The Discussion Book: 50 Great Ways to Get People Talking

  • 2h 8m
  • Stephen D. Brookfield, Stephen Preskill
  • John Wiley & Sons (US)
  • 2016

Build teams, make better decisions, energize groups, and think out of the box

Do you need a resource that you can pull out of your pocket to liven up meetings, trainings, professional development, and teaching? The fifty easily applied techniques in this timely manual spur creativity, stimulate energy, keep groups focused, and increase participation. Whether you're teaching classes, facilitating employee training, leading organizational or community meetings, furthering staff and professional development, guiding town halls, or working with congregations, The Discussion Book is your go-to guide for improving any group process.

Each of the concrete techniques and exercises is clearly described with guidance on selection and implementation, as well as advice on which pitfalls to avoid. All of the techniques:

  • Offer new ways to engage people and energize groups
  • Get employees, students, colleagues, constituents, and community members to participate more fully in deliberative decision-making
  • Encourage creativity and openness to new perspectives
  • Increase collaboration and build cohesive teams
  • Keep groups focused on important topics and hard-to-address issues

Derived from the authors' decades of experience using these exercises with schools, colleges, corporations, the military, social movements, health care organizations, prisons, unions, non-profits, and elsewhere, The Discussion Book will help you guide discussions that matter.

About the Authors

STEPHEN D. BROOKFIELD is the John Ireland Endowed Chair at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books including The Skillful Teacher, Teaching for Critical Thinking, and Powerful Techniques for Teaching Adults, from Jossey-Bass.

STEPHEN PRESKILL is professor emeritus at Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. He is the author, with Stephen Brookfield, of Discussion as a Way of Teaching and Learning as a Way of Leading, both from Jossey-Bass.

In this Book

  • The Discussion Book—50 Great Ways to Get People Talking
  • Preface
  • User Guide
  • Introduction
  • Circle of Voices
  • Chalk Talk
  • Circular Response
  • Newsprint Dialogue
  • Today’s Meet
  • Giving Appreciation—The Appreciative Pause–Sticky Note Plaudit
  • Rotating Stations
  • Snowballing
  • Conversational Moves
  • Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ)
  • Strategic Questioning
  • Open-ended Questions
  • Nominating Questions
  • If You Could Only Ask One Question
  • On-the-Spot Questions and Topics
  • What Do You Think?
  • Clearness Committee
  • Team Modeling
  • Question Brainstorm
  • Narrative Listening and Questioning
  • Participation Rubric
  • Critical Conversation Protocol
  • What Are You Hearing?
  • Understanding Check
  • Stand Where You Stand
  • Think-Pair-Share
  • Drawing Discussion
  • Musicalizing Discussion
  • Structured Silence
  • Writing Discussion
  • Quick Writes
  • Cocktail Party
  • Bohmian Dialogue
  • Methodological Belief
  • Justifiable Pressure
  • Hatful of Quotes
  • Quotes to Affirm and Challenge
  • Jigsaw
  • Titling the Text
  • Critical Debate
  • Single Word Sum-Ups
  • Setting Ground Rules
  • Canvassing for Common Ground
  • Dramatizing Discussion
  • Deliberative Polling
  • Participatory Decision Making
  • Mutual Invitation
  • The Three-Person Rule
  • Conversational Roles
  • Facilitator Summary
  • Bibliography
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