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.
By Alberto Morales (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)
I came to the DeeP Collaborative with a curious mind to deepen and expand my pedagogical and andragogical practice in higher education. My participation in the DeeP Collaborative provided me with an opportunity to revisit some of the lingering questions I have about higher education and learning: what is learning through difference like for these newer generations of students, and how much can students learn through disagreement in a safe and accountable space in today’s political climate?
In my Winter 2025 quarter-term course, ‘Race Across the Americas,’ I introduced deliberative pedagogical exercises as one means of engaging students in class discussions. This course, drawing on Ethnic Studies, Latin American Studies, and Global Studies, offers a comparative exploration of racial formations in Latin America, the U.S.A., the Caribbean, and their transnational and diasporic communities. We adopt a hemispheric approach to the study of race, moving beyond national frameworks to examine how ideas about race have developed dialogically across the Americas. One of the key objectives of this course is to encourage students to critically examine race and racial formations as culturally contextualized and situated within the politics of difference.
I briefly introduced students to the concept and practice of deliberation during our first course meeting following their completion of a pre-course survey. Deliberative practice was a new concept for most students, particularly in understanding that it is not about debate or determining who is right or wrong but about appreciating and enriching each other’s perspectives through careful attention to and engagement with difference. Teaching-wise, scaffolding deliberative approaches through in-class exercises was crucial in helping students become familiar with open communication while examining disagreement and opposing viewpoints. Equally important was a self-reflection writing exercise with open-ended questions, which students completed immediately after the deliberation.
I was skeptical at first, as I did not fully agree with all the deliberative pedagogy parameters, which at times felt too scripted and limiting. However, after putting deliberation into pedagogical practice through three one-hour-long, in-class deliberations and based on students’ feedback, I will continue to explore and develop deliberative pedagogical approaches in future courses. In the remainder of this post, I discuss two of the three deliberative exercises my students participated in, beginning with a 15–20 minute familiarization exercise designed to prepare them for deliberation.
In-Class Pair Activity about Deliberative Strategies
We began to engage with deliberative strategies by having the students respond to an in-class activity in pairs. The worksheet asked them to write out phrases they use when they face different forms of disagreement and help them navigate difficult conversations. For example, I asked students to write sentences that demonstrate how to: acknowledge feelings and offer understanding and support, ask open-ended questions and diffuse tension, and find common ground and diffuse misunderstandings, among other things. During a think-pair-share, students were able to exchange phrases and conversational approaches with one another. After their think-pair-share, they reported back to the class, creating a collective Google Doc. This exercise was inspired by the “Conversations Tips: A Pocket Guide” handout, a resource developed by Living Room Conversations and the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative at Davidson College, which provided practical advice for engaging in productive and respectful conversations.
Small Group Deliberations
Not all deliberations were the same or took on the same form. I purposely designed the in-class deliberative exercises to be different each time so that students could take on various roles and appreciate the diverse content and forms of deliberative practice available. After completing a few readings on deliberation, I placed students into small groups of 4-5 students for their first deliberation experience, using the Living Room Conversations guides on Race.
Of particular interest were the following Living Room Conversations: Race and Ethnicity, Interracial Race and Ethnicity Conversations, and Being White in the Racial Justice Movement. This soft introduction to deliberation was well received by the students, resulting in overwhelmingly positive written feedback. One student expressed that the most meaningful aspect of the Living Room Conversation for them was the groundwork for free speech and expression it provided. “We created a safe space to talk,” the student noted.
All students had the added challenge to employ in this deliberation concepts from our course readings, lectures, and discussions based on the following authors: Aurora Levins Morales’ “What Race Isn’t,” Juliet Hooker’s Theorizing Race Across the Americas, Ruha Benkamin’s Imagination: A Manifesto, and Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia on Caribbean political radicalism.
One of the reflection questions students had to answer was, “What concepts, terms, or historical knowledge from this course helped you understand your conversations on race? Their responses were positive and included comments such as the following: “The concept of multiracial democracy provided a useful starting point for thinking about what a society that values racial and ethnic differences might look like.”
Additionally, these initial micro deliberations also encouraged students to practice and develop careful and intentional listening skills. As one student observed, “the most valuable thing in this Living Room Conversation was to talk to my peers and listen to their own stories and perspectives. I appreciated that it was more of a discussion than an argument between different parties, which can be polarizing to many. It was meaningful not only to discuss but also to listen to others in my group.” These reflections underscore the students’ sense of empowerment and the inspiration they drew from the course deliberations.
Micro-Deliberations on Controversial Topics
For the second in-class deliberation exercise, I randomly assigned students to one of five home groups. Now that I had familiarized the students with deliberative pedagogy and practice, I decided to challenge them further by engaging them in micro-deliberations on more controversial topics. Students had to prepare by reading two Deliberation Guides by the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, one entitled “College Admissions Policies: How Should Applicants’ Backgrounds Be Taken into Account, If at All?” and the other “Immigration: Who should we welcome? What should we do?”
To facilitate this second in-class deliberation and keep students curious and engaged in the process, I employed the Institute for Civil Dialogues’ Hot Topics/Cool Head toolkit, which encourages spontaneous face-to-face interactions among participants while maintaining respect and equanimity. After having assigned the students into small home groups, students were called up to sit at a table in the front of the class and called to perform one of these randomly assigned positions: “Agree Strongly,” “Agree Somewhat,” “Neutral/Undecided,” “Disagree Somewhat,” and “Disagree Strongly.”
The goal was for them to engage with differing viewpoints on a controversial subject and have spontaneous discussions without demonizing one another. Discussion topics included race-based affirmative action, legacy admissions, underrepresented and minoritized students, border security, foreign-born populations, immigrant rights, ethnoracial composition of immigrant populations, and other concerns related to racialization and social, political, and economic inequalities.
A set of reflection questions also followed this exercise. This second deliberation exercise proved to be the most challenging for the students, and it received mixed reviews due to the added challenge of not being able to choose which perspective or standpoint to deliberate from. On the one hand, those who liked this exercise wrote, “My favorite in-class activity was the deliberation exercise, where we were each assigned a specific stance. It was intense, making it an engaging way to explore different perspectives while strengthening our critical thinking and deliberation skills.”
On the other hand, some students expressed their discontent with the activity, while others had mixed feelings about it, stating, “I was not too fond of the activity where we had to act out an assigned role. However, I also enjoyed this activity because it exposed me to a situation that made me uncomfortable which allowed me to grow as an individual.” I took a risk with this exercise, which involved controlled disagreement and polarization, but I also empathized with the students’ concerns.
Lessons Learned
As a result, I suggest allocating more class time for this type of deliberation exercise, where students engage purposefully with disagreement, to invite them to unpack and vocalize their experiences and reflections through in-class discussions or a decompression session. We were unable to do this as we had reached the end of our scheduled class period. Even though students were very vocal about being assigned to a position where they had to disagree with something they would usually agree on or vice versa, the activity proved helpful in holding space for students to appreciate differences and opposing views. As one student put it, “I gained skills from the deliberation exercises, especially the one where you might have to agree with a view that you do not align with. That exercise made me think about the reasoning behind different viewpoints and why someone may feel a certain way.”
Overall, students in Race Across the Americas had a great experience enriched by deliberation exercises and diverse deliberative pedagogical approaches. As one student summed it up, “Learning about racial imaginations and how they can transcend geographical borders yet manifest differently is an important concept that has altered my view of the social system we live in. Additionally, this course has taught me essential skills for engaging in constructive and respectful conversations on complex subjects.”
