Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 20

and thus assigned broad topics (e.g. consumer
culture). However, the structure of the World Café
challenges hosts to provide provocative questions
which generate lively engagement. Formatting topics
as questions helps to provoke more immediate
responses. The more provocative a question, the
more likely it is to be met with strong opinions from
the class (e.g. Does Emma Bovary’s materialism mean
that she “gets what she deserves” at the end of the
novel?) The directed nature of the discussion means
that ILOs can be met while students still lead the
conversation.
Discussion during each segment of the Café has
always been lively and directed in my seminars,
with even the quietest students contributing to
the construction of knowledge. As Brown insists,
‘conversation is action’ (38). Asking the scribes to
present on the groups’ discussion allows students
who are anxious about saying the wrong thing to feel
comfortable, because they are reporting on the ideas
of others. Nevertheless, the role of the scribe helps to
develop key academic skills, including public speaking
and the ability to synthesize information.
It is, in some ways, disheartening to find a gender
gap in class participation in the Humanities, which is
already structured around knowledge construction
and collaborative learning in small-group settings. Yet
there are clear ways for educators to begin to address
the problem within every seminar or tutorial, ensuring
that all voices are heard and that all students have the
opportunity to develop their communication skills and
benefit from class participation marks.
References
Brown, Juanita and David Isaacs (2005). The World
Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations
that Matter. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers.
Bruner, Jerome (1966). Toward a Theory of
Instruction. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of
Harvard University.
20

Bunce, Diane M.; Flens, Elizabeth A.; Neiles, Kelly
Y. (2010). How Long Can Students Pay Attention in
Class? A Study of Student Attention Decline Using
Clickers. Journal of Chemical Education 87(12),
p.1438-1443.
Carter, Alecia; Croft, Alyssa; Lukas, Dieter; Sandstrom,
Gillian. (2017) Women's visibility in academic
seminars: women ask fewer questions than men.
Submitted to Cornell University Library. Available
here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.10985.pdf
Fedewa, Alicia L; Fettrow, Elizabeth; Erwin, Heather;
Ahn, Soyeon; Farook, Minnah (2018). Academic-
Based and Aerobic-Only Movement Breaks: Are
There Differential Effects on Physical Activity and
Achievement? Research Quarterly for Exercise and
Sport 89(2), pp.153-163.
Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen; Christodoulou, Joanna
A.; Singh, Vanessa (2012). Rest Is Not Idleness:
Implications of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human
Development and Education. Perspectives on
Psychological Science 7(4), p.352-365.
James, Deborah and Janice Drakich (1993).
Understanding Gender Differences in Amount of
Talk: A Critical Review of Research in D. Tannen
(Ed.), Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics: Gender and
Conversational Interaction. New York, NY, US: Oxford
University Press.
Kirkup, James (2014). Boys being left behind as
university gender gap widens. The Telegraph [online].
Krathwohl, David R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s
Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory in Practice 41(4), pp.
212-218.
Morrissette, Victoria; Jesme, Shannon; Hunter, Cheryl
(2018). Teacher and Administrator Perceptions of
Gender in the Classroom. Educational Studies 44(3),
pp.295-312.
Parker, Sara (2018). Get Up! Five Ways To Energize
A Classroom With Physically Active Learning. College