of ideas, especially when dealing with controversial and contentious issues. After considerable discussion, the two groups submitted a proposal for funding to Ford Foundation Difficult Dialogues Initiative. In 2006, they received a grant to conduct a series of faculty workshops or “intensives” and develop, implement, and evaluate pedagogical strategies for addressing difficult dialogues in their classrooms. These books recount the journey of their “Encountering Controversies Project.”
Both books contain an intriguing and informative combination of background information, project organization tips, pedagogical exercises and strategies, commentary and anecdotes from key project members (including students), as well as project evaluation processes. They are written using down-to-earth language that clearly reflects their passion for the project and makes the reading effortless and interesting!
Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education provides an overview of the first two years of their joint initiative. It has been organized into the “handbook” format indicated with its title. It is spiral bound and has index tabs for flipping easily to the various sections of the book. It outlines the five-day intensive program that started the project, the first year of implementing the strategies and techniques they then took back to the classroom from their discussions, frank assessments of the successes and failures they encountered along the way, and a thoughtful discussion about future directions. Throughout the book, there are many useful cross-references to additional material and examples found elsewhere in the volume. It is also acknowledged that work by Brookfield and Preskill (2005) served as a major source for their project.
The first section of the book, titled “Ground Rules,” emphasizes the challenges of their endeavor—not only of finding ways to engage students in the classroom but also of creating trust among faculty members who may be resistant to change. Their code of conduct for the project was explicit—to promote participation, engagement, and collaboration while balancing safety and risk. The ultimate goal was to understand and exercise their academic freedom in ways that would strengthen teaching and enhance civil discourse in their classrooms, campuses, and communities.
The section continues with an overview of the agenda of the first day of their intensive encounters, beginning with an opening exercise where participants shared some of their most difficult classroom experiences and discussed various teaching and learning styles. This session was followed by a presentation on academic freedom, including case studies, and another on several strategies for creating a classroom atmosphere conducive to civil discourse, including how to respond to “contra-power harassment” (i.e., when students disrespect, harass, bully, or threaten their instructors), the role of silence and reflective writing, tips to facilitate and assess controversial discussion, and meeting the expectations of learners. The day ended with a “Critical Incident Questionnaire” asking for honest feedback on the day’s activities.
The second section of the book is titled “Rhetoric, Debate” and summarizes the second day of the faculty intensive, which began with a debriefing of comments from the previous day’s Critical Incident Questionnaires. The rest of the session was devoted to exploring the Western traditions of rhetoric, argument, and debate that traditionally inform practices in North American universities. They utilized several guest speakers to provide background information, case studies, and classroom exercises on rhetorical questioning and debate as pedagogical tools. Participants were then challenged to identify how these issues related to their disciplines, classrooms, and students.
The next section of the book details the third day of the intensive, when participants turned their attention to starting to address some of the most controversial issues that faculty and students face in the classroom, beginning with issues of “Race, Class, Culture.” Participants were taken outside of their comfort zones with exercises related to their own identities, privileges, and cultures that they could then take back to their classrooms. The ultimate goal of these techniques is to create respectful, democratic, and inclusive classroom spaces and discussions. One significant technique that emerged from the discussion that followed was the decision to select various “books of the year” that could be used at both universities to teach about privilege, create cultural awareness of the voices of minorities, and stimulate engaged discussions about controversial topics. This section of the book ends with a realistic (and refreshing) admission that some participants expressed serious concerns about their ability to add such extra activities in their classrooms, given the time constraints of content-heavy courses. However, the rejoinder emphasized that the ultimate goal of engaging students in difficult dialogues could still be accomplished by being realistic and selective in the use of the exercises.
Day four of the intensive is summarized in the next section of the book. It continues the focus on various classroom strategies for engaging students in controversial and contentious issues. This time those debates related to “Science, Religion.” Having students respond to books or films or participate in panel discussions or informal conversations were featured as effective techniques for stimulating discussions on these topics.
The fifth section of the book, titled “Business, Politics, Social Justice,” describes the last day of their faculty intensive where they discussed how they could take the strategies and techniques they had learned from the intensives and implement them into their classrooms and public events on both campuses. Although the subjects of business, politics, and social justice were not addressed directly during the intensive discussions, many of the suggestions for specific classroom or public activities that were made by participants on this last day were related to these topics. Consequently, background information and teaching techniques about a number of issues related to business, politics, and social justice are included in this section of the book. This section also reports the successes and failures they experienced over the next year as they attempted to put their plans to promote civil discourse in the classroom and community into action.
The next section of the book, titled “Outcomes,” presents a candid evaluation of their joint learning initiative to date (2008). In summary, they felt that they had created an effective model for promoting faculty development, generated greater awareness of controversial issues, and presented a number of strategies for encouraging civil discourse both inside and outside of the classroom. They argued that the faculty participants had gained confidence in approaching these issues in their classrooms and created a network of colleagues for support and advice. They did acknowledge that faculty workloads and expectations may be too intense for significant change and that teaching these topics was still a challenging enterprise, especially with limited energies and resources. However, overall, they were encouraged that the project did represent significant strides toward their ultimate goal of improving civil discourse in their classrooms and communities.
The final section of the book, titled “Keep Talking,” emphasizes that Start Talking represents only the beginning of the important work that needs to be done to engage students and the community in difficult dialogues. The participants realized that there was one significant and difficult issue that they had not addressed adequately—the integration of academic and Alaska Native cultures. This admission led the book to conclude by calling for real dialogue between the two universities and the broader Alaska Native community in the months and years ahead. This is the agenda that will inform the second part of their Difficult Dialogues Initiative and be recounted in the book Stop Talking (reviewed in the following).
