Classroom Deliberation in an Era of Political Polarization

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Notes

Notes

Data collection began in spring 2005 and was completed in spring 2009. The sample includes 1,001 students in 35 classes in 21 schools in three states (Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin). This is one of the largest democratic education studies in the nation, and the only longitudinal study that includes robust qualitative data from teachers and their students and follow‐up data from students after they have left high school. We have administered pre‐ and post‐course questionnaires to 999 students and their teachers. The bulk of other data comes from observing classes and issues forums attended by multiple classes, interviewing teachers about their educational philosophies, and interviewing a large subsample of students ( n = 226) during the last 2 weeks of the course. We contracted with the UW Survey Center to conduct two rounds of follow‐up telephone interviews. The first was completed in 2007 with 402 participants. The second was completed in 2009 with 369 participants.

We have adopted Parker’s () distinction between discussion and deliberation (explained on p. 15 of this article), and will use both terms throughout the paper.

For more on political stability and classroom practice, see Hoepken ().

The idea that deliberation is an important part of political decision making has been around since Aristotle’s Politics; however, these theorists were repositioning deliberation as a central feature of democratic life.

The only tracked course is one section for English Language Learners.

Abrams and Fiorina () argue that Bishop’s work may overemphasize the extent to which people have geographically sorted themselves, but they do not dispute the fact that some sorting has occurred and that political amplification is happening.

To see the press release and the text of the speech go to http://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html (retrieved September 26, 2010).

The previous two paragraphs have been adapted from Hess ().

We are grateful for Eric Plutzer (personal communication, May 16, 2012), who pointed us in the direction of the empirical‐policy distinction.