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The questions we instructors ask propel classroom conversations in various ways. Though sometimes our questions merely elicit information from students or allow us to gauge how well students have digested course material, our questions may also stimulate students' insights and lead the entire class to novel understandings of controversial issues. Different ways of talking, including how we ask questions, bring about different learning experiences and ultimately create different realities.
When we address controversial issues such as gender and racial/ethnic inequality, religion, and politics, the discussions among students and between instructor and student(s) take turns that may challenge the instructor's ability to manage the discussion productively. Many times in my own Intercultural Communication courses I have encountered students who make remarks perceived by others as racist or insensitive, stirring controversy and distracting us from the issue at hand. Although no technique can prevent such disturbances entirely, a technique called Circular Questioning has been used effectively in some conflict-prone settings and shows promise for applications in the classroom setting.
I would like to take the question in the title as a departure point to illustrate how I use Circular Questioning (CQ) to facilitate student discussion of potentially controversial material . First, I will give a brief background on Circular Questioning; second, I will provide details of how the process works in other settings; and, third, I will explain what I seek to achieve by adapting CQ for use in the classroom.
Circular Questioning: An Overview
Circular questioning is the centerpiece of a group of Italian family therapists known as the Milan Group. Their experiences with families of schizophrenics led them to question and discard structural approaches in therapy and to incorporate systems theory, which draws heavily on the work of Gregory Bateson, into their work. For Bateson, mental processes are a form of cybernetic feedback, and "mind" consists of components connected in circular patterns. For therapists such as Karl Tomm, circularity means " the capacity of the therapist to conduct his [sic] investigation on the basis of feedback from the family in response to the information he solicits about relationships." Tomm also regards circularity as "a bridge connecting systemic hypothesizing and neutrality by means of the therapists' activity" (p. 33). (For more detail, see Tomm's as well as Cronen and Pearce's work in circular interviewing.)
Systemic therapists attempt to understand the system and to facilitate therapeutic change. To achieve these goals, they use two types of Circular Questions: descriptive and reflexive. They use the former to elicit information to help them understand how the "problem" is systemically connected, while they use the latter to attempt to precipitate a change in that particular system. In general, using CQ in therapeutic intervention not only demonstrates respect for the autonomy of the system, but also provides more possibilities for transformation than does offering opinions, prescriptions, directives, or instructions. In family therapy, the method has three key aspects: circularity, neutrality, and hypothesizing.
The circularity of CQ results from asking questions in such a way that the family can make new connections and think in new ways about certain events and acts. This requires shifting person-positions from first-person actor to third-person observer. For example, when a mother describes her son's perception of his father, the father faces a new image of himself. Instead of asking the son linear questions, such as "Do you love your father?" the therapists ask the mother circular questions, such as "How does your son show his love for his father?"
Neutrality, the second aspect of Circular Questioning, protects therapists from being forcibly incorporated into a family's system.. Normally, neutrality implies a lack of bias or involvement. In the case of Circular Questioning, Systemic therapists expect to be drawn into the conflicting patterns of the family, so they match this expectation in unexpected ways: they intervene by joining the family's system of knowledge in order to help change the very same patterns of meaning and action that have brought the family to therapy. Therapists using Circular Questioning work in teams to take the side of the entire family and not the side of any one particular family member. They do this by asking each other circular questions in the family's presence. For example, one therapist might ask another, "What do you think is the biggest challenge this family faces together?" Besides performing a person-shift, this question indicates to family members that they have to work together and that the therapists see them as a unit.
The third aspect of Circular Questioning, hypothesizing, is used to guide the family to make connections among elements of the stories told by family members and the actions associated with those stories. Therapists create a flurry of hypotheses, all of which suggest different patterns of connections. They may hypothesize that a person being treated for depression has been and will be through periods of being "not depressed." Instead of asking that person, "Why are you depressed?" they might ask, "When you are not depressed, what do you enjoy the most about not being depressed?" In searching for systemic connections, the therapists may ask the group, "Who is most affected by X's depression?" They might also give a positive connotation to a symptom. For example, they may praise the depressed person's behavior, hypothesizing that this depression is what holds the family together. From this point, they hypothesize that when the depressed person is ready to let others share the burden of holding the family together, s/he might find it easier not to be depressed.
