Spring 1999
Vol 7 Issue 2
IN THIS ISSUE...
Renewing Our Commitment to Understanding and Faith
Developing Instruction that Promotes Diverse Perspectives
SEE ALSO...
The Labyrinth
Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction
Developing Instruction that Promotes Diverse Perspectives: A Conversation with Dr. Jane McGrath
Naomi Story, MCLI
NOTE: The audio version of this phone interview, taped on February 25, 1999, is available in RealAudio format.
Recently, I spoke with Dr. Jane McGrath about a new reading textbook she has just published, Understanding Diverse Viewpoints: A Thematic Reader. Her book is quite unusual in that it not only includes diverse reading pieces and themes by different writers from unique backgrounds, but it also provides approaches and activities to promote critical thinking. When I asked Jane to write an article about her book, she graciously said, "No" because she felt it might be received as a promotion of her text. However, she consented to an interview about developing diverse and critical reading skills as well as the challenges of creating the context for diversity in her text.
This interview gives us perspectives and ideas as we consider curriculum enhancements that stimulate diverse thinking. Jane illustrates how students tend to read and analyze readings. Also, her words demonstrate the faculty's challenge to engage students in deepening or expanding their thinking. This insight is important so that we provide unique learning context and environments that allow students to take responsibility and engage in critical analysis about the issues and assumptions of diversity. It also provides insights about methods which shape instruction and learning based on a particular need including input from colleagues who can give different perspectives. And, finally on a personal level, Jane gives an introspective look on herself as a learner and teacher.
NS: Tell me, how did you arrive at this idea for your book?
JM: Teaching reading always included the problem of students feeling that if they read it [the concept] in the newspaper, it was true....And, so, if they had read something in the morning, that was the way it was. Or, if they heard something on television, this was fact. There was no, or very little, idea that there might be more than one viewpoint. And, so it was very difficult to ask students to be critical readers by analyzing evidence. They didn't see any need for it.
NS: Why do you think they do not question?
JM: I am not sure. I think that to a large extent that it is easy and, maybe, they are very trusting. They can't imagine that someone would say something or write something that's not particularly true. "Could it get into print if it is not true?"
NS: I would say a lot of us who are not students also do this. I can see why novice readers or students would do so more readily.
JM: Yes, and then the problem became more difficult because, in high school, they had written what they called a "research paper"—which was very good—but, often what they did was take only two sides to an issue. Students learned that only one side was right so the other side had to be wrong.
NS: So there is a duality or polarization of ideas versus various shades of gray.
JM: Exactly; the concept of, "Oh, some of what this person says might be valid," as well as "What some of what this other person says might also be valid," and, "Oh, there might be a third person who would have even [still] different valid information," is hard to teach. It became a real challenge as a teacher to have students looking for different opinions without immediately adopting one and saying, "Well, this one is right, and all of the others are wrong." Or, "I believe this; therefore, I can't believe anything else."
I used to teach this process by photcopying articles and bringing in the newspaper...the assignment would be 10 extra credits for all the people who could find the different viewpoint. But this is difficult to do in the spur of the moment.
NS: For students?
JM: Yes.
NS: For just our students?
JM: No, I've talked with instructors across the country, and I find that they have exactly the same problems. I find that my students are not unique. So, as I started to think of what I wanted to do for the book. I really wanted to produce a book that would simply encourage students to look at a variety of viewpoints on topics.
NS: How did you decide on the themes?
JM: Over a six-moth period, my editors at Harcourt Brace and I asked instructors: "What kinds of readings are your students doing when you give extra credit assignments? What kinds of things do you think students would be interested in?" We talked to instructors at Maricopa too.
NS: Do you think there is a possibility that some of these themes are current and cover topics that people are discussing today versus topics that may come in the future?
JM: Oh, definitely. The shelf life of a textbook these days is about three years. The topics that are in my textbook, I have no doubt that the majority of them will be changed in two years...because politically correct language may or may not still be a big item.
NS: You can still use the readings as a jumping off point. How would you say that faculty could use a text like this...how can they enhance or use a text like this that really enhances learning?
JM: I think that using a text such as this, or even using the text as a model to create their own unit particular to the topic that fits into their discipline would be a wonderful way to get students to read more. ...one of the things that this book asks a student to do, which is probably unique from most textbooks, is the ending exercises. For each theme, there is an exercise, that asks students to defend a variety of points of view rather than to chose one and defend it. For example, at the end of the theme on grades, rather than saying, "I think that 'A's' are given way too frequently and the grading system needs to be changed," they have to defend both points of view that 'A's' are too easy to get these days and the point of view that says they are not. I quote John Stuart Mills, "If you cannot defend your opponents point of view then you do not know enough to support your own."
NS: The text is not just for a reading course. What other areas or combinations could it be used?
JM: Yes, the text was really designed for what used to be called, if you were from South Carolina, "The Freshman Year Experience Program." When you have groups of students who are learning together and want materials to help them work in groups with discussion topics. It gives them common learning materials so they share ideas and learn from one another. And, of course that concept has now grown and expanded into learning communities, and to even block courses in which instructors are putting together freshman compostion and sociology or any other number of combinations.
NS: What have you learned about the process of writing a text like this or the challenges of meeting diverse populations?
JM: I think that one of my biggest "aha's" that I found early in the process was when I read an article which I included in the book by Philip Roth who asks, "Are we training our students to be too critical?" ...It never occurred to me that our emphasis was training students to find what is wrong with a piece. The concept really hit me; hopefully, I am not only training students to find what is wrong with a piece. We do have a responsibility to be even more diverse. What I want to do is help students not to look for the bad and not to try to show up the author because this behavior transfers into real life. So, I had to be really careful as I worded questions and activities so that I wasn't asking students to find fault and I wasn't asking them to look for just bad things.