Intergroup Dialogue

Engaging Difference, Social Identities and Social Justice

Ximena Zuniga, Gretchen Lopez, Kristie Ford, Ximena Zuniga, Gretchen Lopez, Kristie Ford, Ximena Zuniga, Gretchen Lopez, Kristie A. Ford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138949539
• eBook ISBN: 9781134917167
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Intergroup dialogue is a form of democratic engagement that fosters communication, critical reflection, and collaborative action across social and cultural divides. Engaging social identities is central to this approach. In recent years, intergroup dialogue has emerged as a promising social justice education practice that addresses pressing issues in higher education, school and community settings. This edited volume provides a thoughtful and comprehensive overview of intergroup dialogue spanning conceptual frameworks for practice, and most notably a diverse set of research studies which examine in detail the processes and learning that take place through dialogue.

This book addresses questions from the fields of education, social psychology, sociology, and social work, offering specific recommendations and examples related to curriculum and pedagogy. Furthermore, it contributes to an understanding of how to constructively engage students and others in education about difference, identities, and social justice.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Equity & Excellence in Education.

Intergroup Dialogue: Critical Conversations about Difference and Social Justice

Ximena Zúñiga
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Gretchen E. Lopez
Syracuse University
Kristie A. Ford
Skidmore College

Dialogue is a moment where humans meet to reflect on their reality as they make it and remake it ... through dialogue, reflecting together on what we know and don't know, we can then act critically to transform reality.

(Freire, cited in Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 13).

To engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries, the barriers that may or may not be erected by race, gender, class, professional standing, and a host of other differences.

(hooks, 1994, p. 130).

... for dialogue to be possible, people—particularly those who enjoy relative privilege—must take responsibility for identifying and reducing socially determined asymmetries that dictate who gets to speak, what forums and forms of speech are deemed legitimate, whose speech counts and to whom it counts. It is difficult to imagine what might motivate such efforts on the part of those who are comfortable within current social structures, but precisely this kind of imagining is needed.

(Wood, 2004, p. xx).

Intergroup dialogue, the primary focus of this book, is a form of democratic engagement that fosters critical understanding, communication, and collaborative action across race and other social group boundaries about contentious issues in

educational and community settings. In education, intergroup dialogue has emerged as a promising social justice education practice that fosters meaningful and thoughtful conversations and learning about social justice issues such as racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ethno-religious oppression (Adams, 2007; Dessel & Rogge, 2008; Maxwell, Fisher, Thompson, & Behling, 2011; Mayhew & Fernandez, 2007; Zúñiga, Nagda, Chesler, & Cytron-Walker, 2007). An alternative to more formal "top down" instruction, intergroup dialogue engages multiple voices and experiences in the creation of shared meaning and new ways of thinking, relating, and acting, both inside and outside of the classroom. Intergroup dialogue may be broadly described as a democratic practice that fosters communication, critical self-reflection, analysis of social structures and conditions that contribute to social inequality; it also encourages collaborative social action across cultural and social divides. The goals of intergroup dialogue include critical co-inquiry, consciousness-raising about the causes and effects of social group inequalities, conflict transformation, and civic engagement in activities that foster learning and social change.

Challenged by increasingly polarized public debates about a number of pressing issues impacting public life in the United States (e.g., health care, school re-segregation, immigration, reproductive rights, gay marriage, and environmental pollution), more and more people from diverse backgrounds are engaging in dialogues across differences within local and regional communities, K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and workplaces. The call for dialogue as a way of addressing polarized issues is not new, but the growing number of institutional and grassroots efforts to establish and support dialogic practices in school cafeterias and libraries, college residence halls, houses of worship, and community centers represents widespread interest in this practice (Judkins, 2012; Schoem & Hurtado, 2001; Thomas, 2010).

