Teaching What You Don’t Know by Therese Huston

Author:Therese Huston [Huston, Therese]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: education, Higher, Teaching Methods & Materials, General, Professional Development
ISBN: 9780674035805
Google: ptplvFnVi8EC
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-11-15T00:17:30.334523+00:00

Activity of Thirty to Sixty Minutes

FISHBOWL (OR CONCENTRIC CIRCLE DISCUSSION)

Preparation: Minimal

Structure: One medium group and one large group

Activity: This activity is popular among education faculty and works well for discussion classes. In many traditional discussion classes, a few students dominate while the rest of the class remains silent. A fishbowl provides a way to engage a greater number of students in the conversation. A fishbowl consists of two concentric circles of students: an inner circle of six to ten students having a discussion around a table, surrounded by a larger group of students who listen to the smaller group’s discussion.

To set up the activity, ask for volunteers for the inner circle. The talkative students who normally dominate will be the first to volunteer. That’s fine. They have a chance to participate in a more fast-paced and animated discussion than they would in a normal class, and the silent students on the periphery get to observe a livelier version of the discussion. Provide the inner circle with discussion questions and a time limit. Give the outer ring different roles. At the very least, their job is to observe and document the discussion dynamics. Which topics are discussed most? Which arguments or pieces of evidence are raised and discussed, and which ones are raised but relatively ignored by the rest of the group? When do emotions appear to be running high? It’s also a good idea to ask someone in the outer group to be a timekeeper and let the inner group know when they have just a few minutes remaining. When it’s time to end the discussion, you might give the outer group the opportunity to de-brief the discussion they just witnessed. In this way, there is first a discussion by the inner circle and then a discussion by the outer circle.

A more dynamic variation on this activity is to give students in the outer circle a way to join the discussion by simply “tapping in.” Any person from the outer circle is allowed to tap the shoulder of someone in the discussion and swap seats. This not only gives outer-circle students an opportunity to add something important to the conversation but also creates a way to censor a dominating student. If you’re going to allow students to “tap in,” you might want to add some rules. For example, someone who has been “tapped out” needs to wait until three other people have tapped in before they can tap in again.

This activity is a stress reliever if you’re teaching on the edge of your expertise because it requires you to generate only the initial question to launch the discussion, rather than a full twenty to forty minutes’ worth of discussion questions. Some faculty who are still learning the material are reluctant to lead discussions because it’s challenging to generate a series of effective questions. In a fishbowl, you ask the initial question and then step back and let students do the rest. Of course, the initial question needs to be open-ended and interesting enough that students can discuss it for twenty to forty minutes.

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