Dialogue Across Difference: Practice, Theory, and Research on Intergroup Dialogue

3. A Critical-Dialogic Theoretical Framework for Intergroup Dialogue

chAPTER 3 A Critical-Dialogic Theoretical Framework for Intergroup Dialogue [We] often hate each other because we fear each other; we fear each other because we don’t know each other; we don’t know each other because we cannot communicate; we cannot communicate because we are separated. —Martin Luther King Jr. In the previous chapter, we described the critical-dialogic practice model of intergroup dialogue (IGD). The pedagogical features of IGD—content learning, structured interaction, and facilitation—are intentionally integrated to foster communication processes that play the central theoretical role in how IGD increases intergroup understanding, intergroup relationships , and intergroup collaboration. As noted in chapter 1, talking about race and gender across race and gender is challenging. Such conversations are often avoided or approached superficially , yet the rewards are great when these conversations are intentional and supported by facilitators. On college campuses, for example, students often interact across differences and power simply as acquaintances or classmates , superficially greeting each other with a variety of casual expressions: “What’s up?” “What’d you do Saturday night?” “Saw you tagged on Facebook !” Even when they interact with greater depth, they sometimes create A CRITICAL-DIALOGIC THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 75 misunderstandings or reinforce tensions because of their limited skills for conversing across differences. Intergroup dialogue, in contrast, aims to encourage deep conversations about and across social divides of race and gender . In small group learning environments, students interact across social boundaries to develop more substantive relationships that may not be available in other spaces on campus. The communication processes that are the heart of what happens in IGD produce an interaction that students sometimes describe as “relating under the skin.” Instead of staying at a superficial level, they learn to communicate in new ways. In intergroup dialogue, they learn to ask about each other’s life experiences, and what it means for them to build community with each other. They ask, “How do you feel about that?” “What does hearing about that experience mean to you?” “How do our different life experiences affect our perspectives, beliefs, and how we interpret what we read?” “How can we work together across our differences?” Engaging these questions are starting points to develop more meaningful and connective relationships that require knowing and practicing relational skills we believe are the substrate for other learning in intergroup dialogues. Such learning may be thought of as “an ecology of relationships with people who value diversity and transformative discourse” (Parks Daloz 2000, 116). In this chapter, we present a theoretical framework for intergroup dialogue that guided both the implementation and the research investigation of gender and race-ethnicity dialogues at the nine participating universities. We emphasize communication processes in our theoretical framework as the central mechanisms of change. They are the processes that take place in interactions among participants that then foster changes that individuals undergo in the IGD experience. Figure 3.1 shows this theoretical framework. It differentiates the communication processes that occur among individuals and the psychological processes that occur within individuals (Nagda 2006; Sorensen et al. 2009; Stephan 2008). Our theoretical framework posits that the IGD pedagogy fosters the communication processes, which in turn lead to psychological processes. Together, the communication and psychological processes lead to the outcomes of intergroup relationships, understanding, and collaboration. We begin our description of the framework with the conceptualization and definition of the communication processes. Pedagogical Features Communication Processes Psychological Processes Outcomes End of Dialogue Outcomes One Year Later Content learning Structured interactions Facilitation Dialogic communication Critical communication Affective positivity Cognitive involvement Intergroup understanding Intergroup relationships Intergroup action and collaboration Intergroup understanding Intergroup relationships Intergroup action and collaboration figure 3.1 A critical-Dialogic Theoretical framework of Intergroup Dialogue Source: Authors’ compilation. A CRITICAL-DIALOGIC THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 77 coMMuNIcATIoN PRocEssEs IN INTERGRouP DIAloGuE Recent work in intergroup contact and intergroup relations interventions has moved from solely understanding outcomes to understanding the mechanisms that help explain how interventions work to produce desired outcomes (Dovidio et al. 2004; Stephan 2008; Pettigrew and Tropp 2011). Given the long-standing tradition of research on intergroup contact in social psychology , most of these intervening processes are considered to be psychological, that is, they refer to what happens within individuals. For example, intergroup anxiety as experienced by individuals is often considered as an explanation for when intergroup contact has positive versus negative effects (Stephan 2008). Research on diversity in higher education also emphasizes mechanisms that explain the...