Intergroup Dialogue in Higher Education E-Book

Ximena Zuniga

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B ASHE-ERIC Report Series (AEHE)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 203

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Intergroup dialogue promotes student engagement across cultural andsocial divides on college campuses through a face-to-face,interactive, and facilitated learning experience that bringstogether twelve to eighteen students from two or more socialidentity groups over a sustained period of time. Students inintergroup dialogue explore commonalities and differences; examinethe nature and impact of discrimination, power, and privilege; andfind ways of working together toward greater inclusion, equality,and social justice. Intergroup dialogue is offered as a cocurricular activity onsome campuses and as a course or part of a course on others. Thepractice of intergroup dialogue is considered a substantive andmeaningful avenue for preparing college graduates with theknowledge, commitment, and skills essential for living and workingin a diverse yet socially stratified society. The research evidencesupports the promise of intergroup dialogues to meet itseducational goals?consciousness raising, building relationshipsacross differences and conflicts, and strengthening individual andcollective capacities to promote social justice. This volume outlines the theory, practice, and research onintergroup dialogue. It also offers educational resources tosupport the practice of intergroup dialogue. Addressing faculty,administrators, student affairs personnel, students, andpractitioners, this volume is a useful resource for anyoneimplementing intergroup dialogues in higher education. This is the 4th issue of the 32nd volume of the Jossey-Bassreport series ASHE Higher Education Report Series.Each monograph in the series is the definitive analysis of a toughhigher education problem, based on thorough research of pertinentliterature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified bya national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are thencommissioned to write the reports, with experts providing criticalreviews of each manuscript before publication.

Leseprobe

Contents

Executive Summary

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Intergroup Dialogue in Higher Education: Definition, Origins,and Practices

Defining Intergroup Dialogue

Historical Roots of and Contemporary Influences on Intergroup Dialogue

Organization of This Monograph

Educational Goals of Intergroup Dialogue

Consciousness Raising

Building Relationships Across Differences and Conflicts

Strengthening Individual and Collective Capacities to Promote Social Justice

Design and Practice Principles in Intergroup Dialogue

A Key Pedagogical Assumption

Design Elements

The Four-Stage Design of Intergroup Dialogue

Practice Principles for Intergroup Dialogue

Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues

Why Facilitation and Cofacilitation?

Competencies Required for Facilitators of Intergroup Dialogue

Preparing Facilitators for Intergroup Dialogues

Major Issues and Challenges in Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues and Programs

Research on Outcomes and Processes of Intergroup Dialogue

A Conceptual Framework for Research on Intergroup Dialogue

Outcomes of Intergroup Dialogue

Conclusion

Program Development, Implementation, and Institutional Impact

Program Development

Implementation and Sustainability

Institutional Impact of IGD Programs

Final Thoughts

Appendix: Educational Resources

References

Name Index

Subject Index

About the Authors

Intergroup Dialogue in Higher Education: Meaningful Learning About Social Justice

Ximena Zúñiga, Biren (Ratnesh) A. Nagda, Mark Chesler, Adena Cytron-Walker

ASHE Higher Education Report: Volume 32, Number 4

Kelly Ward, Lisa E. Wolf-Wendel, Series Editors

Copyright © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, c/o John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River St., Hoboken, NJ 07030; [phone], fax [phone], www.wiley.com/go/permissions

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Advisory Board

The ASHE Higher Education Report Series is sponsored by the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), which provides an editorial advisory board of ASHE members.

Melissa Anderson

University of Minnesota

Denise Green

University of Illinois

James Fairweather

Michigan State University

Jerlando Jackson

University of Wisconsin

Kevin Kinser

University of Albany

Sara Donaho

Student Representative

J. Douglas Toma

University of Georgia

Adrianna J. Kezar

University of Southern California

Executive Summary

This volume outlines the theory, practice, and research on intergroup dialogue (IGD). Intergroup dialogue is a face-to-face, interactive, and facilitated learning experience that brings together twelve to eighteen students from two or more social identity groups over a sustained period to explore commonalities and differences, examine the nature and consequences of systems of power and privilege, and find ways to work together to promote social justice. Some groups that participate in intergroup dialogue include men and women; white people and people of color; African Americans and Latinos or Latinas; heterosexuals, gay men, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people; and Christians and Jews. Students engage in active and experiential learning over the course of eight to twelve sessions. The IGD groups are guided by trained facilitators who use an educational curriculum. Intergroup dialogues are offered in a variety of ways on different campuses, ranging from cocurricular activities to full-fledged courses.

