Stories and voices: Engaging community differences by designing a deliberative public dialogue

Abstract

Students engage in a pedagogy that fosters deliberation on civic issues that elicit different perspectives relevant to a community through a semester-long project that culminates in the execution of public dialogue forum. This project facilitates three learning objectives: dialogic praxis, communication as design, and facilitative leadership. Students design, organize, and implement a public dialogue on campus, facilitating dialogic discussions on a relevant community topic. The aim of the “Stories and Voices” project is to elicit and contextualize disparate experiences, as well as to lift voices that are often unheard on civic issues. Students marry practice with deep consideration of equity, diversity, and power. Courses Relevant upper-division courses, including deliberation, dialogue, public participation, public communication/public sphere, deliberative democracy, small, group and organizational communication, and could be adapted to subject specific courses such as environmental communication, health communication, or social justice-oriented courses. The semester-long activity also provides a mechanism for examining systematic racism in various aspects of civic policy. Objectives The course engages students in a pedagogy grounded in dialogue and deliberation on civic issues that elicit different perspectives relevant to a community through a semester-long project that culminates in the execution of public dialogue forum. The project’s primary objective prepares students to foster civic dialogue as they marry practice with deep consideration of equity, diversity, and power. The “Stories and Voices” event elicits and contextualizes disparate experiences, as well as elevates voices that are often unheard on civic issues. A second objective focuses on communication as design as students develop, organize, and implement an event on campus that is marketed and open to the community to attend. Students learn how to frame issues, include those frequently marginalized, and create reciprocity in the program design. They distinguish between advocacy and inquiry models, generative and deliberative models; and learn the power of asking questions. They explore the distinctions and appropriateness of different types and aims of public discourse, and how best to facilitate conversations important in the public sphere. The final objective animates Barber’s concept of facilitative leadership, as the project requires outside commitments from students to facilitate and weigh the roles of expertise, impartiality, and conflict as conversation leaders responsible for the outcomes of the forum.