Review our draft findings HERE.
Read our story in The Breeze HERE.
Watch our #ListenFirstFriday video on our findings.
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Students need to develop civic muscles to be active citizens. Deliberative pedagogy encourages students to learn ways weighing options against tradeoffs and reaching shared judgment with others. In working across differences in a highly polarized world, students can develop the capacity to see beyond ideological differences and partisan preferences to shared values and common good. Unfortunately, students have extremely limited opportunities to engage in dialogue across genuine divides. Opportunities that do exist are often social scientific research experiments or one-off campus events that provide little return on civic learning. Students need the kind of sustained and “meaningful interactions between people from different backgrounds, with different scars, and different ways of looking at the world” they cannot get dialoguing in discrete classrooms or from self-selected campus activities.
This research analyzes the impact of student deliberating across divides during campus-specific forum and forums held as part of the National Week of Deliberation. We assess the gender, ideological and geographic diversity of particular small group discussions and compare to the group’s ability to find common ground together, degree in which they support common ground, and whether students are able to find value in engaging with different views when discussing wicked issues.
This study has been approved by the JMU IRB, protocol #20-1420. This project will survey participants from the Free Speech and Inclusive Campus, Climate Choices, and Immigration Reform forums.
This research was featured in an Inside Higher Education article on campus bridging programs. Portions of this research were presented at the 2021 American Political Science Association annual conference. Updated methods, data, and results have been submitted for presentation at the 2023 Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement conference. Other sections will be submitted for competitive review for presentation at the 2023 National Communication Association annual conference.
This research has support from the Madison Center for Civic Engagement, the JMU First Year Research Experience (FYRE) program, and the student engagement mini-grant program sponsored by JMU’s faculty senate and Student Government Association (SGA).