Hur bör lärare bemöta elever som yttrar sig extremt i undervisningssituationer?

Ett förslag på en elevcentrerad strategi för att komma till rätta med tolkningsproblem

Abstract

Extreme utterances, for instance racist remarks, made by students give rise to difficult problems of interpretation that have not received adequate attention. An adequate and responsible teacher response to an extreme utterance depends, among other things, on why the student expressed him- or herself in an extreme manner and how the utterance could and should be interpreted. However, there is a knowledge gap in earlier research regarding these questions. We therefore propose, describe, and defend a student-centred strategy that teachers in many situations could use in order to handle such problems of interpretation. The strategy consists of two methods: The Invite, Listen, Summarize Method, and the Method of Charity. We argue that these methods meet reasonable conditions on an adequate method; for instance, the methods are effective as means to solve problems of interpretation, easy to apply, and theoretically well-motivated; and also, ethically reasonable since they give concreteness to what it means to encounter students with respect. The student-centred strategy we propose can thus, in many situations, be useful for teachers who are gathering information relevant for an adequate teacher response to students who have expressed themselves in an extreme manner.