Teaching During the U.S. Election

The U.S. election is a high-stakes, emotionally resonant national moment. One study of college students during the 2020 election cycle found that 76% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the election was causing them anxiety, with students who identified as Hispanic/Latinx, women, and LGBTQ+ reporting higher levels of stress (Ballard et al., 2022). The purpose of this Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning and Swearer Center for Public Service newsletter is to support our academic community in preparing intentionally for classes immediately adjacent to November 5, 2024.

We see the election as an opportunity to build our students’ capacity to think and talk across difference in the political spectrum. To illustrate, the percentage of Brown first-year students who report that they rarely or never had conversations with students who differed from them in political beliefs has increased (from 12% in 2011 to 27% in 2023, Enrolled Student Survey, Brown OIR). Among seniors, we see a similar increase over more than a decade (19% in 2011 and 26% in 2023). Here we offer several possibilities for preparing for these discussions, addressing the topic, or acknowledging the emotions that many members of the Brown community may be facing at this time.

Because I have decided that in my classroom I will address relevant events that can cause emotions to run high, we spend time over the first few weeks of class creating community norms and agreements about the types of dialogue we want to have. This enables students to hold each other accountable for allowing each other to express differing views. I know I can’t fully prepare and I expect conversations will be uncomfortable, but I plan ahead to make space, especially as it ties to goals of the course.

-Professor Emily Kalej Qazilbash, Department of Education

Opportunities in the moment
The national election offers opportunities to deepen our students’ civic engagement. Traditional college-aged voters account for almost one third of the eligible voting population in the U.S. Brown supports nonpartisan initiatives encouraging democratic participation, including Brown Votes, collaboration with TurboVote, and the federal Election Day holiday. The Brown Votes Civic Engagement Toolkit 2024 provides suggestions for faculty interested in communicating key voting-related dates and resources.

Further, the moment offers opportunities for instructors to work with their students to dialogue across difference, political and otherwise. This Faculty Bulletin piece summarizes some of the strategies shared by Brown faculty during the Spring 2024 Sheridan Center series on difficult conversations, including low-stakes writing, close reading, and being attentive to one’s “trust moves” in the classroom (Felten, Forsyth, and Sutherland, p. 6). Sheridan Center resources on Facilitating Controversial Discussions and Supporting a Diverse International Student Community also offer useful approaches.

In all of these efforts, strategies to build student agency can be helpful to allow students a sense of autonomy over their learning and to cultivate resilience. Inclusive Teaching in an Open Curriculum offers several strategies for constructing autonomy-rich environments (see: “Do I have control over my work?”)

Taking these proactive steps before November can be useful to establish a positive learning environment. However, we also encourage instructors to plan for the classes immediately following the election and, below, offer guidance for those moments.

Signaling your concern for students
Generally, research suggests that students appreciate when instructors acknowledge issues of deep campus and global concern. A study on instructional responses after large-scale emotional events found that the vast majority of students appreciate when an instructor briefly acknowledges a distressing event before moving forward with the lesson (Huston & DiPietro, 2007). A brief non-partisan acknowledgement of your concern for students' well-being during difficult emotional times can signal your care for students while also addressing the need to focus class time on key course objectives. A sample verbal statement might be something like the following:

I understand that this is likely a challenging day to be thinking about [subject]. I also imagine that by being here today, like me, you find some reassurance in observing this moment as a community. In a minute, I will turn to the topic in the syllabus, but I do understand that it may be difficult to focus, and so I will [as applicable: record the session, share notes, ask the class to take collaborative notes] and be available later this week in office hours to support your learning and well-being.

Holding a discussion soon
Depending on the learning objectives of your class, a discussion of the results of the election can benefit student learning, engagement and well-being — and help you address course material in a highly relevant way. However, thinking intentionally about how to facilitate a controversial discussion is important to avoid some common pitfalls, which psychologist Derald Sue (2013) summarizes as silencing, abruptly cutting off dialogue, and allowing the discussion to develop in unproductive and potentially harmful ways. If you choose to have a discussion during class, planning the contours of the discussion and anticipating hot moments are important considerations.

