From debate to dialogue: Toward a pedagogy of nonpolarized public discourse

Abstract

This essay describes the rationale, content, and structure of a team‐taught course which explored the difference between debate and dialogue as forms of public discourse. Our thesis is that the value of public argument in our culture is undermined by its tendency to polarize popular opinion, and that this situation could be improved by the development of a pedagogy of dialogue to balance our discipline's traditional emphasis on debate. The essay is divided into four sections. The first section examines our discipline's view of argument. The second section explores the question of dialogue's “teachability,” and the third section proposes several fundamental components of a pedagogy of dialogue. The final section describes the format of the team‐taught course that the authors designed to explore the comparative benefits of debate and dialogue as forms for public discourse.