by Assoc. Prof. Susan Beth Rottmann (Ozyegin University) and Prof. Harald Weilnböck (Cultures Interactive)
A key goal of university teaching is imparting skills for democratic participation, including the ability to engage with diverse perspectives and to navigate difficult conversations. Students need to learn to attune and mediate different kinds of emotional escalation, effects of chronic polarization around various issues and expressions of hatred and devaluation of others that they find in society and sometimes, unfortunately, also on their campuses. Yet, professors face several challenges when they want to facilitate discussion of complex, emotionally-charged and controversial issues. Sometimes they even encounter less than bona fide debate strategies from ideologically driven students and members of anti-democratic organisations who may also have been trained to disrupt and propagate.They must balance the need to maintain trust, respect, and empathy among students (and between themselves and students) while fostering the needed critical thinking on tough topics – and avert disrespectful or abusive communication.
In this article, we discuss some techniques based on the “Narrative Group Work” method (Weilnböck 2024; 2025;
Cultures Interactive 2018) that professors may try when students show destructive oppositional thinking and hostility towards societal groups during course discussions. These techniques are adapted from our research in the OppAttune project, which showed that they can be help to build participants’ capacity to take up a range of positions based on understanding, empathy and introspection and, to sustain dialogue in the face of conflict and destructive interactions.
- Attention and Acknowledgement: Signal that the statement has been heard and recognized as significant. This can be done verbally, as follows: “Thank you for sharing that thought,” or “I hear what you’re saying” or non-verbally through attentive listening. The goal is to avoid the feeling that the statement has been ignored or is not recognized as important to discuss.
- Share a Brief Assessment: Offer a carefully calibrated hint of your own perspective or a factual assessment based on course material (if relevant), but aim to do so in a subdued way and only to the extent necessary to maintain the interaction and personal authenticity. Helpful phrases could be:
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- “I find that statement concerning because it devalues a group of people, but tell me more about how you come to think that way…”
- “Academic research with/on [the group/situation] doesn’t support what you are saying, but if you explain more about your own experience, then I might be able to understand what you are saying…”
- “I do not agree with what you said, but tell me more about your point of view and what made you say that…”
- Focus on Narrative Communication: Encourage the sharing of (and listening to) personal experiences through narrative accounts rather than engagement in debates, arguments, or counter-speech. Narrative communication can build social and emotional intelligence and help to attune to difficult issues (Weilnböck, 2024; 2025). A helpful phrase could be:
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- “Thanks for speaking up, but please also tell me where you got these ideas from? Tell me about the people that you mix with and share these beliefs with. What is your experience with these people otherwise? Can you share one particular experience about one particular person?”
- Acknowledge the limitations of the classroom setting: Due to time constraints and the need to maintain broader educational goals in a classroom, it is not possible to fully explore the origins of hostile views and the nuances of students’ personal experiences. Remember (and remind students) that the classroom is a learning environment with specific goals. A helpful phrase to signal this to students could be:
- “Interesting! Evidently we have strong opinions with lots of emotional charge here in the room. Some of it sounds like prejudice or even hostility or hatred. I guess we would need to talk about personal experiences much more than we can here, if we were to get to the bottom of it all. Of course this would need a special space and time, which we do not have here… But do you have an idea about what we would talk about in order to get to the center of this hostility? More importantly, what do you think social scientists would have to say about this?”
By using these techniques, professors can ensure that their classrooms are spaces where difficult conversations are approached with a blend of immediate, attuned responses and a broader pedagogical commitment to open inquiry, mutual respect for individuals, and critical engagement with challenging topics.
References
Cultures Interactive e.V. (2018): Narrative group work. Intensified civic education that links content and emotions. https://www.cultures-interactive.de/en/narrativegroupwork.html
Weilnböck, H. (2024). ‘Democracy means people successfully speaking and listening to each other’ – Dr Harald Weilnböck on a ‘narrative dialogue group work’ approach to understanding and fostering political communication in divisive times”. In: The Psychologist, 05/2024, 51–53.
Weilnböck, H. (2025). How can “extremist oppositional“ worldviews be “attuned”? – Narrative Group Work in Schools® – an approach to learning to become a democrat. https://www.cultures-interactive.de/files/publikationen/Fachartikel/2024_Weilnboeck_How%20can%20extremist%20oppositional%20worldviews%20be%20attuned.pdf