Over the past decade, intergroup dialogue has evolved as a sought-after practice in higher education for fostering learning and building mutual understanding among students from different social backgrounds (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen, and Allen, 1999; President’s Initiative on Race Advisory Board, 1998). This practice has its roots in the progressive democratic education and intergroup education movements of the 1930s and 1940s. Intergroup dialogue shares common goals with other diversity education efforts in higher education, yet it is distinctive in its critical-dialogic approach to addressing issues of social identity and social location in the context of systems of power and privilege. Unlike efforts that emphasize content knowledge about group inequality or prejudice reduction through personalized encounters, intergroup dialogue strives to balance intimate, interactive, and reflective encounters among diverse participants with cognitive, affective, and active approaches to learning about diversity and social justice (Nagda and Derr, 2004; Schoem and Hurtado, 2001; Zúñiga and Nagda, 1993a; Zúñiga, Nagda, and Sevig, 2002).

What Are the Goals of Intergroup Dialogue?

The specific goals of intergroup dialogue are to:

Promote the development of consciousness about social identity and social group differences by examining how personal and group-related attitudes, relationships with other people and groups, information about the social world, and access to critical social and material resources are shaped by systems of power and privilege;

Help members of social identity groups with a history of conflict or potential conflict to forge connections across differences and conflicts by building caring and reciprocal relationships that support the development of mutual empathy in an inclusive environment where participants can learn to listen and speak openly, engage with one another seriously, take risks, explore differences and conflicts, and discover common ground; and

Strengthen individual and collective capacities for social action by fostering connections and alliances across and in social identity groups and build the confidence, commitment, and skills needed to support coalitional actions for social justice inside and outside the dialogues.

As a whole, the educational goals of intergroup dialogue—consciousness raising, building relationships across differences and conflicts, and strengthening individual and collective capacities to promote social justice—fulfill the call for college graduates to have the knowledge, commitment, and skills essential for living and working in a diverse and socially stratified society (Guarasci and Cornwell, 1997; Gurin, 1999; hooks, 1994, 2003; Schoem and Hurtado, 2001).

How Are Intergroup Dialogues Structured and Designed?

To promote a sense of equal status in the group (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998), participants in an intergroup dialogue are drawn in equal numbers from the social identity groups participating in the dialogue. Trained cofacilitators, one from each group participating in the dialogue, facilitate dialogic engagement and provide a model for working across differences.

To successfully meet the goals of intergroup dialogue, participants must gain knowledge about intergroup issues and conflicts, critically reflect on their own social identities and locations, and actively engage in honest and fruitful dialogue. In contrast to the banking approach to education (Freire, 1970), intergroup dialogue relies on student-centered pedagogies that assume that students can cocreate knowledge through facilitated active learning processes that value learning from experience as well as from conceptual frameworks, literature, empirical data, and story telling (Adams, 1997; Brookfield and Preskill, 1999, 2005; hooks, 1994, 2003; Stage, Muller, Kinzie, and Simmons, 1998; Wink, 2005).

Participants are encouraged to address constructively the often-hidden and -contested territories of social identity and intergroup relations through an educational design that explicitly attends to both content concerns (what participants talk about and learn) and process concerns (how participants engage with each other and with learning). This process is accomplished by intentionally weaving structured activities and dialogic methods that encourage individual and collective learning. Because critical and reflective conversations across differences do not occur naturally or easily in a society that is divided and socially stratified along social identity–group lines, intergroup dialogue uses a four-stage curricular design that moves from group beginnings to exploring differences and commonalities to addressing controversial issues to considering or taking actions for social justice. Three practice principles—balancing and integrating personal and structural levels of analysis, exploring commonalities and differences, and linking reflection and action—inform the educational design and guide the work of intergroup dialogue facilitators.

Who Facilitates Intergroup Dialogues and What Are Their Roles and Responsibilities?

In intergroup dialogue, facilitation means active, responsive guidance, not formal instruction. An important role of facilitators is to enable the group to develop its own processes and ways of gaining knowledge. Rather than simply presenting data, concepts, and theories, facilitators engage individual participants and the group in reflecting, sharing, and dialoguing about perspectives, feelings, and desires that are both personally and socially relevant. Facilitators support and challenge participants to maximize their learning rather than evaluate individual participants against preestablished performance criteria. They are coparticipants, not experts, in the dialogue process.

