Preparing Seniors for Independent Thinking through Leaderless Discussion

Last week, I had my students engage in a Leaderless (Student-Led) Discussion. I prepared the series of questions concerning the work we've been doing this year with Freud, Heart of Darkness, and most recently Kafka's Metamorphosis. When students arrived in class, I had desks arranged in two concentric circles, one inside the other, and I directed students to sit in either. At the start of class, I explained the ground rules and purpose of the exercise: Everyone speaks, listen first, ask interesting questions, keep the conversation going. All students prepped for five minutes by annotating questions from the list that interested them and finding one quote in Freud, Kafka, or Conrad that they could read aloud to the group for discussion. Students in the outside circle were given a grid to keep track of which students in the inner circle initiated topics, responded, or asked questions. After fifteen minutes, students on the inside would switch with those on the outside and continue. The teacher and those in the outer circle were to remain silent. At the end of class, we would all debrief and students were to use their individual class blogs that night to respond to any topic discussed or to comment on the process itself.
  The excercise went well, though always unpredictably, and students were lively and engaged, with only a few awkward pauses. Afterwards, students were enthusiastic about the process and quite articulate about the implications for independence from the teacher and peer-to-peer learning. Many of the student blogs explored the philosophy of letting students self-direct their own discussions and learning, with some worrying about the open-endedness and directionlessness of such conversations. Overall, everyone agreed we would experiment further as second semester seniors moved toward graduation.
    This is the third year I have used such discussions and they continue to energize second semester seniors and give them a new measure of freedom from teacher-dominated Socratic discussions. I hope to drive home the points that they have a growing ability to self-regulate, self-direct, and share learning in their own student community. I emphasize, and hope they remember, to help actualize such learning experiences next year in college and to shift from receptive-regurgition models to self-directed, constructivist ones.