Facilitating critical discourse through “meaningful disagreement” online

Abstract

This paper is concerned with identifying ways of facilitating "meaningful disagreement" amongst students in interprofessional online discussion forums. It builds on previous research that identified a trend toward polite agreement and only limited evidence of disagreement in this setting. Given the suggestion that disagreement indicates a deeper level of engagement in group discussion and therefore leads to deeper learning, our aim was to critique the pedagogical approach adopted by analyzing whether we were promoting a particular interprofessional discourse amongst students that favored agreement and therefore limited potential learning. Agreement in this context has been conceptualized as a form of online interprofessional "netiquette" existing amongst participants. Findings suggest that creating an online context for critical discourse is challenging; however, the careful construction of learning outcomes, trigger material/resources and learning activities, as well as attention to students' stage of study and life experience, can provoke the desired effects.

The good enough facilitator: exploring online interprofessional therapeutic facilitation in times of COVID-19

“…The aim of this research was to increase understanding of the efficacy of differing facilitation styles and the consequences of the student's experiences. This paper employs a discursive approach (Edwards & Potter, 1992) developing a new strand which adds to the three previous studies which explored the evidence of agreement (Clouder et al, 2011), meaningful disagreement (Dalley-Hewer et al, 2012), and an ecological systems theory analysis (P. Bluteau et al, 2017) of the IPLP. The discursive approach used in this original research paper employs discourse analysis to explore what was actually said within the discussion groups and explore the development of the groups and the group members, in which the facilitators had a central role.…”