Descriptions of Post-Conference Trainings
Below you will find descriptions and learning objectives for the nine post-conference trainings that were held on Tuesday, October 26 in conjunction with the 2004 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation.
Organizing and Moderating Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts in Communities, Corporations and Campuses
Facilitators:
Facilitated by Harold H. Saunders, President of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue and Priya N. Parker, Coordinator of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Project. Saunders is also Director of International Affairs at the Kettering Foundation.
Description:
Participants will learn enough about the five-stage process of Sustained Dialogue to (a) decide whether it would be useful to them and (b) begin forming dialogue groups. A later workshop can prepare moderators of Sustained Dialogue. Sustained Dialogue (SD) is a systematic, interactive, open-ended political process to transform conflictual relationships over time. SD focuses on the dynamics of the relationships that underlie conflict and block its resolution. It is a conceptualization of two decades of experience with protracted dialogues among citizens outside government in conflicts?whether for racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, or historical causes.
The five-stage process of sustained dialogue is carefully designed for use with groups in deep-rooted human conflict?groups that must deal with deeply divisive relational animosities before they can find enough common ground to work together in resolving problems that affect the interests of both. Sustained dialogue provides a space for developing the capacities, practices, and relationships essential to political and economic democracy.
Length of Training:
Half-day
Cost of Training:
$150
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Convening and Moderating National Issues Forums
Facilitators:
Facilitated by Senator Les Ihara, Hawaii State Legislator, Taylor Willingham, Director of Texas Forums and Research Associate for the Kettering Foundation and Dolores Foley, Associate Professor at the University of Hawai`i.
Description:
Civil discourse is vital to the health of a democratic society and sound public policy. This workshop will introduce participants to the tools, methods and theory of deliberative forums developed as part of the research agenda of the Kettering Foundation and supported by the National Issues Forums Institute. The deliberative forums have been used in communities across the country to tackle national issues as part of a national dialogue and to address locally-framed issues. Participants will experience a deliberative forum, discuss how issues are framed for deliberative discourse, and learn how to tap into the National Issues Forums network to convene deliberative forums in their communities.
Learning Objectives:
The goal of this workshop is to provide participants with the tools and skills that they can use to engage the members of their community in deliberative forums on critical public issues, such as education, immigration, health care and Americans' Role in the World. Participants will also understand the unique way in which issues are framed in authentic public terms that lead to non-partisan, deliberative conversations with the goal of finding common ground. Using the National Issues Forums model, which is widely used by a network of citizens in communities across the country, participants will learn: 1. How to use deliberation and the NIF discussion guides to generate thoughtful civic engagement on traditionally thorny and complex public policy issues. 2. How to moderate seemingly opposed points of view in a way that moves toward common understanding. 3. How to build partnerships with community organizations to draw in under-represented populations.
Length of Training:
Full day
Cost of Training:
$150
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Addressing the Campus Climate for Diversity: Promoting Positive Intergroup Relations using Structured Intergroup Interaction Initiatives
Facilitators:
Facilitated by the University of Denver?s Jes?s Trevi?o, Ph.D., Associate Provost for Multicultural Affairs, Lamont Sellers, Assistant Director, Center for Multicultural Affairs, and Niki Latino, Multicultural Student Academic Advisor.
Description:
The purpose of this workshop is to present a comprehensive model for promoting positive intergroup relations on college campuses using structured intergroup interaction initiatves. The case of the Center for Multicultural Excellence at the University of Denver will be presented in addition to the programs and activities that bring students, staff, and faculty together for dialogue around issues of diversity. Participants will get an opportunity to learn about developing and administering structured intergroup interaction initiatives including intergroup dialogues, intergroup relations retreats, and intergroup training workshops. This will be a hands-on and interactive workshop.
Learning Objectives:
1) To examine a comprehensive model for creating structured intergroup interaction on college campuses. 2) To examine and understand conceptually and practically the purpose of structured intergroup interaction initiatives on college campuses. 3) To obtain practical skills in creating and administering structured intergroup interaction initiatives including intergroup dialogues, intergroup relations retreats, and intergroup relations workshops.
Length of Training:
Full day
Cost of Training:
$150
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Planning, Facilitating, and Evaluating a City-wide Public Dialogue Process
Facilitators:
Facilitated by Kimberly Pearce and Barnett Pearce, Founding members of the Public Dialogue Consortium. Kim Pearce is also a Professor in the Department of Speech Communication at De Anza College; Barnett Pearce is also a Professor in the School of Human and Organization Development at Fielding Graduate Institute.
Description:
The Public Dialogue Consortium (PDC) seeks to engage the public and government officials in patterns of public communication about important issues that have the desirable qualities of dialogue. To do so, the PDC works collaboratively with government and members of the public to design multi-event processes, to develop innovative meetings, and to employ unusual forms of communication. In this session, we will look at 1) the distinctive features of the Public Dialogue Consortium's ways of working; 2) lessons learned about the prospects for and challenges of public dialogue processes; and 3) questions raised by our experience. Participants will be invited to review and assess an 18-month public dialogue process in a small California city as a way of identifying skills and strategies and posing relevant questions. In addition to the in-session training, participants will receive a copy of Kim Pearce's (2002) book, Making Better Social Worlds: Engaging in and Facilitating Dialogic Communication. Redwood City, CA: Pearce Associates.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will learn about the Public Dialogue Consortium, particularly the way the PDC's practice is grounded in communication theory. Participants will profit from examining a project that attempted to engage the public and city government in a public communication that had some of the characteristics of dialogue. Participants will enrich their repertoire of designs for sustained dialogue projects. Participants will learn new ways of designing public meetings. Participants will add to their repertoire of specific, in-the-moment facilitation skills.
