Dr. Rachel Mordecai, Associate Professor of Caribbean Literature in English, leverages discussion-based teaching techniques to not only enhance students' critical thinking and understanding of complex topics but also to foster an inclusive, dynamic learning community where diverse perspectives are shared and respected. By employing strategies such as varying discussion formats, visualizing discussions, and allowing students to have a say in the course material, she ensures active student engagement and ownership over their learning and helps students develop strong communication and collaborative skills.
What do you do to create a supportive learning environment where students feel their voices matter and are heard?
My primary approach is to demonstrate through my words and actions that all ideas (except those that dehumanize others) are worthy of consideration. Visually tracking our conversations on the whiteboard or screen as they develop helps with this. Making note of all students’ thoughts builds trust that I’m open to their ideas, don’t have a rigid notion of what they should say or think, and won’t ridicule or belittle any of their contributions.
How would you describe your approach to discussion-based teaching and learning?
I tell my students that the most important learning they will do in our class will be done together. Our work in literary studies is to open up texts to new and nuanced interpretations through careful, creative reading, and much of that work happens via in-class discussion.
My class plans generally comprise discrete 20-30 minute activities in varied modes, with at least one discussion-based activity (and usually more) in each class meeting. I balance structure with flexibility by prioritizing my intentions for the day and placing higher-priority activities toward the beginning of the class, which allows me the option of letting a discussion that takes off in an energetic and productive direction play itself out for a while.
What do you do to facilitate powerful discussions (i.e., how you step in and add your own thoughts or step back)?
I never walk in with the assumption that my reading of a text necessarily trumps my students’. I try to model a radical openness to multiple ideas, and guide students through a process of follow-up questions (“Where in the text do you see that happening?” “How might that relate to the point [X] made earlier about [Y]?” “What would you say to someone who disagreed on that basis that…?”) toward stronger, more internally coherent and textually grounded interpretations. It’s a dynamic collaborative process through which they experience literary analysis in action – something far more valuable than teasing out my idea of the “correct” interpretation of a text.
Can you describe how you help students see connections and tensions by visualizing the discussion as you map it on the board and/or categorizing themes?
I’m a firm believer in multi-modal communication, and this includes note-taking on the board as our conversations unfold in class. Whenever we are starting a new novel or long play, we begin by creating a collaborative thought-map. I ask the students to think of the one textual element that they would offer to the class as a starting point for our discussions and then we go around the room, with each person offering something to be added to the thought-map as I track its development. The students might organically indicate connections between their own contribution and one that has come before (“Jumping off of what [x] said…”) which begins the process of drawing arrows and creating clusters of like elements, but then we will also do a secondary round in which I invite the students to add anything important that isn’t already on the map and to suggest conceptual relationships that haven’t already been diagrammed.

Example of a thought-map produced in ENGL 300, fall 2022.
These thought-maps are saved (either as photos of the whiteboard or as files from mind-mapping software) and posted to our Moodle site. I also return to them in class. I particularly enjoy re-circulating the thought-map in the last class on that text and inviting the students to annotate it: what connections are apparent now that weren’t when we began? What now seems particularly important, having read the whole text, and what less so? This annotation process can be followed by an informal writing moment in which they reflect on their take-aways from our collaborative work on the text.
Can you describe how varying the formats (pairs, small groups, whole class) with which you engage students help to scaffold class discussions?
The varying modes of class discussion represent a kind of scaffolding process in themselves: students write on their own in response to a prompt, then share the gist of that writing with a classmate or in a small group, and then all the groups report back to the whole class. In this process, students try their ideas out, note the synergies and tensions between their ideas and others, support their ideas in conversation with one or two other students, and then see how those revised/refined ideas align with or push against what the rest of the class is thinking. Generally, their arguments get better as this process unfolds. I use discussion activities on a range of scales (from pair work through whole-class discussion) both because students may be more comfortable on one scale than another, and because moving through the modes or scales itself offers learning opportunities. Every transition to a new scale also offers a refresh point for our collective attention and a chance to encourage students to move around the room and find a new partner or group to work with.
Can you describe the collaborative process you have for deciding which texts to read from the textbook, and what you see as the impact of this process on students’ engagement in the discussions?
In some of my classes – where the primary goals are skills-based rather than content-based – I give the students input into selecting the texts we will read. Working from an anthology, students individually identify texts they would like to read and then negotiate in small groups to arrive at common slates, from which I choose our actual reading list. This gives the students a sense of ownership over the material of the course, and it’s usually fun for everyone to hear each other’s arguments for and against particular recommendations.
What would you say are the most powerful strategies that you are using?
I try to be flexible and nimble in walking a line between what I intend/expect will happen in a certain class meeting and what turns out to have the most energy behind it, in moving between the particular (and often delightful) eddies that a discussion can fall into and broader, synthesizing work. But perhaps the most powerful strategy is an orientation: I value my students as whole beings as well as thinkers, and I prioritize process over product when assessing what happens in my classroom. As long as students are listening carefully to each other, attending carefully to the text, and engaging in good faith with our common project, I count whatever emerges as a success.