The Good Project Core Concepts: Excellence

by Lynn Barendsen

At work, when and how do you consider questions about excellence? Some further questions that might come to mind about excellence at work are:

• Do you have time to reflect and consider the quality of your work?

• Do you answer to an immediate supervisor, and does their opinion impact your understanding of excellence at work?  

• Do you supervise others, and do you regularly discuss what is and isn’t quality work with them?

• How do you do your “best” work?

• Does your current work allow you to make the most of your skills?

• What is the relationship between high quality work and “good work”?

At The Good Project, “good work” is about three “Es”: ethics (contributing to the world in a positive way and doing no harm), engagement (meaningful, fulfilling), and excellence (high quality). This blog focuses on excellence: what we mean by this term, how it has evolved since our research began, and particular contexts to take into account when reflecting upon and discussing excellence in today’s climate.

During our original research of the nature of “good work” in the mid 1990s, we identified practitioners to interview via a process of recommendations, based predominantly on excellence. Each time we began to study a new profession (genetics, journalism, medicine or law, for example), we would conduct a series of informant interviews, talking with experts in that field. These “gatekeepers” would help us to identify emerging issues in that particular profession; they also helped us to identify established or emerging leaders. When we asked about leaders in the field, we asked only about excellent, or high quality, work; we didn’t ask for the most ethical leaders, nor did we ask about those who found meaning in their work. In other words, when we first began our research, “excellence” meant expertise: high-achieving, well-known, respected work. We wanted to talk with those who were leaders in their various professions in terms of high quality work (the other two “Es” were identified as a result of the data gathered through conversations with “excellent” workers).

In the decades since this research, our understandings of excellence in work have evolved in multiple ways. Today, we believe that it’s critical to take into account how personal standards for excellence may differ from one another. For example, someone who has been working in a particular field for decades will have developed a level of expertise not possible for a novice; someone raised with wealth and privilege will have a different approach to work than someone struggling with food insecurity and lack of housing. There are many other examples of difference with respect to the factors that impact how individuals approach their work. If we truly want to encourage excellence in work (not to mention ethics, engagement and other elements of good work we have yet to identify), everyone must feel motivated and supported, and we must recognize that what works for some doesn’t work for others. Often, excellence is our individual “best” effort, determined by any number of factors, at a particular moment in time.

Although an individual “best” on any given day can shift, what’s important are the standards to which we hold ourselves. We bring varied notions of excellence to the table based on a number of factors, including cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, neurological and other differences. That said, there are of course standards of “excellence” that are important to keep in mind. For example, a surgeon’s “personal best” on a given day is not enough if it puts a patient’s life at risk. If she is tired and not able to meet her profession’s standards, perhaps her personal best on that day involves rest and recuperation rather than work in the operating room. Importantly, this is why we also have professional standards that must be met, so that is not just up to individual, personal judgment.

On The Good Project, we have come to believe that the concept of excellence - like the full good work framework - is:

• attentive to the particular qualities and behaviors we want to cultivate in ourselves and others; 

• more than meeting a particular benchmark (like a grade) and is attentive to complexity;

• regularly reflected upon for insight and growth; 

• guided by personal values and is context specific but open to flexibility (e.g., excellence as a nurse looks different than it does for a journalist, a restaurant worker, or a teacher)

An additional important question, especially considering the current mental health crisis: is striving for the “best” necessarily a good thing? As Jennifer Breheny Wallace has highlighted in her bestselling book, Never Enough, optimizing performance has become toxic and dangerous in an achievement culture within a particular subset of the population. (Some solutions to this toxicity are suggested in this interview with the author.) Also crucial to any conversation about excellence is an understanding about difficulty and even, at times, failure: how do individuals respond to obstacles in their work? As a recent article on Failing Well explains, “intelligent” failure is common with innovation, and if learning happens as a result of a failed experience, the net result may in fact be positive.

When we work with high school students, we have had to make clear that we are not insisting that every student be “excellent” every day and in every way. But where and how these lines are drawn are important topics of conversation, for educators, for students, for school communities as a whole and of course, for families.