Once a team of therapists joins a family system to explore how persons, actions, and ideas are inter(in)dependent, they use CQ to help the family become aware of how they engage with their "problems" by thinking and acting in certain patterns, and to guide them in creating alternate patterns. Rejecting the notion that problems are "caused" by meanings inside a person's head, therapists use CQ to help people conceive of things like "family problems" as socially constructed achievements. Ultimately, CQ helps therapists probe for the ways families describe their relationships; in essence, it helps therapists discover a "grammar" of meaning and action within relationships in order to transform painful patterns of interaction.
Using CQ in Mediation And Community Dialogues
In its journey from family therapy to classroom settings, Circular Questioning also has been used as a technique for group deliberation in community dialogues and for mediation. Working with a group of facilitators of community dialogues, I have used CQ to help participants express their views about others and understand each other's perspectives on a conflict and its role within their relationships. Facilitators typically ask participants to describe a problem from their own viewpoints and to explain how and why the problem began. Prompted by these questions, participants describe how the problem affects their behavior and their relationships. Here the technique shows its transformative potential: participants describe what their relationships were like before and during the problem and begin speculating about what their lives will be like after the problem is resolved. They prioritize, compare, rank, and speculate about the future. (See Littlejohn and Domenici's and Spano's applications.)
In mediation, I have used CQ in three stages. In the opening remarks, I ask disputants to share about what brings them to the mediation session, what they hope to accomplish, and what they're prepared to do about the situation. During the session, I might ask the disputants to speculate what their lives would be like if the problem continued unresolved and to consider what it might take for them to move toward a resolution. If they reach an agreement, I ask them to imagine any reason the settlement might not work and to think how they would handle it in that case. These seemingly simple questions facilitate the person-shifts necessary for circularity, lay the ground for hypothesizing about a settlement, and establish my neutrality and my commitment to helping them transform their issue. (See Gadlin and Ouelette in the list of suggested readings for their succinct application of the Milan approach to mediation).
In sum, using CQ in community dialogue and mediation allows us to search for a different story, helping participants move away from blaming and negatively characterizing others, toward new ways of thinking about problems and new ways of acting in the face of such problems.
From The Classroom
I function under the assumption that the classroom is a system of knowledge. As such, it is a composite unit with parts or elements coherently organized under a common goal. Such coherence derives from the circular and reciprocal relationships among its components: the students and the instructor. Just as therapists focus their attention on how ideas, feelings, actions, persons, etc., are circularly connected, in the classroom I focus on understanding how these connections can transform the system of knowledge. For me, circularity requires that I structure classroom discussions to resemble closely coherent conversation, and it allows me to reframe potentially volatile statements.
Those who use CQ in therapeutic settings have identified four fundamental ways to bring circularity into a system. From the therapists' and from my own experiences and applications of CQ to mediation and community dialogue, I have adapted these techniques to bring circularity into a class discussion. Toward this goal, I use descriptive questions in order to generate or modify my understanding of how the "problem" presented by students is systemically connected, and I use reflexive questions in order to initiate a change in that particular system. While these two types of questions are not mutually exclusive, I use them context-specifically, depending on my intent.
My first technique for bringing circularity into the classroom involves simulating real conversation, asking every question so that it clearly connects to the previous statement by a student. I demonstrate how CQ permits us to explore the "grammars" of meanings and actions--the words people use to justify their "musts" and "shoulds"--by incorporating the actual terms students use in the discussion. For example, if a student says, "Others do not like the way I talk about race, because they think I'm a white supremacist," I explore his grammar by asking him, "How do you think someone who is not in the class would define a white supremacist?" Simulating real conversation means I neither simply restate what a student said nor move on to another topic after my question is answered: instead I use their terms but in a way that focuses on the issue and not on the participants. For example, when a student remarks, "The only thing she ever talks about is how men are oppressive towards women!" I redirect the statement by asking, "Who else has noticed that gender oppression is an important issue for her?"
My second technique for bringing circularity into the classroom involves connecting the discussants in an episode to each other, inviting many comparisons. When a student remarks that "Affirmative Action did nothing more than invent reverse discrimination," I ask, "Who is most affected when Affirmative Action is confused with reverse discrimination? Who is next most?" These connections allow them to envision themselves acting and being in various places within a system.
An emphasis on time is the third technique for bringing about circularity. I may ask questions that relate and compare past, present, and future, such as, "How do you think the relationship between group M and group O will be a year from now?" or "How are race relations different now than they were before Affirmative Action legislation went into effect?" Moves such as these highlight the fact that issues are historical and tied to all of our actions. Rather than asking "why" questions and expecting those justifications to suffice, questions about time and difference call attention to the sequential aspects of interaction.
