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The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative<\/span><\/a> consists of 15 faculty from Davidson College and five other Associated Colleges of the South institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. Throughout the 2021-22 academic year, these faculty, who come from a wide array of disciplines, studied and discussed different deliberative pedagogy methods, shared their ideas and questions with one another, and worked 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.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n For a couple years, I gave a \u201cFirst Lecture\u201d during Southwestern University\u2019s welcome week\u2014the period in August where only new freshmen are living on campus\u2014about \u201cTalking Politics in Polarized Times.\u201d The students who attend are asked \u201cwhat worries or concerns do you have about talking politics on campus or in college?\u201d They jot their responses down on post-it notes that they place on the wall for everyone to see. It might not surprise you to know that their biggest concerns are social: will their peers judge them for their opinions, for not knowing enough, for being too vocal? Will the discovery that they believe something different from their friends lead to ostracization from the group that they\u2019ve only recently come to belong in?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The conversations I\u2019ve had with incoming students about their anxiety around political discussion has led me to think more broadly about how to incorporate political discussion into my classroom. Thus, when I had the opportunity to participate in the Associated Colleges of the South\u2019s Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative (DeeP) and to collaborate with DCI, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to build a class in which discussion took a primary role. This spring, I taught a course on Political Psychology and we grounded our investigation of psychological concepts in deliberative political theory and its application in real-world political contexts. In short, the course asked \u201cCan deliberation be an effective component of governance and citizen engagement, given what we know about human psychology?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In developing the course, I knew I wanted students to engage with deliberation both academically\u2014through readings and in-class discussion\u2014and experientially\u2014through their own deliberation on an issue facing contemporary American politics. The biggest hurdle then became structuring the in-class deliberations. The course had 22 enrolled students, which made a full-class deliberation unwieldy, but simultaneous small group deliberations required students to moderate (something I\u2019d have to train them to do) and made it difficult for me to grade through simple observation of the discussion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, I decided that we\u2019d hold two in-class deliberations throughout the semester and that students would take on one of two roles\u2014participant or observer\u2014in each. Participants were expected to read the deliberation materials in advance, write a brief (1-2 paragraph) statement of where they fall on the issue in advance, and engage in the conversation for the full 75-minute course, adhering to the guidelines for deliberation we\u2019d developed from our readings and own class norms. Observers were expected to pose a research question related to deliberation and describe how they\u2019d measure it, then attempt to execute that data collection strategy during the class time. We also recorded the discussion, in part so observers could go back and look things up they might have missed, and in part to make it possible for students who had to miss class for athletics or COVID-19 related reasons to make up the assignment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Overall, I found the deliberative discussions and affiliated assignments achieved my course goals and were interesting and engaging for both me and the students. In their reflections on deliberation, several participants commented that in spite of their initial anxiety about talking politics with their peers, they had found the discussions to be a positive experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n All of the students seemed to take their roles seriously and everyone made at<\/span> least one comment during their assigned day to deliberate. It was clear<\/span> from their reflective essays that students understood what the components of deliberation were, relative to a general discussion or conversation, and could apply the political psychology<\/span> research we\u2019d read about knowledge acquisition, information processing, partisan identity, and<\/span> cognitive biases to their own experience either deliberating or observing their peers\u2019 deliberation.<\/span><\/p>\n While many enjoyed the experience, they also emphasized the deliberations\u2019 weaknesses, calling attention to the ways our practice failed to live up to normative ideals. Of particular interest was the expectation that all participants have equal opportunity to speak. Several observers counted how many times political science majors spoke relative to non-majors, finding the political science majors more engaged. Another argued for the importance of a more active moderator, drawing on observational data demonstrating that the three participants that spoke the most during one deliberative discussion were also responsible for interrupting or talking over those who spoke the least.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Each of these findings, as well as the overall experience participating in the deliberations, became an opportunity for classroom discussion about deliberative theory, practice, and the psychological biases and limitations on information processing that widen the gap between the two. They also serve as an important set of takeaways for me as a teacher, leading me to reflect on how to bring different voices into the conversation and on the extent to which I should be a more active moderator.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I look forward to incorporating more deliberative discussion into other classes I teach as part of my goal to reduce students\u2019 anxiety around talking politics. Even if our classroom conversations fell short of the deliberative ideal, they succeeded by helping the students form and express their own political opinions in the face of social pressure\u2014reducing their worries from their first days as freshmen. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of 15 faculty from Davidson College and five other Associated Colleges of the South institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. Throughout the 2021-22 academic year, these faculty, who come from a wide array of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":2232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-blogposts","category-deep","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1.jpg","rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1.jpg",1080,1080,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1.jpg",1080,1080,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1.jpg",1080,1080,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1-180x180.jpg",180,180,true],"medium":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"large":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1-1024x1024.jpg",1024,1024,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1.jpg",1080,1080,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1.jpg",1080,1080,false],"mini-thumbnail":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1-75x75.jpg",75,75,true],"team-member":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/DeeP-Collaborative-series-1-600x600.jpg",600,600,true]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Emily Sydnor","author_link":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/author\/esydnor\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Blog Posts<\/a> Faculty Posts<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of 15 faculty from Davidson College and five other Associated Colleges of the South institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. Throughout the 2021-22 academic year, these faculty, who come from a wide array of…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2231"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2234,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions\/2234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}