Some questions we continue to ponder:

• Does all work have to be “excellent,” or can it be really good or great? Does this vary by the work carried out? What is the relationship between “perfection” and high quality work? Do you need to be an expert to do excellent work? What is the relationship between competence and high quality work?

• How are our expectations of “excellence” connected to the number of people impacted by the work carried out? Is there a difference, for example, in what we expect of a rocket scientist or an architect because the work they do can potentially help or harm a large number of people?

• Do we consider the years of training required to do a particular type of work, or the number of years someone has been in a particular position, in our expectations about excellence? In other words, do we expect more in some ways of a lawyer than a school bus driver, or more of a chef who has been in the kitchen for 15 years than one who has been working for 5?

• How are our understandings of excellence connected to the responsibilities of a particular type of work?

• What are the differences between the process of excellence and the product of the work? Consider, for example, the “journey” towards excellence versus the actual product of “being” excellent. Sometimes failing along the way is a positive process, as it allows for innovation. What are the important distinctions between the process of work and the end result of those efforts?

Below are some resources from The Good Project that you might use to explore excellence:

• A video describing the three Es of excellence, ethics and engagement

• “The Meaning of Grades” Dilemma

• “When In Doubt, Make it Excellent” Dilemma

• Famous Failures Activity

• What is Excellent Work Activity

The Good Project Core Concepts: Engagement

by Shelby Clark

When you go to work, how do you feel? Consider the following questions: 

• At work, do you feel bursting with energy? 

• At work, do you feel full of meaning and purpose? 

• Does time fly when you are working?

• Are you enthusiastic about your job? 

• Does your job inspire you? 

• When you get up in the morning, do you want to go to work? 

If you answered yes to many of these questions, it’s likely that you feel very engaged by your work. Engagement can refer to how committed individuals feel towards their “work, team, and organization.” How happy and satisfied someone is at work is also often an element of worker engagement, perhaps why engagement and well-being efforts often go hand-in-hand. Commitment, happiness, satisfaction – these ideas of engagement are common. For example, students might be described as engaged in their school work if they show dedication and “stick-to-itiveness” or if they are consistently excited to show up to school each day.  

Here at The Good Project, the idea of engagement, in addition to ethics and excellence, serves as one of our 3 Es of “good work.” However, when The Good Project research originally began in the 1990s, this concept was not a part of the original “Es.” As Gardner described in Good Work: Theory and Practice, “To be sure, Excellence and Ethics emerged soon after Humane Creativity [the original Good Work study] had transmogrified into a study of the professions; but Engagement was added near the end of the empirical study.” 

The Good Work research study originally began with hundreds of interviews from a variety of different professions, including those such as genetics, journalism, law, and medicine. However, it was not until the research sample was later broadened to include more of the caring professions, such as teachers and nurses, that engagement was added to the “good work” model. These interviews indicated that without a clear commitment to and love of one’s work, those in these caring professions burnout or quickly leave the field. However, as other Good Project research has shown, too much engagement, or an overidentification with one’s work, can similarly lead to burnout. 

Lynn Barendsen described this phenomenon of engagement and over-engagement in The Good Project’s work with teachers over the past several years. These teachers, as Lynn noted, worked with The Good Project team on various research projects and have been “deeply committed to their students. Their work often went “above and beyond” - beyond regular hours and beyond “formal” commitments. The shared experiences between teachers and students can be positive experiences for both: teachers often describe learning from students, feeling a deep sense of meaning in their work; students identify teachers as role models for a lifetime. And yet teachers who give too much of themselves (especially in these days of remote learning) may well suffer from burnout and exhaustion.

Engagement as one of The Good Project’s 3 Es has been left open to some interpretation to fit a variety of contexts. In 2010, in line with Csikszentmihalyi’s original contributions to the Good Work project, we wrote that engagement means that the work “yields experiences of flow”. By 2015, engagement meant that a worker “likes to go to work, appreciates the institution in which she works, values her colleagues, and relishes the opportunity to practice her craft.” In 2021, we spoke of engaging work as being work that is “meaningful and purposeful for the worker.”

