Deliberative Interdependence: A Durkheimian Approach to Promoting Collaborative Learning in Diverse Classrooms

ABSTRACT

As institutions of higher education have become more diverse over the past several decades, building a strong sense of community in the classroom has emerged as a core moral and pedagogical imperative to make students from all backgrounds feel welcome and promote their academic success. In this paper, I argue that the pedagogy underlying the impetus for community building in the classroom is premised on a problematic understanding of the type of bonds that connect students in a genuinely diverse classroom. In Durkheimian terms, these bonds are more akin to organic solidarity (bonds by virtue of mutual reliance) than mechanical solidarity (bonds by virtue of shared cultural and moral beliefs). Instead of community building, I propose deliberative interdependence as a more effective model for generating collaborative learning in diverse classrooms. I illustrate how to apply this model through innovative learning and assessment methods and draw on student course evaluations to document their effectiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaborative learning
• community
• diversity
• inclusion
• group work

COMMUNITY AS STRONG MORAL BONDS IN THE CONTEXT OF DIVERSITY?

As institutions of higher education have become more diverse over the past several decades (de Brey et al. 2019), building a strong sense of community in the classroom has emerged as a core moral and pedagogical imperative to make students from all backgrounds feel welcome and promote their academic success. Concretely, this is often taken to mean that instructors should undertake serious efforts to bridge the divide between students from different backgrounds in the service of establishing a deep culture of empathy and camaraderie in the classroom. This language is commonplace in teaching centers at university and college campuses across the country. For example, Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation encourages instructors to conceptualize their course as a community and defines community building as constructing a “shared identity” among students (CTI n.d.). As part of its recommendations for community building, Carnegie Mellon University’s teaching center advises instructors to foster close relationships among students by drawing on research from experimental psychology that shows how to “speed up” the process of developing friendships (ECTEEI n.d.). Similarly, the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Connecticut states that building community is foundational for classroom equity and partly defines community as having students feel “cared for” by their peers (CETL n.d.). A quick glance at the website of nearly any teaching center reveals an emphasis on community building defined as a process that embeds learning in a series of interactions that foster deep bonds of intergroup understanding, engagement, and trust (e.g. CATL n.d.; CITL n.d.; CTAL n.d.; CTL n.d.).

This view is rooted in a growing body of work showing the positive impact of community, belonging, and group work on students’ academic success. The issue is that this work does not address the question of building community among students from diverse backgrounds. For example, one branch of the literature on community building advocates for cultivating relationships among students as a means to decrease their anxiety toward difficult course material, nurture their internal motivation, and make the learning process meaningful (Chambliss and Takacs 2014; Escandell and Chu 2021; Gravett and Winstone 2022; Macheski et al. 2008); but this work discusses students in general, without placing them in their specific social context and group identities. The literature on belonging does focus on making the classroom feel welcoming for specific subsets of historically minoritized students, an issue of paramount importance (Booker 2016; Stephens et al. 2012; Walton and Cohen 2007), but it does not address the question of building connections between students across these groups. And much of the literature on group work either emphasizes its instrumental value for learning (Cebulak and Zipp 2019; Monson 2017) or, as with the literature just mentioned, fails to directly address the question of building a shared identity among students from different backgrounds (Bailey, Barber, and Ferguson 2015; Sublett et al. 2022).

There are no theoretical insights or empirical findings in this research for conceptualizing, much less successfully implementing, strategies that facilitate the development of strong moral bonds between students with different life experiences. Moreover, such an effort stands at odds with one of the most robust insights in the history of our discipline: people gravitate and tend to build strong connections with people who are like them. From Marx and Engels’ (1978) theories of class formation, Weber’s (2009) reflections on status groups, and Du Bois (2007) analysis of racial groups, to more contemporary work like Goffman’s (1959) theory of the self, Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of habitus or Davis’ (1983) critical history of Black women, the general insight is that strong bonds emerge among those whose interests and experiences intersect.

DURKHEIM ON THE CHARACTER OF COMMUNITY IN THE CONTEXT OF DIVERSITY

To conceptualize the basis of community in the context of diversity, I propose we turn to an unlikely source of inspiration: Émile Durkheim. The type of strong moral bonds, rooted in a deeply internalized shared culture, that characterize current discussions about classroom community are akin to what Durkheim ([1893] 1984) called “mechanical solidarity.” It is worth bringing Durkheim’s views to bear on this issue because his concern with solidarity resembles the question of community building in the classroom.

Durkheim argued that relatively undifferentiated societies are held together by a type of solidarity based on likeness: people (“mechanically”) resemble each other in their beliefs, values, and daily routines, and a sense of camaraderie ensues as a result. But what nurtures solidarity in highly differentiated—or we might say, diverse—societies? Conceptually, the challenge is the same in highly diverse classrooms. How do we build a strong sense of solidarity or community among students whose sense of self is organized around different group identities, values, life experiences, class backgrounds, educational trajectories, and professional goals? For Durkheim, groups like this are held together by “organic solidarity,” a thin form of solidarity based mostly on interdependence. In contexts like this, people develop a sense of camaraderie, not because they think or behave alike, but because they depend on each other for their survival and well-being.

