Open for Discussion: the Research of Angela Bermudez

Students’ critical thinking may have a lot to do with their understanding of social and political conflict, according to the research of doctoral student Angela Bermudez.

For several years, Bermudez has been investigating not only how adolescents learn about political issues and controversies but also how they respond to them. After earning a prestigious Spencer Fellowship this year, Bermudez began her dissertation which involves a case study of a diverse group of students who participated in a 2002 online forum examining issues of violence, racism, and the riots surrounding the 1992 Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. In particular, she studies the different intellectual and social dynamics that evolve in the group conversation that make it productive or unproductive. How students use “critical thinking tools” (problem posing, multiperspectivity, reflective skepticism, systemic thinking and dialog) and “rhetorical tools” (positioning of self and others, invoking cultural narratives, justifications, challenges, resistance) provides insight into whether or not discussions deepen student’s understanding of controversial issues and foster recognition across groups in conflict, she says.

“Schools have a very big responsibility to teach their students to think in more sophisticated ways about social and political controversies, to talk across differences of culture, class, and ideology and to engage in conversation with others that might have very different viewpoints,” Bermudez says. “Many teachers are very interested and willing to bring controversial discussions into the classrooms, but they soon feel they have to abandon these efforts, either because they give rise to very difficult conflicts among students or because students don’t really engage reflectively with the issues or with each other.”  This forecloses the possibility of learning to do a critical examination of important issues and it spreads a sense relativism that is counter to the purpose of critical deliberation that is necessary for democracy, she adds.

Bermudez believes that this research could provide teachers more ways of engaging students in productive conversations about controversial issues without reaching a wall because a classroom conversation can’t move forward. Among other blunders for advancing students’ critical thinking skills is creating an environment where every opinion counts the same.

“If the goal is to develop critical thinking of students, but there is no room for disagreement and respectful challenging of each other, then you don’t have ways of engaging in critical perspective,” she says.

Ultimately, Bermudez says without critical thinking and understanding we have a society where students haven’t fully developed the capacity to think in sophisticated ways or even outside of their own views.

“This isn’t necessarily bad until you get into a world like ours where you are constantly interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds and ideological orientations,” she says. “If you can’t understand, then you are more inclined to respond in violent ways.”