How to Foster Civil Discourse in the Classroom
Using the science of group dynamics to help your students disagree well, my new partnership with GiveDirectly, and other updates
The Collective Edge is a newsletter for curious people to learn how the science of groups and organizations can help us live and work better together. Not to be confused with the eponymous book that I’ll reference incessantly.
At The Collective Edge, you’ll get twice-monthly-ish newsletters that help you understand and shape your own moments of collaboration and creativity, mixing essays and interviews. You’ll also learn about social science, the writing process, and the non-stop action of academic careers.
We have a lot of new readers, so welcome! (Seriously - we cracked #15 on the Substack “Rising Science Newsletters” leaderboard!) If you don’t know what this is, please start with this post.
Up-to-Date Updates
You thought I’d start with what I promised in the title? No! I have fooled you again. Now you must choose between reading important updates from me and skimming to the next heading. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!
The Collective Edge + GiveDirectly Substack Partnership
Here’s one of the most meaningful things I’ve been a part of since I’ve started dabbling in newsletters and public scholarship: Partnering with some of my idols for one of my favorite charities: GiveDirectly.
The Collective Edge is joining with about 30 other great substacks and authors (including Matthew Yglesias, Derek Thompson, Nate Silver, Jill Filipovic, and many others) to support GiveDirectly this December. We even have our very own URL: GiveDirectly.org/Collective! (I am irrationally excited about the URL).
Your favorite Substack writers are teaming up to send ~$1,100 via digital transfer to all 800+ families across 3 villages in the Bikara region of Rwanda to spend and invest on what they need most. Cash transfers are backed by research for their efficiency and effectiveness at making the world a better place. (You should read Matt Yglesias’s great explainer here for further inspiration).
I already have a recurring monthly donation to GiveDirectly. I’ll also match the first $1000 in donations at the unique Collective Edge link below AND donate all December revenue from The Collective Edge Newsletter paid memberships.
Please join with me and your other favorite Substackers and donate now to double your impact - GiveDirectly.org/Collective.
Just look at that beautiful, beautiful URL.
The Paradox of Groups, with Wendy K Smith (January 15, 2026, 12 pm - 1 pm EST)
One of the fascinating things about groups is that you can’t “fix” them…because groups are paradoxical. They feature a push and pull between collective and individual needs. Within us, our desire for belonging (and fear of ostracism) pushes us to conform to what we perceive to be the will of the group. Simultaneously, our drive for autonomy pushes us to stand out, get noticed, or free ourselves from the strictures of social life.
I love talking about paradoxes and groups, so I reached out to one of my favorite scholar/thought-leaders, Wendy K Smith of It's Not An Either/Or — perhaps the world’s leading expert on paradoxes at work (and co-author of Both/And Thinking with Marianne Lewis).
Wendy and I will be taking our first foray into hosting Substack Live on January 15, 2026, 12 pm - 1 pm EST. Please mark your calendars and join us live so you can comment, ask questions, and catch up! (https://open.substack.com/live-stream/86974).
The PR Journey
If you follow me on LinkedIn (or, to a lesser extent, Instagram), you’ve been able to keep up with my exploits in promoting the book through podcasts, articles, and the like. But I’ve done a bad job of keeping those of you who spend less time humblebragging and/or doomscrolling your way through social media in the loop.
Thus, I have compiled a Spotify Playlist that contains most of my podcast appearances.
In my inimitable half-assed way, I have also soft-launched a YouTube Channel (@drcolinmfisher - smash those like and subscribe buttons). It turns out that YouTube is the world’s biggest podcast platform. You can view many of my interviews on this mildly up-to-date playlist. And (with the help of videographer Phoenix Jones), we’ve been creating YouTube Shorts, some of which have a surprising number of views considering I haven’t made any effort to tell people they exist.
Now, onto our regularly scheduled programming!
How to Foster Civil Discourse in the Classroom
[Reposted from my Psychology Today column, also confusingly called The Collective Edge]
When instructors explicitly make constructive disagreement a goal, it helps students express dissent.
Reframe debate as discourse so students think “us versus the problem” rather than “me versus you.”
Students will only take intellectual risks if they feel psychologically safe.
Universities were once celebrated as places where ideas could be challenged, debated, and refined. Classrooms were meant to be arenas for civil discourse—spaces where disagreement was not only tolerated but valued.
Yet that ideal is under strain. Divisions between social and political groups have deepened, and polarization—especially in the U.S.—has reached historic levels. Many instructors now hesitate to invite disagreement for fear that conversations will spiral into conflict. But learning depends on dialogue. And dialogue depends on difference.
My new book, The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups, explores the psychological and social forces that shape how we live and work together—and why it’s so hard to cooperate or listen across divides. Drawing on The Collective Edge, here are four strategies to help students practice the art of disagreeing well.
1. Make Constructive Disagreement a Goal
A class in which everyone agrees all the time isn’t a productive learning environment. Groups that avoid conflict may appear harmonious, but they learn little. As Stanford professor Kathleen Eisenhardt and her colleagues once wrote, “The absence of conflict is not harmony—it’s apathy.”
Tell your students: I value disagreement. That’s where learning happens. True discovery comes from engaging different viewpoints and uncovering what each person knows that others don’t.
2. Reframe Debate as Discourse
We often call classroom discussions “debates.” But debate implies a contest: you vs. me, or us vs. them. That framing primes students to defend their side rather than explore new ground. Think about televised political debates—when was the last time a participant said, “You know, you have a good point. You’ve convinced me!”
Discourse, by contrast, reframes the goal. It becomes us against the problem. Instructors and students alike are co-investigators seeking truth together. When the purpose shifts from winning to understanding, people listen differently. Learning means being willing to change our minds when presented with better ideas. Encourage students to listen to understand, not to refute.
3. Build a Culture of Psychological Safety
Students will only take intellectual risks if they feel socially safe. Psychological safety is the belief that you can ask questions, voice disagreement, or admit mistakes without fear of ridicule or ostracism. Ironically, classrooms that sound most polite may lack psychological safety.
Instructors play an important role. To foster psychological safety in your classroom, admit when you’re uncertain. Thank students who challenge assumptions. Praise those who raise uncomfortable questions. And ask for feedback on the subtle cues—facial expressions, tone, interruptions—that might unintentionally discourage openness. When instructors model vulnerability, students mirror it.
4. Analyze Contrasting Perspectives
Disagreement can’t emerge if students only encounter one way of thinking. Research shows that comparing perspectives deepens learning.
Instructors can design ways to expose students to different perspectives. For instance, you can assign materials that take opposing stances and ask students to identify where ideas clash—and how they might be reconciled. Role-play also helps: have students analyze cases from different positions (e.g., the CEO, the middle manager, the frontline worker). These exercises shift the focus from defending opinions to understanding the sources of disagreement. Disagreement becomes an act of inquiry and a skill that students can hone.
In today’s polarized environment, encouraging disagreement can feel risky. But avoiding it is riskier still. When we sidestep conflict, we deprive students of a vital civic skill—the ability to engage across differences without disengaging from one another.
By structuring classroom discussions with care, modeling intellectual humility, and celebrating curiosity over certainty, we can make disagreement productive again. Students won’t just learn to argue better; they’ll learn to listen better. That’s not only how learning happens—it’s equipping them with the tools to improve the world.
Further Reading
References
Fisher, C. M. (2025). The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups. Avery.
Eisenhardt, K. M., Kahwajy, J. L., & III, L. J. B. (1997). How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight. Harvard Business Review.
Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1(1), 23–43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091305
