Tutor dominating the group
With reference to the sections on what is a seminar for you can see, I am sure, that what is crucially important is the input of students. This is the forum for students to try out ideas and to practice philosophising as well as to get points clarified and test them out and try to equate them with your own understanding and views on the world. What sometimes happens is that the tutor, possibly through lack of confidence, starts to guide the seminar rather too much so that it becomes a mini version of the lecture. Students can also consciously or unconsciously conspire to make this happen because, lets face it, it is much less work to hear someone speak than to formulate your own responses.
Ways around this are for the tutor to:
1. explicitly take a back seat, possibly even to leave the room having set a task for the group to work on;
2. always pass some questions over to the group, e.g., the response to, "why did Galileo make the distinction between primary and secondary qualities?" could be, "a number of reasons have been suggested, but why do you think he might, what does he gain from this manoeuvre? Anyone have any ideas on that?"
3. profess a lack of certainty and ask for help, e.g., "I sort of get the idea of panpsychism, everything is supposed to have some mindlike qualities, but how does that actually work? What does it mean for a rock? Can anyone help me here?"
4. monitor the exchanges that take place to check that everyone has opportunities to speak and that not all responses are channelled through you. You can even point out to students who answer by speaking to you to direct their answers to the group;
5. ask for connections to personal experience, where this can be relevant because this is valuing something that the tutor cannot provide;
6. hand over some of the tutor type tasks to a student, e.g., writing up things on the board, chairing a debate.
One or two students dominating the group
Having tried so hard to get everyone talking what can sometimes happen is that one or two take on the task for everyone else. Sometimes this can happen out of a mixture of desperation to avoid silence and a lack of skill in letting other people in. The tutor can do a lot to encourage wider participation: pairs, sub groups, interrupting and directing questions more widely, and having a word with individuals after the seminar to explain what is happening or being explicit about the problem in the seminar. Students can also make it clear that they want to contribute and are not getting the chance. In really difficult cases the group could even allocate air time.
Return to Seminar Guide // Return to Collaborative Learning in Philosophy page