Heterodox Academy seeks to create environments where scholars and students can work together to transcend the limits of their thinking and discover truth. This resource guide explores some of the proactive strategies and mindsets that universities, professors, staff, and students can adopt to overcome entrenched orthodoxies and spark innovation.
We hope these materials help you engage with this important topic and encourage you to share them with colleagues.
HxA Top Picks:
Blog: Failure Isn’t Really Failure: What Academia Can Learn From Start-Up Culture, by Steven Zhou
Event: Why Our Brains Deceive Us (and How to Think Better), with Julia Galef
Tool: Creating Connection to Generate Deep Discussion
Events:
- Why Our Brains Deceive Us (and How to Think Better), with Julia Galef, Author of The Scout Mindset and host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast.
- Overcoming Academic Pressure, with Margarita Mooney Suarez, Jason Baehr, and Lisa Jaremka.
- Member Spotlight: Why “Knowledge” is a Dirty Word in K-12 Education, with Ashley Berner, Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy.
Blog Posts:
- Failure Isn’t Really Failure: What Academia Can Learn From Start-Up Culture, by Steven Zhou
- Selecting and Surviving Your Graduate Program: Tips Based on a Recent HxA Survey, by Samantha Hedges
- How Simplistic Narratives Can Mislead Us: A Case Study of the Galileo Affair, by Patrick J. Casey
- Teasing Out Heterogeneity & Combating Polarization, by Musa al-Gharbi
- Don’t Dismiss the Importance of Debate, by Meg Mott
- Both Sides Now: From Debate to Dialogue, by Judith Shapiro and Debra Mashek
- Teaching Students to Engage with Opposing Viewpoints, by Liz Norell
- Rigorous Intentional Inclusion, by Marisela Martinez-Cola
- To Help Students Find Their Voice and Pursue Truth, Lie to Them, by Jim Lemoine
Podcast Episodes:
- A Structure for Difficult Classroom Dialogue with Jill DeTemple
- Teaching Techniques to Promote Viewpoint Diversity with Christine Legare
Tools & Resources:
- How to Create a Political Classroom – This instructional guide for teachers provides practical guidance on what a political classroom is and how to create and structure one.
- Have Students Interview Someone They Disagree With – This activity promotes viewpoint diversity while simultaneously showing students they can be exposed to disagreement and difference without suffering.
- Creating Connection to Generate Deep Discussion – This activity helps prepare students to take the interpersonal risks of sharing diverse viewpoints, admitting the limits of their own knowledge, and expressing genuine curiosity about the experiences and perspectives of others.
- Dialectical Thinking Classroom Activity – This worksheet aims to help people learn how to use dialectical thinking to explore a range of controversial, political, or academic topics.
- Discussion Guide: “The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools” – This discussion guide is intended to facilitate thoughtful conversation about The Case for Contention, by Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson.