Figuring out how to create meaningful and purposeful work is not a new phenomenon (Cal Newport of The New Yorker asks us to remember the “follow your passion” hysteria of the 1990s parents of today’s Millennials). However, with the onset of Covid-19, the question of how to create and maintain one’s engagement in work became more important than ever, particularly in some spheres. A 2022 Gallup poll found that 44% of teachers felt burned out at work – significantly more than full time workers in any other industry. Moreover, only 35% of U.S. workers overall are considered “engaged” at work, and 61% of Gen Zers want a job that has a purpose beyond making a profit. 

At The Good Project, we’ve found that engagement overlaps with a variety of our other core concepts, such as missions, values, and responsibilities. A main finding from our work has been that having a common purpose or mission can often serve as a guidepost for employee engagement. As Lynn Barendsen explained, “Having a religious basis for work, or having colleagues that share the same mission, whether frankly religious or religious in spirit, can sometimes spell the difference between continuing and dropping out.” The Good Project has found that mission statements can help individuals to identify how their own values are in line with the mission of their organization. Indeed, missing statements have the power to “unify people around a common idea” and ask individuals to think about whether they agree with the kind of impact their organization is making in the world. 

Furthermore, The Good Project work has encouraged individuals to understand how their personal values contribute to their feelings of engagement. Individuals might do this by exploring their values via The Good Project Value Sort. That is, what is more important to them – acquiring wealth, acquiring fame, acquiring learning, or helping the community? Such rankings can help guide individuals to pursue work and activities that are more focused on their preferred values.

We know that more and more workers want to feel they are making a difference and are doing meaningful work. By using The Good Project’s Rings of Responsibility activity or exploring our impact framework, individuals can explore more what it means for them to make a difference in the world. Pursuing such work is another way for individuals to feel greater engagement.  

Consider the above definitions and suggestions. Would you consider yourself engaged at work? If yes, why? If not, why not? Might you be over-engaged? Burned out? Take stock of some of the suggestions recommended above. Do any of them resonate with your experience? Maybe your organization just needs to better articulate its mission and goals in order for you to feel a sense of direction. Or, rather, maybe your organization has a strong sense of mission, and you’re just not sure whether or not your values align because you haven’t had a chance to reflect on it systematically. Instead, perhaps you need to re-prioritize based on your overall goals for making a difference in your life. Or, maybe there is a conversation that could be started at your work regarding new goal setting or changing mindsets. 

Certainly, not every job will be engaging for every worker. But, hopefully, this blog helps offer some guidance for thinking about what engagement is and how and why one is or is not engaged in a variety of settings. 

Below are some resources you might use to explore engagement: 

A video describing the 3Es of The Good Project (Ethics, Excellence, & Engagement): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNqvhQUGPU&list=PL5sNbw1uznitpzLCwnv49tgumEAh1bcxG

What is my Mission? Activity 

https://www.thegoodproject.org/activities-database-blog/2020/8/12/interview-a-worker-9wg8s-xgzhs-k3prh-2g5k7-zewcz-d2bch?rq=engagement

“Tough Love” Dilemma

https://www.thegoodproject.org/activities-database-blog/2020/8/12/interview-a-worker-9wg8s-xgzhs-k3prh?rq=engagement

Picture Yourself as a… 

https://www.thegoodproject.org/activities-database-blog/2020/7/13/your-two-cents-lblty-b2854-y5xrs-b2jp4-zwkmk-6esn9-xdyny-fmwyf-p2rcr-92wa8?rq=engagement

The Good Project Core Concepts: Alignment and Misalignment

by Danny Mucinskas

Think about your current work and the organization or team that you are a part of. Take a moment to ask yourself some of the following questions:

• What are my goals? What are my colleagues’ goals? What are the goals of our organization or workplace?

• Do my colleagues share my opinions about our shared goals?