Facilitators participate in training activities and are provided with ongoing coaching and support while facilitating the intergroup dialogue. Preparing competent facilitators requires recruiting people who are ready to learn and use the knowledge, awareness, and skills required to understand and work with the distinctive features of intergroup dialogue. A few intergroup dialogue programs have used faculty as facilitators, but it is more common for student affairs staff to serve in this capacity. On a few campuses, graduate or undergraduate students serve as trained peer facilitators for other graduate or undergraduate students.

What Is the Impact of Intergroup Dialogue on Participants and What Accounts for the Impact?

The promise of intergroup dialogue is supported by a growing body of quantitative and qualitative studies conducted by researchers and practitioners of intergroup dialogue (Gurin, 1999; Hurtado, 2001; Stephan and Stephan, 2001). This research suggests that intergroup dialogue has a positive effect on student outcomes that is directly related to the educational goals of raising participants’ consciousness, building relationships across differences and conflicts, and strengthening individual and collective capacities to promote social justice (Gurin, Peng, Lopez, and Nagda, 1999; Lopez, Gurin, and Nagda, 1998; Nagda, Kim, Moise-Swanson, and Kim, 2006; Zúñiga, 2004). Moreover, specific communication and pedagogical processes (such as sustained and intimate engagement across differences and a focus on both cognitive and affective dimensions of dialogue and learning) appear to support the development of these student outcomes (Nagda, 2006; Nagda, Kim, and Truelove, 2004; Nagda and Zúñiga, 2003; Yeakley, 1998). Further research is needed to determine more precisely what and how students learn in intergroup dialogue and how the practice can be improved.

How Are Intergroup Dialogues Organized on Campus and What Is Their Institutional Impact?

Intergroup dialogue has garnered increasing interest from faculty, student affairs professionals, students, and administrators over the last decade. It provides a forum for addressing issues that many feel are too controversial to examine effectively in the classroom and to encourage a learning process that enables significant collaboration among faculty, student affairs professionals, and student facilitators.

Several paths lead to creation of dialogue programs in higher education. Be it an independent, student-generated effort or housed in student or academic affairs, its adaptability to a range of situations makes it appealing to students, staff, faculty, and administrators from varying parts of the campus. Intergroup dialogue programs share common goals and design features, though each individual program is tailored to the specific objectives and needs of the campus, academic department, or student affairs unit it serves.

Although the institutional impact of intergroup dialogue remains an area of further research and inquiry, these programs appear to yield valuable institutional benefits on many campuses. Both students and faculty report that students transfer the skills learned to other areas of their lives on campus—student leadership positions, for example—and faculty and student affairs professionals have found that being involved in intergroup dialogue has enhanced their work on other areas, including the classroom. As colleges and universities weigh different approaches for promoting citizens’ engagement in a diverse democracy, they may find that intergroup dialogue offers a fruitful and exciting opportunity for faculty, student affairs professionals, and students to work together to build a more inclusive and just future.

Foreword

The educational value of diversity was the major theme of the seventy-four amicus briefs submitted on behalf of the University of Michigan in defending its use of race-conscious admissions policies in cases that were acted on by the Supreme Court in June 2003. These briefs—from the nonprofit and corporate sectors to professional organizations to the military—stressed, in language unique to their particular societal missions, the crucial importance of students’ acquiring an understanding of different life experiences and group perspectives and developing the cultural competence that will be needed to be effective leaders in the United States and the world. The Supreme Court ruling affirmed the use of race-conscious admissions. We, as scholars and professionals in higher education, must now grapple with the question What kind of academic experiences will promote outcomes toward cultural competence?

Intergroup dialogue, as conceptualized and described in this volume, explicitly engages students in the cognitive, emotional, and skill development that cultural competence demands. Learning how to talk and listen across differences and to discern commonalities as well as differences in these interactions is fundamental to cultural understanding and intercultural competence. So, too, are appreciating the life experiences of people from backgrounds distinct from one’s own, understanding the dynamics of inequalities, and learning to work with conflicts that inevitably emerge in intercultural situations. Together, all these outcomes augur well for working cooperatively across differences in the pursuit of equality and social justice.

The authors, who collectively created intergroup dialogue nearly two decades ago, have written the definitive statement of its development and current status in higher education. This volume is a treasure trove of theory, research, and practice that will guide scholars and practitioners in student affairs for years to come as they increasingly seek effective tools to actualize the educational potential of diversity.

Patricia Gurin

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor