Deliberating Controversial Public Issues As Part of Civic Education¹

An earlier version of this article was published in Enseñanza de las Ciencias Sociales in 2011.

Abstract

The authors argue that deliberation should be an integral part of secondary civics classrooms and teacher education programs. Drawing on a wide range of research, they contend that teaching and learning deliberative skills has the potential to build individual and group civic capacity. They share some of the results of an evaluation of one ten-nation project, Deliberating in a Democracy, which suggest that teachers can learn to conduct deliberations in secondary classrooms. Furthermore, across countries, students reported increases in their understanding of issues, their ability to state their opinions, and their confidence in talking about controversial issues with peers. Most important, students demonstrated greater perspective-taking abilities than students not involved in the project. The potential limitations and weaknesses of the deliberative model are discussed, as are the implications for civic pedagogy and learning.

Keywords:

• deliberation
• Structured Academic Controversy
• civic education
• controversial issues

Notes

An earlier version of this article was published in Enseñanza de las Ciencias Sociales in 2011.

All names are pseudonyms.

The Deliberating in a Democracy (DID) Project and its extension, the Expanding Deliberating in a Democracy (ExDID) Project, were conducted by the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago (CRFC), the Constitutional Rights Foundation in Los Angeles (CRF), and Street Law, Inc., with grants from the U.S. Department of Education (No. Q304A040003 and No. Q304A070005, respectively). We are grateful to Carolyn Pereiera, project director, and Katie Moore and Bebs Chorak, project coordinators, for their support as we conducted the evaluation of the projects. Data reported in this article draw on multiple evaluation reports and conference presentations, the most significant of which are Avery, Freeman, and Greenwalt 2005; Avery, Levy, and Simmons 2010; 2011; Avery, Simmons, and Freeman 2007.

See, however, Cohen, Sherman, Bastardi, Hsu, McGoey, and Ross 2007 for a fascinating study suggesting that participants in negotiations are more likely to compromise when their values and viewpoints are affirmed than when they are told that the goal is to reach a compromise position.

The items were: “As a result of participating in the deliberations, I developed a better understanding of the issues”; “My participation in the deliberations increased my ability to state my opinions”; and “Because of my participation in the deliberations, I am more confident talking about controversial issues with my peers.” Response options included Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree.

Classroom climate was measured by a six-item scale used in the IEA CivEd Study (Torney-Purta et al. 2001) and includes six items: Students feel free to disagree openly with their teachers about political and social issues during class; Students are encouraged to make up their own minds about issues; Teachers respect our opinions and encourage us to express them during class; Students feel free to express opinions in class even when their opinions are different from most of the other students; Teachers encourage us to discuss political or social issues about which people have different opinions; and Teachers present several positions on an issue when explaining it in class (207). Response options included: never, rarely, sometimes, often.