• How are the goals of our work made visible or tangible?

• What can I do to understand and bridge areas where others do not share my own views of our work?

It might be the case that you feel you know your goals well, that common goals are shared and discussed in your organization, and that others around you also subscribe to them. Or, less fortunately, you might feel the opposite.

In a previous blog post (linked), I emphasized the importance of personal and institutional mission statements and the role they can play in answering some of these questions and in guiding work to common purposes. Mission statements can help clarify the goals of individual and shared work and help to guide decisions.

When our team began The Good Project and researched a variety of professions, we looked not only at individuals but at all the constituencies involved in the work (e.g., in education, we spoke to students, teachers, administrators, and parents). In surveying the opinions of the various constituencies, we found two general states among the sectors we studied.

• Alignment: The people involved in a workplace or profession share the same goals as one another and have similar views of what constitutes success. Using the dimensions of “good work,” people in aligned workplaces or sectors have common understandings of excellence, of ethical behavior, and of what engages them in the work. This makes it easier for people to do good work with one another. It makes it more likely that quality, enjoyable work will be done together and less likely that ethical breaches will occur.

• Misalignment: The people involved in work together do not share similar goals or views about what their work should achieve. This situation can be due to differences of opinions at the individual level or to underlying structural issues. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to agree upon what successful work looks like. People are likely to work at cross-purposes, and “good work” is less likely to be achieved. Workers may feel disconnected from one another, and ethical mistakes can be made.

At the time of our investigation, we observed prototypical examples of aligned and misaligned professional domains.

First, genetics represented an aligned area. The interviewees we spoke to were united in a single common vision of bettering human life through scientific discovery. The common purpose united workers, providing them with a shared sense of excellence and a conviction that the work was serving ethical ends.  

Second, and not as happily, journalism was misaligned, especially between constituency groups. Depending upon their role, workers in the field seemed to have different priorities for what journalism was supposed to be or achieve. For example, while editors might have wanted to ensure profitability and involvement of their media outlets with high profile issues, rank-and-file journalists wanted to take part in investigative reporting that interested them, and readers and viewers of news largely just wanted to obtain information quickly and for free.

These two examples serve as models that might apply or relate to numerous workplaces today. Many of our readers come from the education sector, and if we were to guess, we might say that education is likely misaligned as a whole, although there are specific schools and institutions that have been able to help resolve or bring these misalignments together to form something new. For example, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner’s new book The Real World of College describes how higher education institutions are today torn between the desires of multiple constituencies (e.g., should colleges be places that prepare students to get jobs, to learn about a topic area in-depth, or to be personally transformed?). The authors make recommendations regarding how colleges today might react to these misalignments via better onboarding processes, for instance.

It is also possible to think about alignment and misalignment through a political lens. At the national level, the federal government of the United States has moved from a period of relative alignment about issues like environmental protection in the 1970s and 1980s and being “tough on crime” in the 1990s to extreme misalignment today about issues including climate change, healthcare, gun control, and abortion. As in workplaces, “good work” politically is easier to achieve when people are aligned. Congress was able to cooperate in the past to pass legislation that was effective. In the present, it is extremely difficult to see a productive path forward, given considerable misalignments in perspectives about the work that the government should be doing.

However, we also believe that misalignment is not a hopeless situation and can result in great creativity. Misalignments about the goals and purposes of work represent an opportunity for those who can to invest in repairing them and to problem-solve with others. If people within a workplace are experiencing misaligned perspectives, it may be time to launch a new program or protocol that will help people find commonality. While in most cases not simple or easy, the benefits of attempting to bridge misalignments will be worth it if doing “good work” becomes easier as a result.

In the end, none of us does our work completely alone without interfacing or at least having an effect on others, and we will all contend with areas of alignment and misalignment in daily practice. It is also likely to be the case that most organizations and fields aren’t completely aligned or misaligned but fall somewhere in the middle, with these two states as opposite ends of a spectrum. 

