CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Litty, J. M. (1999, May). Making sense of and with our students: A critical methodology for the communication classroom. Paper presented at a non-divisional workshop held at the meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco.
© Jamie M. Litty (1999).

ESSENCE OF PROJECT:
I use Sense-Making Methodology in a variety of communication courses to raise consciousness and infuse active learning activities and dialogic elements into the sessions and into the homework.

THE REASONS I TOOK THIS ROAD:
I am influenced by a core group of pedagogical principles and social scientific perspectives, and Sense-Making fits theoretically into this philosophical framework that guides some of my teaching practices. The critical paradigm in the social sciences and education, for example, mandates ethical inquiry into ideological domination and the potential for discursive alternatives, empowerment, and emancipation. As strains of praxis therein, critical ethnography and pedagogy explore and challenge in their respective contexts: ideas that are preconceived, commonsense, and socially accepted; relationships of dependence and dominance; and procedures that are exclusive and authoritative. Related but not identical is the interpretive paradigm, which is characterized by a de-privileging of the researcher position as we generate cultural knowledge with respondents, an understanding of our respondents as Subjects determined by many discourses and Subject positions, and acknowledgment of the potential for the Subject to create meaning him/herself actively and resistively. The praxes mandated are hermeneutics grounded in individual experiences and microlevel issues of social context (such as organizational setting, domestic situations, or body) and aimed at connections, gaps, and change (or lack thereof). Research and theorizing on active learning and the problems of adult learners stress the fruitfulness of conditions of mutual respect between and among students and teachers, dialogic and inquiry-based teaching methods, and the use of students’ prior knowledge and experiences. Notions of relevance are also essential.

The media literacy movement, with its calls for demystifying the discursive practices and political economic structures of the mass media, are also accomodated by Sense-Making. In theory and research method, it helps students to understand audience experience as both individual and consensual and to understand media experience and practices not as uniform or totalizing forms but as intersections of dominance, negotiation, and multiplicity (of voice, interpretation, etc.). If a goal of media literacy curricula is for students to see what is ideological, exclusionary, and/or dominating about media on the one hand and to see the realities and cognitive processing of the audience on the other, then a consciousness-raising method that explores how the individual student and his or her classmates regularly intersect with media texts is entirely useful. Additionally, Sense-Making is well suited to the study of process, so media literacy curricula, in incorporating the conceptualization and realization of students’ own media projects, can only be assisted by a method that helps students develop a critical perspective on their own biographies, intentionalities, and procedures. Sense-Making is responsive to such enterprises. Furthermore, the methodology offers guidelines, so to speak, for designing course assignments and in-class activities. The micro- and macro-moment timeline interviews, for example, are theoretically informed, conscientizing devices that probe Subjects’ meaning-making in actual experiences. Another example, the emphasis on circling phenomenal, lends itself to democratic classroom participation.

THE BEST OF WHAT I HAVE ACHIEVED:
I have been able to stimulate class discussions and increase overall oral participation across all students in a class. Diversity of thought, expression, and interpretation has been achieved. I have been able to track student learning and identify remaining confusions in a “safe” manner. I have been able to draw out students’ own prior knowledge and feelings on a topic and have been able to point them in the direction toward reaching conclusions on their own . Students have been privileged as critics/theorists, and they have been led to writing more thorough essays and papers. I have also been able to gather “data” from the students on a variety of topics, for future research interests.

WHAT HAS BEEN HELPFUL:
I am fortunate to be in the position of designing my own courses, including all assignments and activities, within a strategically generalist, if not vague, curriculum. I enjoy, one could say, a lack of course supervision and an academic freedom in course content to a large extent. Relatively small class sizes are the norm.

WHAT I HAVE STRUGGLED WITH:
The hegemony of assigning grades is problematic, because it requires evaluative criteria and quantitative asessments of students’ efforts and productivity that are somewhat anathema to the pedagogy. The vocational and professional emphases in communication curricula lurk in my praxis as I ask myself, “ ‘Knowledge for what?’ ” (Lynd, 1939/1970). Eventually and ultimately there are some basic concepts and “right” answers that students must learn, so the privileging of students’ interpretations and theorizing does pose some problems in some circumstances. Cultural, scientific, and moral relativisms are potentially communicated through some activities (and in theory). The scientific and moral are especially troublesome to me and difficult to reconcile with my social science training and my religious perspective. The radical agenda of the critical paradigm is also a spectre as I confront some of its own domineering and elitist literature and practices that can foster a kind of paralysis and irresponsibleness while aiming at ideological liberation. In enabling a critical, cognitive perspective, a self-reflexivity, individual and resistant expressions in our students, we can take their tuition money and render them downwardly mobile, if not unemployable—all this from what for some of us is the comfort/security of our positions in Academe.

WHAT WOULD HELP NOW:
In my own setting, I believe vocational and professional emphases in the communication curriculum ought to be gradually reduced in favor of the kinds of courses that are topical, well-focused, reflective, and dialogic and that grapple with issues of meaning and understanding and “knowledge-for-what.” Where skill-building is appropriate, as in speech or electronic media production, the material and methods should be introductory, expressive, and critical, aimed at cultivating conscientized, media literate, empowered persons—with detail and imitation of “professional” practices relegated to the on-site internship. The critical and interpretive turns that can be accomodated by Sense-Making are not aimed at “preparing students for entry-level jobs” in communication vocations.

PROJECT ABSTRACT:
This paper suggests that teachers adopt and adapt Sense-Making methodology for both theoretical and practical courses that involve interpretation and/or production of “texts.” Texts may be understood loosely as encompassing a wide range of communication phenomena, including conversations, speeches, videos, and assigned readings. Activities structured with a Sense-Making inspiration can fulfill the goals of critical pedagogy and the active learning and media literacy movements. Examples of worksheets and other instruments that have been used in class will be presented.

REFERENCES:
(For references to works by Dervin and colleagues, see Dervin’s writings: Chronological listing.)

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.

Freire, P. (1989). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Original work published in 1968.) New York: Continuum.

Lynd, R. S. (1970). Knowledge for what? The place of social science in American culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. (Original work published in 1939.)

MacLaren, P., & Lankshear, C. (1994). Politics of liberation: Paths from Freire. New York: Routledge.

Rogers, J. (1989). Adults learning, (3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Open University.

OTHER MATERIALS BY THIS AUTHOR ON THIS WEB SITE:
See: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistlitty.html