DISCUS-IS Research Blog  ·  Post 4 of 4  ·  Series: What Instructors Tell Us 

The Catch-22 of Class Participation

How a statistics instructor navigates the tension between inviting engagement and honoring reticence (and what his students said about it)

DISCUS-IS Project Team  ·  NSF IUSE #2314358  ·  Tags: Participation · Cold calling · Belonging · Classroom culture

Instructor Ian Jackson named it himself, without prompting, in the middle of a video-stimulated recall interview. He was watching a recording of his own class and reflecting on his approach to student participation when he said:

“It’s a catch-22. I don’t want to get people uncomfortable, scare them off. So I don’t want to put people on the spot, but I also don’t want people just sitting on the sidelines.”

— Instructor Jackson, instructor participant

This tension is not unique to Jackson, and it is not unique to statistics. Any instructor who has thought carefully about participation has felt it: the simultaneous desire to draw students in and to protect them from exposure. But in a classroom where a meaningful proportion of students identify as neurodivergent — where anxiety, auditory processing differences, and past mathematics failure are common features of the room — the stakes of getting this wrong in either direction are higher.

What Jackson has developed over decades in the classroom is a set of structures that navigate the catch-22 without resolving it. They are worth examining closely.

Cold calling with an escape valve

Jackson uses what his students called “cold calling” — consulting the attendance list and directing a question to a specific student rather than waiting for volunteers. This is a participation structure that many instructors have used, and that many students have dreaded. What distinguishes Jackson’s version is the escape valve.

“Something that is also nice is that he does also give the option for students to pass on questions if they’re not comfortable at answering them. So, if a student will pass, he’ll either call on someone he knows can get the answer right or he’ll just help them and just say the answer for them and be like, “This is how we got this; this is what’s going on.””

— Aiden, student participant

The pass option transforms the participation structure. A student who is called on is not trapped; they have agency. And the consequence of passing is not shame or silence — it is the instructor modeling the answer, which keeps the class moving and removes the association between not knowing and public failure. Several students mentioned this option independently, suggesting it registered as meaningful rather than incidental.

What’s notable is that Jackson’s cold-calling described by Aiden as something the instructor does “unintentionally” forces students into something helpful. The dynamic that emerges — in which being called on feels like part of a shared, low-stakes classroom culture rather than a test — is the product of accumulated relational trust, not just a procedural rule.

The core group problem

Jackson is candid about a limitation in his approach. When asked about participation in class, he said: “No surprise, in all my classes there is usually a core group that will volunteer, usually frankly, less than half the class. But it’s good to have a few in each class, which is what I do. And I mostly call upon them.”

His students corroborated this. Two of them, who were interviewed as a pair, noted that they were often the ones answering questions “because we were like the only ones who would answer, like everything. And talk out when other people wouldn’t. So, they would just sit there quietly.”

This is a common pattern in college classrooms, and acknowledging it honestly is itself instructive. A participation structure that relies primarily on a core group of volunteers can reproduce the same inequities that inclusive design is trying to address: students who are already confident and comfortable participate more; students who are less confident participate less and receive less feedback; the gap widens over time.

Jackson’s cold-calling, done with an escape valve and within a relational climate of safety, is his primary mechanism for disrupting that pattern. It is imperfect — he knows it, and his students know it — but it is honest and intentional.

Circulating as a participation structure

A third strategy Jackson uses, visible in the video-recorded classroom episode and corroborated by several students, is circulating during small-group work to check in with groups individually. Student Phoenix Jamison described a specific exchange:

“It’s collaborative in a way. Sometimes Mr. Jackson would come by and say, “Oh, you got the answer, but she didn’t. Maybe she could help you out.” He’s done that a few times. It makes it easier to compare answers.”

— Phoenix, student participant

This is a participation move that distributes accountability horizontally — toward peers — rather than vertically toward the instructor. A student who is reluctant to speak in front of the class may be more willing to explain something to a groupmate. Jackson’s circulation makes that lateral participation visible and legitimate.

What the catch-22 teaches us

Jackson’s naming of the catch-22 is, in retrospect, one of the most useful moments in the instructor data. It is the language of someone who has genuinely sat with a design problem rather than adopted a solution from outside. He has not resolved the tension between inviting engagement and protecting students from exposure — but he has developed a set of structures that hold it productively.

For instructors thinking about participation in their own classrooms: the goal is probably not to eliminate the catch-22 but to design within it. What structures allow students to enter the conversation at a level of risk they can manage? What happens when a student passes, and does that response make it more or less likely they’ll try next time? These are the questions that Jackson’s classroom, imperfectly and honestly, has been working out for twenty years.

← All posts     

Part of the “What Instructors Tell Us” series · DISCUS-IS Project · NSF IUSE #2314358