SPRING 2012
Difficult Dialogues Faculty Learning Community

Led by Jackie Cason and Trish Jenkins

Fridays Noon - 2 pm

A Ford Foundation grant allowed UAA and APU to create a nationally-recognized book, Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education, which addresses themes of academic freedom; classroom safety; rhetoric and debate; race, class and culture; science and religion; and business, politics and social justice.  The book is designed to serve as a manual for faculty who wish to strengthen their teaching and engage students more effectively in conversations about the most important issues of our time.  

Please join us for a discussion series based on Start Talking which will help us improve our skills at introducing controversial topics into the classroom.  Faculty may attend the whole series or individual sessions on a "drop-in" basis. 

If you wish to participate in the entire series as a Difficult Dialogues Faculty Fellow please complete the application attached here.

 

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Series Topics:

January 27, LIB 307 Structures of Civility in the Classroom

February 3, LIB 307 12:00 - 1:30pm   Deliberative Dialogue Across the Disciplines: Cultivating the Capacity for Judgment

February 17, LIB 307  National Forum on Civil Discourse

March 30, LIB 307  Teaching About A Sense of Place

April 13, TBD   Politics and Expertise in the Classroom

For more information:

aner@uaa.alaska.edu or afjec1@uaa.alaska.edu or aftmj@uaa.alaska.edu.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Deliberative Dialogue Across the Disciplines:  Cultivating the Capacity for Judgment

12:00 pm - 1:30 pm LIB 307

In all disciplines, students must learn to make and support claims, respond to alternative positions, and place their judgments within a context relevant to a particular audience. The rhetorical skills of debate and deliberation are therefore relevant to classrooms across the curriculum. This session will focus on core principles of oppositional engagement  as a means for understanding complex issues and will offer a variety of strategies for fostering deliberative dialogue within any course that seeks to cultivate a student’s capacity for  judgment.

Register Here

Friday, March 30, 2012

Teaching About a Sense of Place

12:00 pm - 2:00 pm LIB 307

What is meant by a sense of place? What does it mean to teach about a sense of place? What is meant by “sense of place”? Why might instructors incorporate a place-based assignment into our courses? How can various disciplines teach about place? This session will focus on ways to teach about place in the context of the educational philosophies and pedagogical theories associated with place-based education.

Register Here