Consider where your workplace falls and how you might wish to open up conversations with others about the purposes of your work and what excellence, ethics, and engagement should look like in your context. It may also be useful to take stock of who the parties or constituencies are that influence your work, taking time to deliberately step back and reflect on where differences in views might cause difficulties or disagreements. For example, certain colleagues might make decisions influenced by personal pressures not experienced by others, or a supervisor might see the work of your organization fulfilling a different purpose than you do.

Below are some resources you might use to explore alignment and misalignment.

• A video explaining alignment and misalignment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4jkCNA48xg&list=PL5sNbw1uznitpzLCwnv49tgumEAh1bcxG

• The Good Collaboration Toolkit, a resource that attempts to create better alignment between partners in a collaborative endeavor

• “When In Doubt… Make It Excellent,” a dilemma about a teen working at a school newspaper and navigating expectations of others

• A blog on the meaning of solidarity at work

The Good Project Core Concepts: Responsibility

by Lynn Barendsen

As we think about what’s involved in carrying out good work and the challenges we face in our efforts, whether or not we realize it, issues of responsibility are often at the core of our decision-making. Some examples:

• Should I stick to my principles and speak up in a group meeting or go along with a majority that feels otherwise? 

• Should I confront my colleague about hurtful actions or remain quiet in an effort to keep the peace? 

• Should I tell the truth or remain quiet to protect someone close to me?

In the mid 1990s, when we began our research into what eventually became a study of good work, we interviewed well over a thousand workers in a variety of different domains. One of the most revealing questions we asked was “to whom or what do you feel responsible in your work?” Using this question as a reflection prompt for students and for educators, we have been struck by the impact of this simple inquiry. One student, having written a long list of his responsibilities, said “no wonder I’m so stressed!” Of course, simply making a list of responsibilities doesn’t mean that choices between them are spontaneously clear or obvious. But the process does help to reveal the factors that pull us in various directions, and sometimes this additional information can aid in decision-making.

When we grapple with ethical dilemmas, we are often wrestling with conflicting responsibilities:  responsibilities to ourselves, to our friends, to our families, to our co-workers, our workplace or profession, or to the wider world. Some of us express a sense of responsibility to our religion, to our identity or identities, to principles or ideals. Responsibility is a core idea on The Good Project for many reasons: how we understand our responsibilities (and which responsibilities take priority) is closely related to what we value and, which of those values have priority, how we construe our roles in the world, and what we understand our identities to be. Taking ownership for our work and its impact on the world is key to our understanding of what it means to do good work.

Over the years, we have written a great deal on the topic of responsibility. In fact, we’ve written an entire book on the topic, where various authors examine different aspects of responsibility through the lens of “good work” and additional perspectives: i.e., the relationship between creativity and responsibility, how responsibility may be understood differently by various groups (genders, types of workers, individuals who are/are not religious), considering responsibility as an “ability” to be responsive. 

In the world of education, teachers juggle multiple responsibilities, and during these past few years, many have felt overburdened by them. Although many tell us they feel their primary responsibility is to their students, they are conflicted about how best to fulfill these obligations. Some examples of dilemmas in which teachers struggle with responsibility might be found here (links in titles):

• The Protest: A teacher struggles to decide whether to take a stance about an issue she believes in (responsibility to ideal) or to respect another’s privacy (responsibility to colleague).

• Discriminating Decisions: An educator is deeply conflicted about following directions at work when the request conflicts with her core beliefs (responsibility to workplace versus responsibility to an ideal).

• The Meaning of Grades: A professor grapples between his responsibility to his beliefs (learning for learning’s sake) versus responsibility to his students (opportunities that might be lost if their grades aren’t top notch).

• Looking Good: The issue of grade inflation is explored from a slightly different angle as a teacher in a new pilot school is torn between his responsibilities to his students and to the school itself.

• Excellence at Risk: A teacher’s safety is at risk when a student threatens her, and she is torn about whether or not to press charges (responsibilities to self, to student, to the community).