DELIBERATIVE INTERDEPENDENCE

The pedagogical insight to be gained from Durkheim’s analysis is that attempting to build community among diverse students may be more easily achieved if they depend on each other for their academic success. Inspired by this insight, I propose deliberative interdependence as a method for generating solidarity among students from different backgrounds. Deliberative interdependence promotes collaborative learning through formal rules that make students accountable to each other for their academic performance on assignments. It nurtures inclusivity through a decision rule and camaraderie through deliberation. I have applied this formative assessment model in three different formats: collective quizzes, collective exams, and collective oral exams.

The quizzes consist in a set of multiple choice questions that students answer in small groups by consensus, that is, they must engage in deliberation with the members of their group to identify the correct answers. The consensus rule ensures that minority voices are given a space and taken seriously during deliberation (Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Mattioli 2015). Only the last question on the quiz is answered individually. In one variant of this question, I ask students to grade themselves on the degree to which they participated and contributed to their group’s success on the quiz. In another, I ask students to grade each other and average out the grades each student receives to calculate their grade for that question. Collective exams are a three step process. First, students individually take a multiple choice exam. Then, they are randomly placed in pairs and take the same exam again, this time deciding the answers by consensus with their peer. Finally, they take the exam one more time in small groups, again deciding the answers by consensus. Each student’s individual final exam grade is the average of the grades received on the three exams.

For collective oral exams, I place students in small groups at the beginning of the course. Three weeks before the exam date, I provide the class with three questions, one of which I will randomly choose to ask them during the exam. All members of a group can contribute their views to answer the main question and follow up questions. Students are graded on accuracy, comprehensiveness, and clarity. At the end of the exam, I ask students to give each of their group members a grade on the degree to which they contributed to their group’s preparation and success. That grade accounts for 25 percent of their exam grade; the rest is based on their answer to the exam question.

The collective quiz, exam, and oral exam foster interdependence by making the process of completing the assignment and assigning grades a collective matter. Each student’s success depends on their peers, making them all accountable to each other regardless of their racial or gender identities, class background, religious affiliations, or political leanings. It unites them by virtue of having to solve a task together and empowers them to hold each other accountable through the grading mechanism.

EVIDENCE

I have used collective quizzes, exams, and oral exams in both synchronous remote and in-person lower- and upper-division courses that ranged in size from 41 to 127 students at the University of California, San Diego (USCD). Sociology is one of the most diverse majors in the social sciences division at UCSD, and in every course, roughly half my students are first generation, half are transfer students, 30–35 percent identify as Asian, 25–30 percent as Latinx and a similar proportion as White, and around 2 percent identify as Black.

In my course evaluations for 10 courses across three years (with response rates at or above 85 percent) students have systematically identified the collective quizzes as the single most important factor in my classes that contributed to a sense of community. The¹ evaluations also show that 85 percent or more of my students felt a stronger sense of community in my courses compared to other courses they were taking that quarter. One student in my Sociology of Social Justice class during Spring 2021 commented, “The quizzes and weekly reading notes kept me on task throughout the quarter and the group structure of the quizzes helped to create a connection with fellow students … . The structure allowed for a cooperative rather than competitive effort—I found it effective.” In my class on Classical Social Theory during Fall 2021, one student stated, “very different from other courses, but in a good way. I liked being able to work with others when discussing the quizzes. I also enjoyed being able to hear from others when we had different ideas on what the answer may have been. I liked the collaboration aspect because it made me feel less anxious.” In the scholarship of teaching and learning, student opinions are rightly considered indirect sources of evidence about learning; however, in this case what is being measured is the degree to which they feel a sense of community, a subjective experience for which, I would argue, survey responses constitute a direct form of evidence.²

It is also worth noting that class size, course level, course format, and institutional context do not constrain the method’s potential. At most, these factors inform instructors’ practical considerations for running the collective assessments. Randomly placing students in groups can be done in seconds using the breakout room function on Zoom. It takes only a few more minutes to do this for in-person classes. In large lecture halls with seats that are fixed in place, I opt for having smaller groups of around three students, so that students collaborate with those sitting next to them. In smaller classrooms or spaces where seats and tables can be moved, I organize students in larger groups of four to six students. In my experience, the difference across these spatial configurations, class formats (online or in person), and student enrollment amount to no more than minutes when organizing the groups.

CONCLUSION

I have found deliberative interdependence to be an effective method for bringing students from different backgrounds together to complete assignments in a manner that they find meaningful and helpful for their learning. Much empirical research remains to be done to map out the specific aspects of learning that this method promotes. But my experience using it during the past three years at a large public research university gives me confidence about the solidarity and collaborative learning it can nurture in highly diverse classrooms. My hope is that instructors elsewhere use it, extend it, and modify it in critical and creative ways to further identify its merits and potential for doing justice to the increasing diversity in colleges and universities. We owe this to our students, many of whom have endured many challenges to arrive in our classrooms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michel Estefan

Michel Estefan is an assistant teaching professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research and teaching focus on equitable pedagogy, social theory, the rule of law, methods, policing, and race.

Notes

¹ I do not have data on the collective exams and oral exams because they are taken during finals week, after students have filled out course evaluations; however, I can say, anecdotally, that they contribute to my students’ sense of community in a manner similar to the quizzes.

² I discuss the positive learning effects that deliberative interdependence can have for students in general and specifically for first-generation and working-class students in Estefan, Selbin, and Macdonald (2023).