As a resource guide, Start Talking has broad appeal. It could be useful to anyone with a general interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning. More specifically, the book could provide insights and information to individuals or groups who want to organize and evaluate collaborative partnerships and/or teaching workshops. The 33 different classroom strategies and exercises for encouraging conversation, discussion, and debate about controversial topics could prove invaluable to both faculty and graduate students already teaching as well as for faculty and graduate teacher training programs. In addition, the numerous short essays throughout the book that provide background information about various controversial issues could provide excellent starting points for discussion and debate in many substantive classes in sociology and other social science disciplines.
Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education tells the story of the project that was created in response to the call made by faculty from UAA and APU at the end of Start Talking to find ways to create greater awareness and understanding of Native Culture in their Alaskan universities—academic worlds that were dominated by non-Native faculty and Western ways of teaching and learning. The title Stop Talking emphasizes, at the outset, the important differences between Western (colonial) and Indigenous ways of knowing. Where Western teaching and learning traditions emphasize writing and asking questions, Indigenous ways of teaching and learning are based on oral and visual traditions and silent reflection. The title is also a message to the non-Native project participants (and other non-Native individuals who will share their experiences by reading this book) to silence their dominant and privileged Western voices and listen to and learn from Indigenous voices that have been ignored and marginalized for far too long.
Project Director Libby Roderick from UAA approached a number of distinguished Alaska Native leaders, educators, and Elders and asked them to create a Native-designed and Native-presented program that might help non-Native participants gain deeper appreciation of Native ways of teaching, learning, and knowing. After a year of discussion and planning, 16 multidisciplinary non-Native faculty came together in spring 2009 for a week-long intensive under the co-direction, facilitation, and guidance of Ilarion Mercelieff and Dr. Abgayuqaq Kawagley. Stop Talking describes the experiences of the intensive and how the faculty used what they had learned in their classrooms and on their campuses over the next year.
The first four chapters of the book describe the first four days of the intensive—a “semi-immersion” experience of Native Alaska ways of teaching and learning. Through stories and activities (e.g., Native dance and games), the participants learned from their facilitators and other Native guests about how Indigenous ways of knowing are based on tradition and respect for people, nature, and the land. They are collaborative, relational, and rely on visual and oral transmission of information. They are experiential (using all of the senses) and reflective. There is an emphasis on indirect rather than direct learning—that is, the type of understanding that comes though observation, by understanding the metaphors found in stories, and taking time for silent reflection. From these experiences, the participants came to a distinctly uncomfortable realization about institutionalized racism in Western universities and expressed a desire to start a process of change concerning this difficult dialogue issue.
Chapter five begins with a description of the activities of the last day of the intensive, including reflections on the previous days’ activities. Numerous pedagogical strategies to take back to their classrooms were discussed and formulated based on their newfound awareness and knowledge. The participants and facilitators alike indicated that the intensive had been a life-altering experience.
The rest of the chapter is devoted to the classroom experiences and reflections of the participants over the next year. The heartfelt stories here from both the participants and their students demonstrate that incorporating Indigenous ways of teaching and learning into their classrooms was transformative.
Chapter six provides the project “Outcomes,” which were based on rigorous recordkeeping of the participants’ input and feedback before, during, and after the five-day intensive and over the next year. The analysis of this information revealed that the participants did have a significant shift in their awareness of the relationship between institutionalized racism and student success. They had acquired stronger skills for addressing Native Alaska issues in their classrooms and making Native students feel more comfortable. They had also embraced ideas and pedagogical strategies for including Indigenous teaching and learning practices in their classrooms. Although it was pointed out that the participants in the Stop Talking project were in no way a large representative sample, the findings were influential in formulating the future directions that are presented in the last chapter.
The final chapter of Stop Talking is called “Pausing for Reflection.” It emphasizes that the work on giving greater consideration to Indigenous ways of knowing in higher education only started with this project. The chapter outlines a number of additional initiatives at UAA and AUP that were designed to address issues of Alaskan Native Culture. However, this chapter also includes a two-page “Manifesto” of ways to “Indigenize Higher Education” that could be used by any institution—even those that do not have Native students—arguing that adding Indigenous practices can inspire, engage, and excite students and faculty everywhere!
Stop Talking is an absolutely fascinating and enlightening book. Sociologically, it could be considered a fine example of a consciousness-raising message. It certainly creates powerful awareness of issues of inequality surrounding Native Peoples. However, it is much, much more. Hearing the stories of the Elders and the responses of the participants and their students will have a profound impact on any reader, particularly those who are non-Native and may have little firsthand knowledge of Native Culture. Experiencing this book might also be affirming for non-Native teachers who already incorporate storytelling and other features of Indigenous teaching and learning practices into their classrooms.
This book is an excellent resource for teachers and students (graduates and undergraduates) alike to learn about Indigenous ways of knowing and how to include Indigenous pedagogical practices into our classrooms and communities. It also teaches us about many aspects of Native Culture through the transcriptions of many oral Native stories and practices that make up the majority of the content of the book. Therefore, Stop Talking would be an important and insightful supplemental text for a course at any level (introductory or senior) on stratification, ethnic relations, or Indigenous Cultures. It could also be valuable in courses on the sociology of knowledge or issues in research methodology for adding Indigenous ways of knowing to discussions about different approaches to building knowledge. Overall, Stop Talking passionately emphasizes that such different ways of knowing are equally important and valuable for informing education in our classrooms, institutions, and communities—a very important message indeed!