In the United States, intergroup dialogue practices gained national attention in the late 1990s as a result of President Clinton's call for a national conversation on race and reconciliation across racial and ethnic boundaries (Schoem, Hurtado, Sevig, Chesler, & Sumida, 2001). The practice of intergroup dialogue, particularly in higher education, has been influenced by IGD,³ the critical-dialogic educational model pioneered by the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, during a time of intense racial strife. The IGD approach to intergroup dialogue has been applied and extended in numerous settings and has been the focus of considerable empirical research (e.g., Gurin, Nagda, & Zúñiga, 2013; Lopez & Zúñiga, 2010; Schoem & Hurtado, 2001; Zúñiga et al., 2007; Zúñiga, Nagda & Sevig, 2002). IGD and other approaches to intergroup dialogue have also gained recognition through various national and regional efforts, including the Ford Foundation's "difficult dialogues" initiative, launched in 2005, and the work of other national organizations such as the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU), the Democracy Imperative, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (Thomas, 2010). Intergroup dialogues based on other practice models have also been initiated in K-12 schools and communities with the support of organizations such as Everyday Democracy (formerly called Study Circles), National Conference on Community and Justice, Public Conversation Project, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, among others (Dessel & Rogge, 2008; Schoem & Hurtado, 2001; Walsh, 2007; Wayne, 2008). Despite this widespread interest in intergroup dialogues, these efforts are often underfunded and reflect the work of a small number of organizers and leaders, as well as the political and institutional will of a handful of school principals or superintendents, college presidents or provosts, or community leaders (Chesler, Lewis, Crowfoot, & 2005; Thomas, 2010).

This book responds to the increased interest in intergroup dialogue by providing educators, practitioners, and researchers with a collection of empirically-based studies about the application and individual and collective impacts of a range of intergroup dialogue practices in formal and non-formal educational settings. These studies address various social justice issues, involve diverse populations, and reflect different and overlapping foundational and pedagogical frameworks. While the main focus of this volume is on intergroup dialogue practices in higher education and K-12 educational settings, we also include additional approaches to dialogue that have influenced the discourse and practice of intergroup dialogue across numerous cultural and institutional contexts. As a whole, the chapters in this book provide substantial support for the continuation and expansion of intergroup dialogue practices in multiple settings. In the following sections of this introduction, we examine the conceptual foundations of intergroup dialogue and situate intergroup dialogue as a social education between justice and pedagogy. Next we introduce approaches to intergroup dialogue reflected in this volume. After a brief review of prior research, we conclude with a discussion of contributions that the 11 chapters in this volume make to our understanding of intergroup dialogue.

Conceptula Foundations of Intergroup Dialogue

The dialogic practices that we refer to as intergroup dialogue are grounded in a variety of intellectual, cultural, and practice traditions (Dessel, 2011; Ellinor & Gerard, 1998; Schoem & Hurtado, 2001; Zúñiga & Nagda, 2001; Zúñiga et al., 2007). Broadly speaking, intergroup dialogue practices are rooted in the dialogic and transformative learning traditions in education that were originally stimulated by the progressive education movement of 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and inspired by the work of John Dewey (Diaz, 2009; Shapiro, Wasserman, & Gallegos, 2012). Intergroup dialogue practices have also been influenced by Martin Bubers (1970) "I-Thou dialogic principle," the intellectual and practical contributions of the intergroup education movement of the 1940 and 1950s, and Gordon Allport's (1954) "intergroup contact hypothesis." More recently, dialogic practices have been shaped by the writings of the postcolonial Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970, 1974), who is known globally for his alternative theory of dialogue as "praxis," and by critical, anti-racist, and feminist theorists and educators such as Patricia Hill Collins (1993, 2012), bell hooks (1994), and Iris Marion Young (1990). While there are important distinctions across these various intellectual legacies, all of these traditions underscore core humanist philosophical premises: the importance of subjectivity, the role of lived experience in the construction of meaning and generation of new knowledge, and the emancipatory potential of relational communication and learning.

Early Influences on Intergroup Dialogue

Dewey (1916, 1938), a pragmatist philosopher who was deeply concerned about the relationship between education and democracy, underscored the centrality of experience and experimentation as ways to counter the negative impact of traditional rote learning practices on student engagement in public schools. He urged educators to encourage democratic practices in their classrooms to help students develop the values, skills, and dispositions needed to engage in generative discussions and experimentation, and to prepare learners for democratic citizenship (Burbules, 2000; Preskill & Brookfield, 2009). Dewey believed that democratic educators needed to provide students with opportunities to work together and to build on their own experiences and on real life situations and problems to reflect critically about their experiences (Brockbank & McGill, 2000). Even though questions related to issues of identity, difference, and power were not addressed in Dewey's work, a set of dialogic and transformative education practices from citizenship education, learner-centered pedagogies, experiential learning, and constructivist approaches to teaching and learning are considered legacies of Dewey and the "progressive movement" in education (Adams, 1997; Banks, 2004; Cho, 2013).

