Deliberative Citizenship Initiative

Building Democracy One Conversation at a Time

Blog Posts

Deepening Class Discussion: This Year’s DeeP Collaborative Orientation Workshop

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DeeP Collaborative Faculty Workshop

On August 10th, we kicked off our third installment of the Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative with our annual DeeP Collaborative Orientation Workshop. This year’s cohort brings together 22 new faculty collaborators – a record number – who specialize in over 15 different academic disciplines, including anthropology, biology, business administration, communication studies, dance, economics, education, English, environmental studies, German studies, philosophy, political science, public health, peace and conflict studies, and sociology.

They also come from 13 different institutions, including Alamance Community College, Birmingham Southern College, Davidson College, Guilford College, Hendrix College, Lenoir-Rhyne University, Macalester College, Rollins College, Sewanee: The University of the South, Spelman College, Swarthmore College, UNC Charlotte, and Vassar College.

The goals of this workshop were to introduce our new Collaborative members to the key principles and practices of deliberative pedagogy, to build community among the cohort members—who will be working together over the coming academic year—and to begin mapping out their goals for the fall semester, during which they will explore how they will apply deliberative pedagogy to their future courses.

DCI Faculty Director Dr. Graham Bullock led the workshop, using both active learning and deliberative strategies to introduce the motivations for using deliberative pedagogy practices, the most relevant concepts and frameworks, specific deliberative teaching methods and tools, and case studies of deliberation-involved courses.

What is deliberative pedagogy? In short, deliberative pedagogy is a teaching practice that involves the use of structured deliberative activities to teach learners how to express different viewpoints about an issue or approaches to a problem, how to evaluate these viewpoints or approaches critically, and how to identify both areas of agreement and disagreement through the course of their deliberative discussions.

The key to practicing deliberative pedagogy well is to setup deliberations in the classroom so that they include multiple viewpoints on the issue at hand, allow all voices to be heard, and promote the assessment of arguments for and against the variety of viewpoints on the table. One way to do so is by introducing conversation agreements, or ground rules for good discursive practices. Another way is to have a facilitator present who can ensure the deliberation represents multiple viewpoints and voices. (Want to learn how to become a trained facilitator for deliberative events in OR out of the classroom? Learn more about our upcoming Deliberation Facilitator Training Program here!)

Deliberative pedagogy is also connected to the concept of deliberative democracy, a type of democratic engagement in which reason-giving – broadly-defined – is used as a means for citizens to make progress on practical issues facing their community.

Some of the lively discussions among our faculty cohort members focused on how deliberative pedagogy can be employed beyond courses that focus explicitly on public policy, including courses in the arts and the sciences. Groups also discussed how deliberative pedagogy can be a form of inclusive pedagogy and how faculty can navigate the apparent tension between affirming our lived experiences as individuals while assessing reasons for and against policy decisions that impact those experiences.

Others discussed whether or in what circumstances instructors should remain neutral during debates about normative issues that do not have straightforward answers and about which there can be reasonable disagreement among deliberators. None of these questions have easy answers, but we look forward to diving deeper with our ’23-’24 DeeP Collaborative cohort on these and other important topics in the coming year. Look out for blog posts from this year’s participants in the spring, once they have begun applying what they have taken from our interactive learning sessions in the fall to their various teaching contexts.

DCI in the News: Support Expands Impact of the DCI

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DCI in the News

An article was published last week on the Davidson College website featuring stories from Davidson students, faculty, staff, community members, and alumni about how the DCI has enabled them to engage in and facilitate more productive discussions about difficult topics. The article includes some great insights from Anthony Toumazatos ’25 (DCI Fellow), David Barnard ’79 (Davidson alum and DCI D Team participant), Pam Dykstra (Davidson community member and DCI Advisory Council member), Jayme Sponsel (Assistant Director For Research, Learning, and Outreach in Davidson’s Library and a Co-Convener of the DCI), and Melissa González (Davidson’s interim Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer and DeeP Collaborative member).

It also highlights two recent gifts that will help the DCI continue to build and expand the deliberative opportunities it is offering. These include a generous gift from Amy ’98 and Steven Wacaster and a major grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. We encourage you to check out the article as soon as you have the chance. It provides a wonderful window into the impact that the DCI has been having – and promises to have in the years to come.

If you want to join in on the action right away, you can sign up for a Fall D Team here and register for our annual Deliberation Facilitator Training Program here. And stay tuned for more announcements soon about our other fall programs that are in the works!

Year in Review: Highlights from Our 2022-23 Annual Report

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DCI 2022-2023 Annual Report Cover

The DCI has wrapped up its third year of deliberative programs and has just published its third Annual Report! As we prepare for another academic year full of Deliberative Forums, Speakers, D Teams, and Training Programs for our Fellows, Deliberation Facilitators, and Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative Faculty Members, we want to share some highlights from this report. We hope that you find something that inspires you to join the DCI and engage with others on the pressing issues facing our society.

Quick tip: If you already know you’d like to get involved in the DCI this year, click here to learn more about our Fall 2023 D Teams and here for more about our upcoming Deliberation Facilitator Training Program!

We started off the 2022 year with our first-ever Semester Kickoff Party, where students, faculty, staff, and community members gathered to learn more about the DCI’s mission and programs, which was followed by our Deliberation Facilitator Training Program, where we trained 44 new facilitators, including our ’22-’23 DCI Fellows and DeeP Collaborative cohorts. The DCI Fellows went on to facilitate conversations among our D Team members, Forum participants, and—in the course of completing their own deliberation projects—other groups on campus and in the wider community. All told, over 850 people participated in last year’s DCI programs.