Length of Training:
Half day
Cost of Training:
$100
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Dialogue to Reconciliation Using Nonviolent Communication
Facilitator:
Facilitated by Miki Kashtan, Co-Founder of BayNVC (Bay Area Nonviolent Communication) and Social Change Project Coordinator for CNVC, the Center for Nonviolent Communication.
Description:
Nonviolent communication (NVC) is a language and consciousness of compassion that can dramatically improve all of our relationships, from personal to professional. Spend the day learning the tools of nonviolent communication for peaceful resolution to conflicts, including how to connect from the heart with people whose views or actions are painfully different from our own, and working with situations where power between conflicting parties is seen as unequal. This workshop will include roleplays and working with participants' real life situations.
Length of Training:
Full day
Cost of Training:
$150
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Experiencing Bohmian Dialogue
Facilitators:
Facilitated by Lee Nichol, Editor of On Dialogue by David Bohm (1996), and Ray Seigfried, Senior Vice President of Christiana Care Health System.
Description:
Individuals will have the opportunity to participate with others in experiencing the meaning of a Bohmian Dialogue. Participants will be encouraged to participate in the Bohm Dialogue session led by Nichol and Seigfried during the conference.
Learning Objectives:
To experience what it means to explore the movement of consciousness, the limitations of reflexive assumptions and the process of thought. We will begin to inquire into the real nature of, and possibilities inherent in, the human organism through arousing body, mind, and emotion. In this process, we suspend and explore the distinction between individual and collective.
Length of Training:
Full day
Cost of Training:
$100
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An Introduction to Dynamic Facilitation, Choice-creating, and the Wisdom Council
Facilitators:
Facilitated by Jim Rough, with Jean Rough, Co-Founders of the Center for Wise Democratic Processes.
Description:
Dynamic Facilitation is an energy-based way of facilitating where people address difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, achieving insights and changes of heart. It elicits a way of talking and thinking, choice-creating, that is like dialogue, except that with it people reach thoughtful conclusions. The Wisdom Council is a newly invented way of structuring a choice-creating conversation within a large system of people, with the potential of forming a unanimous, powerful "We the People."
Learning Objectives:
1) Participants will understand the theory of how Dynamic Facilitation works, how it elicits "choice-creating" as a quality of thinking, and be able to incorporate elements into their style. 2) Participants will experience "choice-creating" and be able to relate it to and distinguish it from dialogue and deliberation. 3) Participants will understand how the Wisdom Council might transform a large organization.
Length of Training:
Full day
Cost of Training:
$150
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Inquiry as Intervention
Facilitator:
Facilitated by Corky Becker, Founding Associate, Public Conversations Project.
Description:
Everything a third party does in an intervention has an effect. Inquiry via the act of asking questions influences people. It both encourages and discourages different types of responses, and it requires participants to re-evaluate their situation and their responses to each other in a particular way. Conflict resolution practitioners often work in situations where conversations have become closed and automatic because parties lock themselves into repeating the same, ineffective communication patterns. In these conversations, practitioners have the opportunity to locate and open the "stuck places" and help them to move towards more constructive communication with the questions that they ask. The choices practitioners make about which questions to ask, as well as when and how to pose them, have an enormous impact on how all parties listen, pay attention, and respond to each other. Questions are not only for eliciting information. They can set the tone for interaction, reflection, relationship development and problem-solving.
Participants in this workshop will focus on the power of crafting, asking, and responding to questions. They will also evaluate the potential for questions in their own practice. During the day, participants will: experience the power of deliberately crafting and responding to questions; practice crafting different types of questions to elicit thoughtful responses; examine the shaping power of language and conversational structure on relationships and the trajectory of conflict.
Length of Training:
Full day
Cost of Training:
$150
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Deliberating Public Issues Online: Using Democracy Lab in Your Classes and for Student Civic Leadership Team Development
Facilitator:
Facilitated by Jim Knauer, Director of Democracy Lab and the Pennsylvania Center for Civic Life.
Description:
Democracy Lab provides online forums for use in high school and college classes. National Issues Forum-style forums run for 10 weeks, fall and spring. Students from around the country dialogue in small groups and are guided from dialogue to inquiry and to action. Instructors adopt Democracy Lab and students purchase online access for $25. Democracy Lab also provides online mentoring for student civic leadership teams with some members going on to become online interns serving on our student staff. Fall 2004 issues are Amerians' Role in the World, Three American Futures, Racial and Ethnic Tensions, News Media and Society, Examining Health Care.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will gain an understanding of the pedagogy of deliberative learning and its relationship to classroom learning and student intellectual and civic development.
Length of Training:
Half day
Cost of Training:
Free!
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