Tragic shootings. Culture wars. Threats of violence. Closures resulting from debunked, racist allegations against Haitian immigrants in Ohio. A lot has happened in schools in the run-up to a contentious and hotly debated national election.
But this year isn’t unique. Schools have, historically, been a public space where polarizing issues have played out. In recent years though, these debates have become more high-pitched and polarizing with real-life consequences—sometimes even costing teachers and school leaders their jobs.
In a nationally representative survey conducted by the EdWeek Research Center this summer, a quarter of teachers and school leaders polled said that politics, political ideologies, and/or politicians have contributed most to the polarization they’ve faced in their district or schools. Nineteen percent said the top contributor was social media.
Educators are also hesitant to bring up politically sensitive topics in class, even if these topics relate directly to a social studies lesson. In response, they’ve adjusted or changed their instructional approach, the same survey found: Thirty-five percent of teachers reported that they skipped an entire topic or subtopic because it would spark complaints from students, parents, or their superiors, while 23 percent said they had skipped a potentially “controversial” topic. Nineteen percent felt compelled to bring up diverse perspectives on a topic, even if they felt the topic didn’t need that treatment.
Teaching within these tight parameters can be exhausting—and could lead to quicker teacher burnout, which is already a significant problem. School leaders need to step in, and find ways to tackle the looming threat of polarizing conflict.
“The 21st-century superpower is facilitation. It’s not charisma-led leadership,” said Martin Carcasson, a liberal arts professor and the founder and director of the Center for Public Deliberation at the Colorado State University. Carcasson coaches school and district leaders to broach, and facilitate, difficult conversations within their district offices, with parents, and with the larger school community.
Conflicts within a school community over divisive issues like reading instruction, gun control, or the rights of transgender students can often mimic what’s happening in the political sphere, where the two-party system often reduces every debate to a political zero-sum game: Do everything in your power to make your opponent’s ideas fail.
“It’s a cynical view of the system,” Carcasson said in an interview with Education Week this summer.
Breaking the cynicism is hard. There’s a way to do it
School leaders, as facilitators, can turn a confrontational debate on its head. In some cases, when leaders can anticipate conflict, they can be proactive about diffusing it.
Not all conflicts can be avoided, though. For these times, it’s important for school leaders to build their facilitation muscles. Carcasson, in his own coaching, has relied on a guided map that can help leaders get in—and out—of a polarizing debate with a solution that works for every participant. It’s called the Groan Zone.
The “groan zone” framework for decision-making was popularized in 1996 by Sam Kaner, an organization development expert. It has three distinct stages:
- divergent thinking or collecting data,
- the Groan Zone, or the main debate, and
- convergent thinking, or coming to a resolution.
In each part of this process, the leader, as a facilitator, will need a different skillset. We’ve adapted this facilitation guide for educators to use in heated conversations with each other, parents, or even students during a class discussion on a controversial or polarizing topic.