We offer a number of additional resources on our website that address responsibility in various ways:

• This video describes the research findings that led to the development of the Circles of Responsibility.

• These writing prompts which encourage reflection about our various obligations and decision-making.

• This video, in which the GP team uses the idea of responsibility to unpack and analyze an ethical dilemma from our dilemmas database.

• Several blogs tackle the topic of responsibility from varied angles. Howard Gardner uses the rings of responsibility in this blog to analyze the life and work of John F. Kennedy. Two blogs consider responsibility in light of the COVID pandemic: Shelby Clark writes about encouraging student responsibility during the pandemic here; in this blog, Kirsten McHugh uses the rings of responsibility as a tool to reflect on how understandings of personal and professional responsibilities since the beginning of the pandemic.

Revisiting responsibilities regularly can be a useful exercise, especially as most of us are regularly juggling multiple obligations. Taking the time to pause, reflect and consider our responsibilities (perhaps using the 5 Ds as a guide) may help to identify core values driving our work.

Dilemma Discussions: An Overview for Educators

by Danny Mucinskas

The Good Project’s curricular resources, including our lesson plans and activities in our online database, focus in large part on discussions of dilemmas.

If you have never led a dilemma discussion before, we recognize that it may be daunting, as it is not always easy to open up a conversation with a room full of students that is not about a traditional disciplinary topic. As an educator, you might wonder how students will react to discussing a specific story, particularly if it deals with a sensitive topic or particularly thorny issue. You might also wonder whether students will find meaning in the activity, and how to keep the conversation “on track” by focusing on what is most salient. Here, our team provides further context about why we use dilemmas as a teaching tool; how you and your students might read dilemmas; and how a productive dilemma discussion in a classroom might unfold.

The Ideas Behind Dilemmas

Our dilemmas are narratives, each of which tells the story of an individual who struggles to make a difficult decision under complex circumstances. All of the dilemmas included in our materials are inspired by real-life cases, and they can be used to as a basis for reflection and conversation about how to do “good work.” As we define “good work,” it is excellent, engaging, and ethical. Oftentimes, the dilemma will involve someone who is torn between these three aspects of our framework of good work. For example, the narrative might describe someone who feels that performing their job responsibilities well would mean a conflict with their moral values, and therefore sacrificing ethics for the sake of excellence (e.g., a lawyer who is forced to defend someone who they believe is guilty of an abhorrent crime).

You can think of dilemma discussions as part of the tradition of the “case-study” method. Case studies are often used as a component of the curricula of professional schools, such as medical, business, or education schools. Such case studies provide students with authentic, in-depth problems of practice that they can discuss and analyze. As a result, they can develop insights that will be applicable in practice to their future careers. Dilemmas have been used as pedagogical tools in a variety of classroom environments, from elementary through graduate school. Additionally, dilemmas offer a powerful method of analyzing students’ ethical reasoning skills, a practice that traces back decades to the work of developmental psychologists like Carol Gilligan, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Jean Piaget.

Like the case studies of professional schools, the dilemmas compiled by The Good Project are intended for students to reflect upon and ideally discuss together, to analyze, and to extrapolate lessons. Our hope is that students will take these lessons with them as they inevitably encounter dilemmas in the world, in their schools and in their future workplaces.

Rather than adhere to any one domain or area of practice, our dilemmas cover a span of professional and academic settings. We chose to include a variety of environments in our narratives so that students can see what “good work” looks like no matter their life course. Additionally and ideally, students will develop skills that are applicable in any setting, including critical thinking, ethical reasoning, perspective-taking, and the ability to reflect.

Through dilemmas, students will put themselves in the shoes of others, gaining exposure to authentic problems that have arisen for individuals in real workplaces or schools. By engaging with the complexity of the narratives, students will become better prepared to make well-reasoned decisions. They will develop insights related to concepts like personal values, responsibility, and ethical frameworks. Using these concepts to pull apart what makes a dilemma complicated and vexing, students will be able to similarly confront real dilemmas that they are likely to encounter in their own lives and navigate them successfully to do “good work.”

