Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching - National University

on the Internet. To keep the classroom a safe place for student expression, it is recommended that
instructors using such examples preface any discussion by noting that each student has a right to
his or her own opinion.
Opinions may be reflective of culture. Students should already be aware that culture must
be taken into account before drawing lasting conclusions about a person. In a counseling
program, this information would be conveyed through the multicultural therapy class or through
the type of integrated awareness recommended by Sue et al. (2009). It may be an easier leap of
acceptance for students to take if political views are linked to culture, provided they have had
some exposure to civil and productive discussions of culture in the classroom.
Yalom (2005) notes that discussions based on occurrences happening outside the group
rarely lead to any positive progress, mainly because such reports cannot be viewed from a purely
objective standpoint. Therefore, group leaders should guide discussion toward occurrences in the
group, which may be supported by multiple group members, rather than a single report from one
member. In this case, the productive discussion should be limited to the application of the
counselor’s point of view, which may often include advocacy for patients’ rights as well as social
change, and critical thinking.
The final guideline is to allow each member of the class discussion to participate at his or
her own pace. As in any discussion that may reveal personal feelings, background, or other
information, the instructor should be aware of the internal barriers to full expression that each
student experiences. Sometimes those barriers are for the good, such as cases in which disclosure
of a reaction is either inappropriate or not sufficiently related to the topic at hand. Sometimes,
however, those barriers are external; the instructor may be restricting the ability of the students to
discuss a topic by either not creating the supportive atmosphere covered above or not setting
clear parameters for the discussion.
The classroom discussion of relevant sociopolitical examples should be moderated by an
instructor who is aware of the boundary between critical analysis and pure venting or arguing.
One alternate method to instructor moderation is breaking the class into smaller groups to
encourage participation by students unlikely to express themselves to the class as a whole. The
solution runs the same risks of argument seen in the larger classroom so, as with any group
discussion, the instructor should be ready to interject.
Students should be encouraged to apply analytical skills to their own reactions and the
ongoing debate about the issue. They should also be informed that their reactions are not being
graded and do not need to be analyzed by other students. One major way instructors can strike
this balance is by encouraging students to look inward regarding reactions, just as therapy group
leaders advise group members to process and analyze their own reactions before the reactions of
others in the group.
The following section is included to shed light on a situation in which the author applied
the above guidelines to the use of a relevant real-world example in the psychology classroom.
Example
One of the main themes of the MAC program’s research course is to introduce critical thinking
and encourage analytical thought. As instructor, the author introduced this theme through two
recent political advertisements as examples of media to which students should apply an
analytical eye.
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