The DCI Blog

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

When you really think about it, many parts of our lives can be understood through the lens of sports metaphors, analogies, and idioms. We “fall short of the goal line,” we “drop the ball,” and we view life as “a marathon, not a race.” Political discourse uses sports metaphors even more frequently. We tune in to “horse race” news coverage of political campaigns, we analyze offensive and defensive strategy, and – of course – we view political parties as rival teams vying to win over voters or maintain loyalties. That brings me to what this blog and the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative are about: public discourse and deliberation, particularly in the context of pedagogical practices in the college classroom. 

As a teacher-scholar of communication and rhetoric whose topic specialty is sports culture, not only am I fascinated by what sports metaphors can and can’t do in public discourse, but I also wanted to experiment with it further in my sports communication course, truly putting the “meta” in “metaphor.” Specifically, as part of the Davidson Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative through the DCI, I sought to infuse deliberative pedagogy into my class and cultivate a “practice field for democracy.” I encouraged my students – which included student athletes and non-student athletes – to view their deliberative skill development as akin to individual athletes and teams training to compete in their sporting endeavors. 

Yet in my classroom, they are practicing deliberative skills to productively engage when it’s politically “game time” – around the Thanksgiving table, in their next class, or in a public context. To practice, we utilize the subject matter of sports and sports communication. Although historically dismissed as the “toy department” of society (and media specifically), what happens on and off the field in the world of sports has a lot more to do with political culture than many students realize. And that’s at the heart of the weekly deliberations I implemented throughout the semester.

My Sports Communication (COM 269) course at Lenoir-Rhyne University, which is offered every spring, has exposed majors and non-majors alike to the important ideas of debate and deliberation in the specific context of sports – a context that is immensely accessible for students to engage in critical discussion about issues of public importance. And yet, I hadn’t made these skills explicit in learning outcomes or assessment. When I applied for the Deliberative Pedagogy cohort, I intended to revise my course to make it more deliberative from top to bottom. That is exactly what I did. First, I include two formal learning outcomes focused on deliberation. Second, I redesigned the major assignments to align with those outcomes. Finally, I incorporated deliberation and rhetoric frameworks throughout the semester, including work on the relationship among democracy, rhetoric, and athletics in Ancient Greece.  Concepts from the deliberative pedagogy literature helped us determine what topics and behaviors were “in bounds,” for our practices; rhetorical frameworks served as the equipment students would use while we tackled different issues.

Deliberative Learning Outcomes and Assessment 

• DLOC 1: Students will engage in productive disagreement and agreement about key social, political, and cultural issues in sports communication theory and practice 
• DLOC 2: Students will deliberate to advance a novel solution to a policy-based communication problem

Deliberating Case Studies

To assess DLOC 1, students participated in weekly practice deliberations in class each week for the duration of a 6-week unit. With students guiding the selection of general topics,* as the deliberation facilitator I then framed questions for us to deliberate on formally during the deliberation day of each week’s “case study.” Students considered questions like “what is the value of the human in sports officiating technology?” and “what are the positive and negative impacts of sports spectacle on our sociopolitical processes?” 

In the practice deliberations, our purpose was to come to a deeper understanding of an issue in sports communication that also extends beyond the sports realm. Questions about the value of humans in sports technology reflect larger conversations around advanced technology and AI in our world. Thinking critically about the Super Bowl shed some light on how everyone being tuned in to the big event means that they can be distracted from pretty significant global events that occur during the broadcast. And at the same time, aren’t we, in a sense, entitled to a little bit of escape? 

These are just two example practice deliberations that provided an opportunity for students to engage in critical discussion, the crafting and debating of arguments, and listening to other perspectives with respect and empathy. The question(s) we explored through the practice deliberations required thoughtful engagement. Participating in the DeeP Collaborative provided the concepts and strategies needed in order to foster a deeper level of conversation. 

*If you would like to know more about this unit and its role in creating a “practice field for democracy,” I encourage you to check out my chapter in the forthcoming book from Lexington Press titled Encouraging College Student Democratic Engagement in an Era of Political Polarization, edited by Angela McGowan-Kirsch.

Final Deliberative Forum

After concluding the Deliberating Case Studies unit, where the goal was to practice deliberating on a variety of questions, the class selected a policy-based topic for a final deliberative forum, which corresponds to DLO2. We engaged in “sportified” deliberations to choose the topic; first, students brainstormed topics which were “seeded” into a “bracket” (March Madness style) to set up “topic face-offs.” Bracket by bracket, we deliberated the pros and cons of each topic, gave ratings and voted, and after deliberating between two final options, ultimately arrived at the final topic of “sports and fraud.” 

Then, for the remaining 5 weeks of the semester, students broke out into different roles to play in the deliberation: league commissioners, athletes, fans, investigative journalists, PR professionals, coaches, policy analysts, and sports law/ethics experts. In addition to researching topics like Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), match-fixing, and illegal sports betting, students engaged in “character research” to understand the different perspectives involved in a policy conversation about fraud. In addition to locating information about training, credentials, and experiences of their assigned role, I also asked them to engage in an informational interview with a real or “simulated” person (we used ChatGPT – students prompted the chatbot to “assume the role of policy analyst in the context of sports and fraud,” for example). 

After performing some individual research, students worked together first in similar roles (e.g., Public Relations specialists and Investigative Journalists) and then in pairs where roles might experience conflicts in values (investigative journalists paired with league commissioners, for example). In these activities, I wanted students to come to a greater understanding of the various perspectives on the issues and the unique pressures faced by each. Why might an athlete engage in point-shaving, and how can we extend greater empathy to those who cheat? This foundation was necessary for policy deliberations on what to do about sports and fraud. 

The final deliberative forum (occurring over two class periods, which was not enough!) featured deliberation over the merits and drawbacks of prevention versus penalty, and the role of communication in restoring public trust in sport. Imagine the parallels between the issue of fraud in the sports context and issues of lying, manipulation, cheating, and stealing in our larger political context. Assigning roles for students to play helped them, even if imperfectly, see and argue for perspectives they might not hold themselves. Many of the students in sports communication are student athletes, but asking them to think of themselves as coaches, journalists, or even just a fan encouraged them to draw on different lines of reasoning and evidence during our deliberations. In final reflections, several students mentioned that they appreciated this feature of the final unit. I was intentional about these roles as well: students might one day become coaches, public relations professionals, or lawyers. At every turn, I tried to craft a deliberative sports communication course that also encouraged career application in addition to democratic application. 

I gained many valuable things by participating in the DeeP collaborative. I sharpened my knowledge and skills on how to incorporate deliberative pedagogy in the day-to-day practices in the classroom, from facilitating small-group and full-class discussions, to incorporating role-play, framing issues effectively for deliberation, returning to my love of metaphor and scholarly roots in the rhetorical tradition, and more. I found myself inspired to be creative and innovative to keep the course fresh and interesting. I was also constantly provided with intriguing ideas to wrestle with, challenged to be agile and flexible, and encouraged to embrace mistakes and learn for next time – see what I did there? 

I believe that incorporating formal deliberation instruction and assessments provided a distinct experience for students wanting to learn more about sports, while also helping them improve their abilities to engage in deliberation about any topic in the public sphere. The level of preparation provided by the DeeP experience, including resources on strategies to implement, troubleshooting difficulties, and support from fellow DeeP members, gave me a solid foundation on which to build a successful deliberative sports communication course.