Instructors may wish to use a brief minute paper with prompts, such as inviting students to reaffirm their own key values (Miyake et al., 2010) or to link observed dynamics to course content. Writing to Learn in Times of Change offers several ideas for how to structure in- and out-of-class writing. Some potential applications include:

Before a class discussion, give students three to five minutes to free-write.
If a discussion starts to go off topic, pause the discussion and give students three to five minutes to put down their thoughts in writing.
At the end of class discussion, give students time for writing. A useful prompt might be to ask them to write about one thing they changed their mind about during the course of the discussion, or one thing about which they would like to know more.

Although a heated verbal exchange is the most popular image of a controversial discussion, unproductive silence is another common outcome (Sue, 2013). For discussions that seem stalled or superficial, Helen Fox (2009) recommends having students write on an index card, "One thing I've been reluctant to say....," which serves as a prompt for follow-up discussion. Written, or silent, discussions can also be effectively employed for online and hybrid contexts.

Staging a discussion for later
A third possibility is to combine both of the approaches above by engaging in a brief acknowledgement in the immediate week but postponing decisions about a discussion until later. This approach may be preferable if you are processing your own emotional response, if you want more time to think through an approach, or if students raise the topic in ways that you had not anticipated. In the latter case, instructors can recognize the importance of the topic, indicate that taking more time to think about it would be helpful, and, if applicable, that they may plan to revisit it in later class sessions.

Other resources to support Brown instructors and students include:

Staff at the Sheridan Center are available to plan or debrief pre- and post-election classroom discussions: sheridan_center@brown.edu. Brown’s Swearer Center for Public Service is also available for 1:1 consultation, for instructors who seek to develop more discipline-specific customized learning opportunities for their students (email Julie_Plaut@brown.edu).
The Brown Votes Civic Engagement Toolkit 2024 provides suggestions for faculty interested in communicating key voting-related dates and resources.
The Brown Library Voting Guide has several non-partisan resources to make sure you’re up to date on the issues in your state. Instructions to embed this guide into a Canvas site can be found here.
Would you like to learn how to negotiate difficult conversations when teaching in Canvas, Zoom, and other digital platforms? Faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and staff can register for Having Difficult Conversations in the Online Classroom, which will be offered synchronously by Zoom on 15 October (Noon - 12:40 PM) and asynchronously by Canvas. For more information and to register, please see the Sheridan Center’s events page.
As we gear up for the upcoming election, the Swearer Center for Public Service and the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning are currently planning a drop-in dinner for faculty and anyone in an instructional role to make space for discussions on how to engage with election-related conversations that may come up in the classroom before and after November 5. Please complete this interest form to receive more information on the details of this dinner.

This resource was originally drafted in November 2016, updated November 2020 and September 2024. It was authored by Dr. Mary Wright, Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning, Executive Director of Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, and Professor (Research) in Sociology, with input from Dr. Julie Plaut, Director of Engaged Scholarship for the Swearer Center for Public Service; Dr. Charles Carroll, Associate Director of Graduate Student Writing in the Sheridan Center; and Dr. Matthew Goode, Director of Sheridan Center Operations.

References

Ballard, P. J., Hoyt, L. T., Yazdani, N., Kornbluh, M., Cohen, A. K., Davis, A. L., & Hagan, M. J. (2022). Election-related sociopolitical stress and coping among college students in the United States. Journal of American College Health: 1–11.

Case, K. (2020). Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence Newsletter: 2020 Election Edition.

Felten, P., Forsyth, R., Sutherland, K. (2023) Building trust in the classroom: A conceptual model for teachers, scholars, and academic developers in higher education. Teaching & Learning Inquiry 11(July). Available: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/TLI/article/view/77047

Fox, H. (2004). "When race breaks out": Conversations about race and racism in college classrooms. New York: Peter Lang.

Huston, T.A., & DiPietro, M. (2007). In the eye of a storm. To Improve the Academy, 25: 207-224.

Miyake, A., Kost-Smith, L. E., Finkelstein, N. D., Pollock, S. J., Cohen, G. L., & Ito, T. A. (2010). Reducing the gender achievement gap in college science: A classroom study of values affirmation. Science, 330(6008), 1234-1237. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1195996