The fourth technique, which creates circularity in terms of the positions people have in the conversation, also is called "gossiping in the presence of others." Let's take as an example two students who often argue with each other during class discussion. I might move these two individuals out of their usual 1st- and 2nd-person positions to 3rd-person observer positions by casting their arguments in a positive light: "X and Y often take on the burden of keeping the discussion going and I would like them to know that they can take a back seat and let others who seldom speak take on that responsibility." I may continue by asking other students a number of questions: "Who becomes the most upset when X and Y argue?" "What do you think makes them argue they way they do?" "Let's suppose that X had been absent the last time: who do you think would have spoken up in her place?" "Who is Y usually addressing when s/he speaks up?" This points out that the positions from which people speak and listen play an important role in the creation of meaning.
Transforming Questions
The use of Circular Questioning in the classroom is in its developing stages. In a classroom where potentially volatile material is discussed, the attention can quickly shift from the topic to the individuals arguing about the topic. Using CQ to facilitate classroom discussions about culture, conflict, and communication allows me to maintain the focus on the material while guiding the students toward a systemic understanding of such issues. I have had some measure of success, especially when I make the goals and the method explicit to students. While some students may need quite a few examples to understand that CQ does not mean going around in circles, usually by the end of the fifth week of the semester many students begin to understand the liberating potential of seeing issues through a systemic lens and of using CQ as transformative intervention. I ask questions such as,
- "Imagine that you live with the threat of violence: what is a typical day like for you?"
- "What do you think are parts of your neighborhood/city that you absolutely could not function without if they were bombed?"
- "What do you think is the most difficult thing immigrants have to deal with when they come to the U.S.?"
- "If you had to abandon this country, what would you miss the most?"
These questions prompt students not just to walk the proverbial mile in someone else's shoes but also to examine potentially disruptive tangents--such as what they perceive to be "chips on the shoulders" of other students--under a systemic lens.
Some students are relieved to know that through the use of CQ we can keep the discussion focused on the material. Questions I might ask that bring about such relief include, "How can the discussions we're having in this class help us in the 'real' world?" or "When you are no longer students, how will these questions and the way you've grappled with them help you interact in an intercultural setting?" Some students are so adept that they even joke in CQ: "Suppose we didn't have a quiz next week, what other ways would we have to calculate grades?" or "When did you [addressing me] first get the idea that we didn't need a quiz review?"
Circular questioning is not just another method of consulting, teaching, or doing therapy; it is a way of challenging assumptions in a system of knowledge. Engaging in this type of conversation requires a firm conviction that the social world is made in conversation and that instructors have a de facto position of power that we can use to encourage the transformation of accounts and to create new conversations. Learning from how family therapists, mediators, and facilitators use Circular Questions, I focus on existing conversational resources and remain aware that multiple cultural and organizational discourses grant me authority and position me within layers of hierarchies. However, I also have the responsibility to set the example by taking a collaborative position and by believing that different ways of talking indeed create different realities. Using CQ in the classroom, this difference lies in how we go about creating these new realities, for the potential to improve human life exists within the system of knowledge.
Suggested Readings
Cronen, V. E., & Pearce, W. B. (1985). Toward an explanation of how the Milan Method works: An invitation to a systemic epistemology and the evolution of family systems. In D. Campbell & R. Draper (Eds.), Applications of systemic family therapy: The Milan approach (pp. 69-84). London: Grune & Station.
Gadlin, H. & Ouelette, P. A. (1986/1987). Mediation Milanese: An application of systemic family therapy to family mediation. Mediation Quarterly, 14/15, 101-118.
Littlejohn, S. W. & Domenici, K. (2000). Engaging communication in conflict: Systemic practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
McNamee, S. & Gergen, K. J. (1999). Relational responsibility: Resources for sustainable dialogue. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Spano, S. (2001). Public dialogue and participatory democracy: The Cupertino Community Project. Cresskill: Hampton Press.
Tomm, K. (1985). Circular interviewing: A multifaceted clinical tool. In D. Campbell & R. Draper (Eds.), Applications of systemic family therapy: The Milan approach (pp. 33-45). London: Grune & Station.
Posted October 17, 2002
All material appearing in this journal is subject to applicable copyright laws. Publication in this journal in no way indicates the endorsement of the content by the California State University, the Institute for Teaching and Learning, or the Exchanges Editorial Board.
©2002 by Liliana Castañeda Rossmann.
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