In high school, students understand that “right” answers refer to classroom materials and texts. When they transition to college, students learn that “right” answers are harder to come by, that it’s important to understand more than one point of view, and that they should arrive at their conclusion by thinking deeply and critically about the question.
That’s true even in a quantitative discipline like math, says mathematics Professor May Mei. In 2025-25, Mei was one of 64 faculty members from 28 institutions who participated in the Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative, a learning community to study deliberative pedagogy and incorporate it in their classrooms.
A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article on civil discourse highlighted Mei’s contributions to the group:
“In a multivariable-calculus course Mei taught recently, she provided students with questions and solutions that might be accurate or inaccurate, generating them with AI tools or pulling them from past students’ work.
“Then she asked the class to evaluate these answers. Were they well written and convincing? Were they supported by evidence and appropriate notation? The students wrote out assessments individually and then talked them through as a group.
“Mei says the class struggled with justifying the answers she provided. Students would tell her things like ‘Well, you said it’ or ‘it’s in the book.’
“Yet as they practiced over the semester, they got better at making a case, developing a skill Mei sees as vital for any academic discipline. ‘Arguing for a belief is how you come to possess that belief,’ she says…‘It’s good thinking as well as good citizenship. It’s what all of us should be doing all the time.’”
