DIALOGUE FOR RECIPROCITY

Diane Maodush-Pitzer

Danielle Lake

GETTING STARTED…

1.Please introduce yourself & then answer the following:

2. Why do you value community engaged teaching?

3. What challenges have you faced/do you foresee when students work with community partners?

--------------------------“Anytime you are going to do community engagement it starts with listening – if we don’t start there, we are in

trouble.”

OBJECTIVESOne Two Three Four

Understand the value and role of dialogue when trying to collaborate with a diverse group of others.

Provide pedagogical tools for fostering dialogic virtues and practices.

Offer in-class engagement activities, assignment ideas, and community-engaged project suggestions designed to help students “work with” community partners.

Apply/revise any one or more recommended practices so its fits your own course needs.

CONVERSATION“to turn together”

DELIBERATION“to weight out”

SUSPEND“Listen w/o resistance”

DEFEND“to ward off”

REFLECTIVE DIALOGUEExplores underlying causes

& assumptions – Frame problem

GENERATIVE DIALOGUENew insights, Ingenuity,

creativity

-- Modified from William Isaac’s Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, 1999

What is dialogue?Dialogue is about LEARNING. Debate is about WINNING.

Assume that others have a piece of the answer

Assume there is one right answer – and you have it

Collaborative Combative

About finding common ground. About winning

Listen to understand and find basis for disagreement

Listen to find flaws and make counter-arguments

Inspecting your assumptions. Defending your assumptions

Discovering new possibilities and opportunities

Seeking an outcome that agrees with your position.

RECIPROCITY

• Are we talking ‘at’ or ‘with’?

TEACHING Democratic Thinking & Action

CO-CREA

TE RULE

S

• Build, test, and revise ground rules• Participatory Virtues

BUILD

COMMUNI

TY

• Foster opportunities for community-building (TRUST)

RE-DISTRIBUT

E POW

ER

• Give students more ownership

Employ

Experientia

l learni

ng

• Employ experiential learning model

Example one:Viewpoint Learning Ground rules

• Speak only for yourself, not as a representative of any group

• Treat everyone as an equal: leave role, status, and stereotypes at the door

• Be open and listen to others even when you disagree

• Search for assumptions

• Look for common ground

• Keep dialogue and decision-making separate

http://www.viewpointlearning.com/about-us/ground-rules-for-dialogue/

PARTICIPATORY VIRTUES

Co-create

practice

Research &

Compare

Reflect & Discuss

Revise

Experimentalism

“Listen fully.”

“Act with courage, while remaining open to others.”

“Respect one another by respecting our differences.”

“Think critically by engaging tension and digging deeper.”

Example 2: World café 1. Clarify the Purpose

2. Create a Hospital Space

3. Explore Questions that Matter

4. Encourage Everyone’s Contributions

5. Connect Diverse Perspectives

6. Listen for insights and share discoveries

EXAMPLE 4:ENCOURAGE COMMUNITY

Foster Perplexity

Focus on Context

Integrate Narrative

Expand Ethical Framework

Aim for Collaboration & Ingenuity

STUDENT OWNERSHIPUSE EXPERIENCE:

Asks students to engage in an experience

OBSERVE & REFLECT: Requires students to carefully observe and reflect

on the experience from multiple perspectives

INTEGRATE & CREATE: Requires students integrate observations with

course content and develop concepts/theories/hypotheses about the issue

EXPERIMENT & REVISE: Asks students to put their theory/hypothesis to the

test and reflect on what they’ve learned by doing so

See examples 5, 6, & 7

begin with values

We cannot engage genuinely in dialogue when we ignore our “lived experiences,” our feelings, our “vulnerability and anger,” and “the body that carries these feelings and experiences” (Freema Elbaz-Luwisch, 2004, p. 9, 13).

Begin with ValuesAcknowledge the views present

COMMON GROUND??? The area “between”

Can we find common ground with others? Yes

• Parker Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy

PRO-LIFE? PRO-CHOICE? PRO-DIALOGUE

• http://www.onbeing.org/program/pro-life-pro-choice-pro-dialogue/4863/audio?embed=1

THE ART OF THINKING TOGETHER

• William Isaacs, 1999

DialogueAssume integrity

Slow down

Suspend Listen

Create a space

Befriend polarity

ENCOURAGE A RIGHT TO DISAGREE

“Protecting our right to disagree is one of democracy’s gifts, and converting this inevitable tension into CREATIVE ENERGY is part of democracy’s genius” (9).

CREATIVE TENSION• Tension = a condition to be

relieved• Stress• Ill health

• Reduce• eliminate

• Tension = a productive energy

• “Stress of being stretched by alien ideas, values, and experiences” (13).

Open listening

RESPECT different perspectives, cultures, and professions,

RESIST privileging one above another, RECOGNIZE the role of conflict,INTEGRATE insights from different perspectives into a plausible explanation.

PROCESSES, FORMATS, & TOOLS

DELIBERATIVE DESIGN FACILITATION TOOLS

• Town hall meetings, • National Issues forums,• Consensus Conferences, • Planning Cells, • citizen juries, • online dialogues• participatory policy• action research

• T-charts, • Decision Matrixes, • Force-field Analyses, • Bridge Building, • Mind Mapping, • Zig-Zag Decision Making• Etc.

Example 8TEAM PERFORMANCE MODEL

Orient across differences

Build Trust and establish community

Clarify goals

Commit to actions

Implement

JUDGING DELIBERATIONSIX ESSENTIALS

1. Reasoned opinion expressed2. References to external sources articulated3. Expressions of disagreement given 4. Equal levels of participation5. Structure and topic cohere6. Engagement between participants

Jennifer Stromer-Galley (2007). “Measuring Deliberation’s Content: A Coding Scheme.” Journal of Public Deliberation. 3 (1): 1-12.

Discussion audit

What ideas were generated? Solutions?

Where was there disagreement?

What was the level of consensus?

How might ideas generated have an impact?

Revised from Brookfield & Preskill (2005)

ProceduralEthical“Group Think”“Cascade effects”Reinforce extremismReinforce social bias

Challenge narrow perspectivesCommunity involvement in

community problemsCo-create transformational

solutions & innovative policy

PROBLEMS BENEFITS

DELIBERATION

YOUR TURNConsider how you might design an activity (or assignment) for one of your own courses that

utilizes any of the recommendations given.