Teaching Negotiation

¶ … Intersectionality and dissensus: A negotiation of the feminist classroom," Wanggren & Sellberg (2012) discuss how to introduce a more collaborative feminist perspective into the modern classroom. Rather than viewing debate and discussion in the classroom as a zero-sum game, the authors stress the need for a more open-minded ethos to further gender equality. "Dissensus is a heterogeneous power structure that gives place for numerous differences, both real and imagined," including the teacher-student relationship (Wanggren & Sellberg 2012).

Instead of a teaching relationship in which the teacher teaches 'to' the student, the relationship must be one of a continual, ongoing exchange of ideas in the form of a collaborative negotiation in which teacher and student assume different roles and both produce knowledge. The authors see current methods of teaching as ones in which are mired in undesirable power relationships.

"The hierarchies of the classical educational model are inseparable from other social hierarchies - class, and the cultural and intellectual capital which underpins the way in which class operates in practice" (Wanggren & Sellberg 2012). However, the classroom can become a radical site of social change if people are treated equally, despite the growing divides in funding for the education of the wealthy and the poor in America.

The authors envision a "classroom where the goal is not to score the highest points, say the right things, and proceed to as profitable a position as possible, but instead to critically question received information" and acquire knowledge through negotiating one's current assumptions about society (Wanggren & Sellberg 2012). This should be true of both teachers and students. One of the problems with Wanggren & Sellberg's analysis is that it can seem excessively theoretical from the point-of-view of the educator.

Does this mean that debate and competition must be removed from the classroom? To prepare students for the future world, this would not seem desirable. However, the value of introducing other conflict resolution strategies into classroom pedagogy to give students other 'tools' with.