In contrast, Buber's (1970) humanistic and existential philosophy of dialogue highlights the centrality of responsive communication to help actualize our ontological relational existence. In Buber's view, the "I-Thou" relationship allows for authentic and reciprocal responses that help break away from the tendency to manipulate or objectify relationships and to see them as a means to an end. While Buber stressed the importance of listening and being fully present and emphasized the idea of embracing the other as critical dimensions of dialogic communication and learning, he did not inquire into how social asymmetries might influence why some learners are more disposed to listen or the kind of personal work that is needed to be able be open to do so. Regardless, Buber's work underscored the role of face-to-face interaction and self-awareness, in actualizing transformative learning.

Allport (1954), a social psychologist, became deeply interested in the cognitive nature of prejudice and how it shaped perceptions within majority-minority relations. Allport posited that internalized prejudices about social groups different from one's own could only be challenged through a form of relational learning structured under specific sociological conditions. The core premise was that if individuals from dominant ("majority") social identity groups were able to interact with members of non-dominant ("minority") social identity groups in an environment able to equalize asymmetrical relations under the right conditions, prejudice would be reduced. Allport proposed the following four conditions for this type of face-to-face encounter, commonly known as the "contact hypothesis": a) equal status (e.g., equal numbers of participants from participating groups); b) learning activities that actively engage participants in the development of a sense of common interest and shared humanity between the groups; c) shared goals; and, d) the support of institutional authorities (e.g., school principal, teacher, college president, city mayor). Allport's theory had a strong influence on the intergroup education movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which grew out of the social unrest following the Great Migration of large numbers of African Americans from the South to the industrial cities in the North (Banks, 2005). His theory also influenced contemporary pedagogical practices aimed at prejudice reduction, anti-racist, multicultural, or social justice education (Adams, 1997; Banks, 2005).

Contemporary Influences on Intergroup Dialogue

While many earlier philosophers and educators largely ignored the role of power and status in cross-group encounters, they laid the groundwork for the contributions of critical, post-colonial, anti-racist, and feminist theorists and educators. One of the most powerful influences on contemporary intergroup dialogue practice, Paulo Freire (1970), made dialogue the center of his educational philosophy and in Pedagogy of the Oppressed argued for a sociopolitical and constructivist view of knowledge and dialogical ways of teaching and learning. Freire viewed dialogue as inextricably linked to processes of conscientization (consciousness-raising) and education for freedom (see also Freire, 1974). In contrast to Dewey, Buber, and Allport, Freire offers a strong cultural and social critique of hierarchical and oppressive relations in education and society. He calls for a mutual learning process that allows teachers to learn from students as much as students learn from teachers. Members of oppressed and oppressor groups can learn from each other as well and become "critical co-investigators" of social realities to liberate themselves from hegemonic practices, an acceptance of oppressive scripts, and the belief that oppressor-oppressed relations cannot be changed (see also Cho, 2013).

Intergroup dialogue theory and practice have also been strongly influenced by national and international anti-colonial, civil, human rights, and feminist movements, and by feminist and anti-racist theorists and educators in the United States. These movements have highlighted how socially constructed identities, such as race and gender, influence a person's access to resources and political power, as well as their ability to speak and shape public and private relationships and discourses. Feminist theorists and educators, in particular, have examined how structural, hierarchical "relations of rule" (Smith, 1990) are reflected and reproduced in the classroom, how certain types of knowledge are valued and others devalued (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Collins, 1990, 1993; Haraway, 1988) and how the concept of "knowledge" itself has been constructed as objective, rational, and detached from relationships and emotions (Miller, 1986). Anti-racist educators and critical race theorists have also examined the relationship between social constructions of race and multiple forms of oppression, including cultural as well as physical colonization and emotional as well as physical exploita...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I. Introducing the Practice and Research on Intergroup Dialogue
• Part II. Intergroup Dialogue in Higher Education
• Part III. Intergroup Dialogue in Schools and Communities
• Index