Toward Discussion Facilitation That Enacts Collective Care. A Response to “Teaching Dobbs Where Divisive Concepts and Abortion Are Restricted”

For both teacher candidates and teacher educators, facilitating discussions of contested issues in hyper-polarized climates remains a heavy lift. This response to “Teaching Dobbs…” celebrates the successes apparent in Geller’s team’s work and identifies key features that supported it. While cautioning readers against adopting avatar rehearsals elsewhere, I distill four themes of planning and enactment that show clear promise for broad transference in teacher education. Drawing from research exploring the interfaces of justice-oriented, practice-based, and democratic social studies scholarship, I offer pedagogical and logistical considerations for other teacher educators and researchers engaged in this ambitious and necessary work to sustain pluralistic democracies and seek justice. Such considerations include topic and question selection; discussion goals and norms oriented around collective trust; approaches to teacher disclosure (sharing); and facilitation choices that consider sociopolitical context in substance and process.