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Motivating perspective taking through oral performance.

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Abstract

Engaging students in reflecting upon and responding to current social issues, while an excellent goal, can be difficult to achieve. This paper argues that engaging students in a perspective taking exercise that is applicable to an applied and/or vocational context provides a motivation for student development of social awareness. Described in this paper is an assignment in which students prepare and present a training module focusing on a social problem experienced by a disadvantaged group. This assignment requires critical thinking and promotes skill development relevant to future employment. It is argued here that the speaking requirement and the vocational skill development entailed in such an assignment motivates students to see how self-interests are served by developing social awareness.

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In American universities written communication and oral communication skills were historically taught in the same classes. A shift began in the 1930s, and later became increasingly common on university campuses, to separate "Speech" or "Communication" departments from the study of English and composition (Russell, 1991). Writing continued to be viewed as the domain of English departments. Most universities in the United States required courses in both writing and oral communication as a part of general education requirements. As with many academic divisions, the distinction between English and Communication departments did not negate the inherent connection between the two areas of study. The same reasons for placing them within the same department remain: oral and written communication skills go hand in hand.

Meticulous written preparation is critical to effective speaking. Likewise, if a composition course focuses solely on the production of written texts to be graded by a teacher, students learn an overly simplistic view of the needs of a writer. When the student simply writes for the instructor, the point of exercises can become pleasing the one anticipated reader. While this can be useful in the more elementary tasks of learning grammar and organizational mechanics, the practice of writing for one person is a fairly easy task not reflective of the kind of writing skills that a student will need throughout life. Writing for one does not equip the student with the kind of complex challenge that best fosters critical thinking skills. Colby et. al. (2003) argue that to equip students to be moral citizens, there needs to be an civic element to their capacities, such that a student comes "to understand how a community operates, the problems it faces, and the richness of its diversity ..." (p. 18). When a student sees the objective of assignments to guess what the teacher wants and values, the student is failing to respond to a more holistic, diverse set of exigencies.

Perspective taking has been researched and examined for its potential contribution to creating moral citizens who are equipped to respond sensitively to critical social issues. Some research...

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