Last year, the DCI expanded its reach within the Davidson campus community. Our Fellows organized and facilitated a friendly deliberative competition about the greatest actors, athletes, and musicians of all time at our Deliberating GOATs event. Fellows also hosted Commons Conversations, informal lunchtime discussions with Davidson students about a wide range of salient topics. Fellows also held office hours at the E.H. Little Library, where the DCI’s newly curated capsule collection of resources and reading materials is on display. The collection is always being updated, so stop by the library to check it out!

We collaborated with academic departments, co-curricular programs, and community partners throughout the year. For example, we co-hosted a forum with the Bonner Scholars Program during which DCI Fellows facilitated conversations among Bonner scholars about free speech and inclusion. And we hosted our second year of the Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative for faculty from both Davidson and Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) institutions.

Visit this page to read our newly published 2022-2023 Annual Report, where you can find out all about our goals, programs, and growth over the three years we’ve been hosting deliberations and building our capacity to engage with one another on challenging topics.

The DCI is Hosting its Fifth Deliberation Facilitator Training Program!

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How should we engage in meaningful, productive disagreement, discussion, and problem-solving with others, especially when the issue at hand is highly contentious and politicized? This is the fundamental question the DCI has been working to answer, and we believe there is a way to do it well. We can disagree respectfully, we can discover the truth in spite of—and indeed, because of—our differences, and we can solve pressing issues democratically using the tools of deliberative democracy.

Deliberation, as we see it at the DCI, is a method of discussion that enables citizens—broadly construed so as not to limit this notion to persons with one particular legal status—to state their views and the presuppositions behind them, reconstruct the arguments for their positions, and to make progress toward solutions to problems where there is entrenched disagreement.

Although this can sometimes happen organically in conversation or in the political sphere, the DCI came about in part because this is so difficult to achieve. After all, we cannot claim to be immune from falling into echo chambers, falling prey to motivated reasoning, relying on fallacious reasoning, or even from failing to be able to articulate the main reasons for the views we hold in the face of criticism from another.

On the other hand, we can also be so uncomfortable in the face of disagreement that we would rather not engage—and we either decide to simply agree to disagree or to shut each other out. But living together requires making decisions together and coming to a shared understanding of difficult problems, at least to some extent.

Our experience, and the experienc of similar programs around the world, has found that well-trained and intentional facilitators can help participants overcome these obstacles and engage in meaningful and productive deliberation, even when they disagree deeply. This is why the DCI is hosting its fifth Deliberation Facilitator Training Program this year. The training will take place over two sessions from 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm, one on Sunday, Sept. 10th and the other on Saturday, Sept. 16th. The sessions complement each other are required components of the training. Virtual and in-person options are available, but space is limited so sign up soon if you are interested. 

his hands-on and interactive program enables participants to lead deliberation sessions in their community, with colleagues, with their families, or in their classrooms, and to facilitate DCI-hosted forums on matters of public interest. The DCI supports facilitators with learning materials we send out before the training days, and participants get a chance to practice facilitating a mock deliberation.

Do you feel your community, your family, your students, or your colleagues would benefit from deliberating about an issue with the help of a trained facilitator? Learn more and sign up here by Tuesday, Sept. 5th!

Introducing Our Fall 2023 D Teams

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The DCI is hosting its fourth year of D Teams starting this fall, and we are excited to share this fall’s theme and topics with you. This year, we also invite you to participate in our new Invite a Friend Program, which will help us increase the range of perspectives represented in D Team discussions.

The DCI’s D Teams provide the opportunity for groups of 6-10 people to meet three times per semester and to discuss a series of contentious topics of public concern together. D Teams present a unique opportunity because they can get you into meaningful conversation with people socially, generationally, or ideologically different from you. They build community among participants empower them to have more productive conversations about topics that typically are difficult to talk about.

When we conducted our Topics Survey earlier this summer—where we gathered responses from previous D Team participants, Davidson students, and community members via our social media channels—and when we considered the suggestions for topics from our 2022-2023 cohort of DCI Fellows, we found that there was significant interest in topics that seemed to touch on the value of autonomy. These topics were: (i) speech, harm, and offense, (ii) abortion, and (iii) book censorship.

Our goal this year is to pay attention to the different problems presented by each topic while also investigating different ways of balancing our autonomy rights with one another’s so that everyone’s autonomy can be properly respected. We will also explore how our commitment to autonomy should be weighed when it comes into conflict with other values. To learn more about our topics for this year and our theme, see our Fall 2023 D Teams webpage. You can also read more about the purpose and structure of our D Teams here.

Since D Teams are about building community and building democracy, we very much would like you to participate in our Invite a Friend Program. This program allows you to indicate a preference to be on a D Team with someone you know when you register. They could be a friend, family member, colleague, neighbor, or someone you know from another context. You may want to invite someone who is ideologically different from you, in order to increase our D Teams’ ability to engage with different perspectives. Or, in case you are feeling hesitant about joining a team, you may want to invite someone with whom you share something in common. In either case, we welcome you and a friend (or multiple friends!) to join us this year as we deliberate about the problems we find both pressing and challenging for us to solve today.

Sign up for a D Team – and invite a friend – by September 7, 2023.