This document provides guidance on fostering constructive dialogue and reciprocal relationships between students and community partners. It discusses: 1. The importance of starting any community engagement with listening to understand different perspectives. 2. Tools for establishing ground rules to build trust and ensure all voices are heard, such as experiencing learning models that involve observing a situation, integrating multiple views, and revising understandings. 3. Challenges like groupthink and social biases that can arise, but also benefits like co-creating solutions and innovative policies by involving the community in problems.

1. DIALOGUE FOR RECIPROCITY
Diane Maodush-Pitzer
Danielle Lake

2. 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.”

3. One 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.

4. CONVERSATION
“to turn together”
DELIBERATION
“to weight out”
SUSPEND
“Listen w/o resistance”
DEFEND
“to ward off”
REFLECTIVE DIALOGUE
Explores underlying causes
& assumptions – Frame
problem
GENERATIVE DIALOGUE
New insights, Ingenuity,
creativity
-- Modified from William Isaac’s
Dialogue and the Art of Thinking
Together, 1999

5. 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.

6. RECIPROCITY

7. CO-CREATE
RULES
• Build, test, and revise ground rules
• Participatory Virtues
BUILD
COMMUNITY
• Foster opportunities for community-building (TRUST)
RE-
DISTRIBUTE
POWER
• Give students more ownership
Employ
Experiential
learning
• Employ experiential learning model

8. 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/

9. Co-
create
practice
Research
&
Compare
Reflect &
Discuss
Revise

10. “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.”

11. 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

12. Foster Perplexity
Focus on Context
Integrate Narrative
Expand Ethical Framework
Aim for Collaboration & Ingenuity

13. USE 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

14. 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 Values
Acknowledge the views present

15. 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

16. THE ART OF THINKING TOGETHER
• William Isaacs, 1999

17. 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).

18. CREATIVE TENSION

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. Example 8
TEAM PERFORMANCE MODEL
Orient across differences
Build Trust and establish community
Clarify goals
Commit to actions
Implement

22. JUDGING DELIBERATION
SIX ESSENTIALS
1. Reasoned opinion expressed
2. References to external sources articulated
3. Expressions of disagreement given
4. Equal levels of participation
5. Structure and topic cohere
6. Engagement between participants
Jennifer Stromer-Galley (2007). “Measuring Deliberation’s Content: A Coding Scheme.”
Journal of Public Deliberation. 3 (1): 1-12.

23. 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)

24. Procedural
Ethical
“Group Think”
“Cascade effects”
Reinforce extremism
Reinforce social bias
Challenge narrow perspectives
Community involvement in
community problems
Co-create transformational
solutions & innovative policy
PROBLEMS BENEFITS
DELIBERATION

25. YOUR TURN
Consider how you might design
an activity (or assignment) for one
of your own courses that utilizes
any of the recommendations
given.