How to Read a Dilemma

When looking at a dilemma for the first time, we recommend that you and your students prepare as follows. This process should help you to get the most out of the narrative and be ready to have a productive discussion together as a group.

1. Read the short version of the dilemma. Each dilemma begins with a 1-2 paragraph summary that covers the main elements of the narrative. (If time is short with your students, or you would like students to imagine details to add to a dilemma, you may want to use the short version only as a basis for discussion.)

2. Read the full version of the dilemma. The full dilemma will contain more information about the person at its center, what precipitated the situation, and which factors may have influenced  decision-making. As you read, make sure to highlight or write down information that is key to understanding the person and the circumstances that are described.

3. Look over your notes and scan through the text of the dilemma again. Now that you have an understanding of what happens in the case, it will be useful to ask yourself questions such as:

• Why is this situation a dilemma for the person described?

• What values are at stake?

• Are conflicting responsibilities present, and if so, what are they?

• What roles and identities does the person in the dilemma hold? How might these various roles and identities conflict? Would people who hold different roles handle the situation differently?

• Do excellence, engagement, and ethics play a role in the story? If so, how? If not, why not?

• What advice would you give the person in the dilemma?

• What other situations does the dilemma remind you of, perhaps in your own life?

It may be useful to create a mind map or other visual organizer of some sort as you analyze the dilemma. Or you could simply write down your thoughts under headings so you don’t forget your insights as you answer some of these questions. Feel free to use whatever aid to thinking and problem-solving works well for you.

4. Finally, consider your opinions about the conclusion of the dilemma. What do you think the person should do (or should have done), and why? Prepare to discuss or write about your opinions using evidence from the text or your own ideas about what might be missing.

How to Have a Dilemma Discussion

Dilemmas can be a source of individual reflection, but they are likely to be most fruitful as teaching tools in group settings. Classroom or small group discussions are ideal formats for students to grapple with dilemmas and to surface multiple viewpoints. Through discussion, your students will learn directly from their peers and be exposed to perspectives that perhaps they had not previously considered. They will practice sharing their opinions and resolving conflicts, and they will become more attuned to doing good work in practice.

We make a few recommendations for successful dilemma discussions below.

• Allow for debate. Students will (hopefully) have divergent views from one another, and it may lead to disagreements. Seek to uncover the source of differing opinions. Why does one student believe one course of action is appropriate in a dilemma, while another student prefers another course of action? Set ground rules for debate, such as those provided by the Better Arguments Project (e.g., “take winning off the table”) in co-designed workbooks available here.

• Ask open-ended questions. There may be lulls in the conversation, or students may not be talkative at first. Prompt them to contribute by asking questions that invite them to take part in the discussion.

• Probe for new ideas. It may seem like students are sharing only a few points, or the dialogue may be moving in circles. Try to expand the conversation by raising new points for students to consider.

• Encourage participation. It’s important that students be able to advocate for their views and that they feel the classroom is a safe space to do so. Students should also feel free to contribute examples from their own lives that may relate to the dilemma at hand. You may also wish to use strategies like picking names out of a bowl so students know they may be called upon, dependent upon your class norms and comfort level of students speaking up.

• Try different formats. It may be helpful for students to discuss first in small groups, to be assigned a position to advocate for in a debate, or to role-play as a particular stakeholder in the dilemma. 

• Maintain a climate of safety and respect. Students should make space for each other’s contributions and approach the conversation with kindness and empathy.

Importantly, an overall principle to keep in mind throughout the discussion is that there is no right or wrong answer to our dilemmas, even though there may well be better or worse solutions that merit discussion. Instead, a dilemma discussion is about the process of students asking one another questions, listening to perspectives, and understanding more deeply the circumstances that led to the dilemma to begin with, rather than arriving at any ultimate correct interpretation.

We hope you and your students enjoy working with our dilemmas! For a set of resources regarding structuring dilemma discussions in practice, including setting norms, developing trust, and how to deal with controversy, please see this post for more information.