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IntroductionAttempts to address wicked public health problems can benefit from collaborative approaches to problem-solving, such as dialogue through structured conversations, that engage a wide range of stakeholders in deliberate inquiry to build trust and mutual understanding. This study seeks to assess the effects of participation in Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD) on university students’ polarization-related attitudes.MethodsThe BYU Campus Conversations project held 27 structured conversations with 139 participants on three divisive public health topics: COVID-19, mental health, and racism. The conversation structure encouraged students to share their personal experiences and learn from others in an environment that promoted vulnerability and confidentiality.ResultsPre- and post-conversation surveys measured participant outcomes and found that participation in conversations was strongly associated with improved attitudes related to openness, tribal identity, and moral disdain. Over 95% of participants reported that they enjoyed taking part in the conversations and that it helped them better understand the experiences of others.DiscussionThe results of this project indicate similar conversations could be an effective tool in helping build understanding around divisive public health issues in university and community settings.

The studies by Trickey and Topping, which provide empirical support that philosophy produces cognitive gains and social benefits, have been used to advocate the view that philosophy deserves a place in the curriculum. Arguably, the existing curriculum, built around well-established core subjects, already provides what philosophy is said to do, and, therefore, there is no case to be made for expanding it to include philosophy. However, if we take citizenship education seriously, then the development of active and informed citizens requires an emphasis on citizen preparation, but significantly more than the existing curriculum can provide, namely, the acquisition of knowledge and skills to improve students’ social and intellectual capacities and dispositions as future citizens. To this end, I argue for a model of democratic education that emphasises philosophy functioning educationally, whereby students have an integral role to play in shaping democracy through engaging in philosophy as collaborative inquiry that integrates pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. I contend that only philosophy can promote democracy, insofar as philosophical inquiry is an exemplar of the kind of deliberative inquiry required for informed and active democratic citizenship. In this way, philosophy can make a fundamental and much needed contribution to education.

Despite the growing interest in deliberative and dialogue models the research literature lacks investigations of the underlying assumptions of deliberative methods. Starting from the current popularity as well as the broad use of the method of deliberative inquiry -one example of such a deliberative method- this article aims to identify approaches and underlying assumptions of deliberative inquiry. Therefor a systematic literature review of empirical research, of descriptions of practical deliberative procedures and of theoretical research of deliberative inquiry is used. This review demonstrates that the method of deliberative inquiry is elaborated and used within different contexts with a corresponding range of rationales: From (1) a procedure to tackle curriculum questions through (2) a way of investigating and agreeing upon policy actions to (3) collaboratively researching issues. By describing the three approaches and by investigating the assumptions of deliberative inquiry within each approach, we demonstrate a range of rationales behind this method. Despite the distinctions, the primary goal of all manifestations of deliberative inquiry is similar: to contemplate a practical problem in a systemic and collaborative way, to weigh arguments for possible solutions and to make (even temporarily) a decision. This article concludes with future research perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Attempts to address wicked public health problems can benefit from collaborative approaches to problem-solving, such as dialogue through structured conversations, that engage a wide range of stakeholders in deliberate inquiry to build trust and mutual understanding. This study seeks to assess the effects of participation in Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD) on university students' polarization-related attitudes., Methods: The BYU Campus Conversations project held 27 structured conversations with 139 participants on three divisive public health topics: COVID-19, mental health, and racism. The conversation structure encouraged students to share their personal experiences and learn from others in an environment that promoted vulnerability and confidentiality., Results: Pre- and post-conversation surveys measured participant outcomes and found that participation in conversations was strongly associated with improved attitudes related to openness, tribal identity, and moral disdain. Over 95% of participants reported that they enjoyed taking part in the conversations and that it helped them better understand the experiences of others., Discussion: The results of this project indicate similar conversations could be an effective tool in helping build understanding around divisive public health issues in university and community settings., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Weaver, Brown, Brady, Carlquist, Dotson, Faldmo, Hall and Glenn.)

In striving for greater integration of children services across a number of government and non government agencies, this paper examines the effect of drawing on deliberative inquiry as the lever for realising greater alignment across agencies. The paper discusses the need for improvement in UK local government children's services and then offers a review of the dialogue based inquiry approaches. In so doing, the paper highlights the Socratic mode of inquiry, emphasising the dual strategies of penetrative questioning, elenchus, and the process of founding new knowledge through working through confusion, aporia. This paper then reports how a London borough realised sustained change through the adoption of deliberative inquiry. The study achieved successful integration through the penetrating and contextually sensitive dialogue the inquiry participants generated, allowing them to develop the capability for realising effective organisational change. The paper concludes that deliberative inquiry facilitates individuals to speak their concerns in a manner that prompts 'consensually accepted beliefs' to emerge through paying equal attention to the motivation of the inquiry participants, as well as to the reality of the contextual demands they need to confront. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Africa, the notion of an African Philosophy of Education emerged with the advent of post-apartheid education and the call for an educational philosophy that would reflect this renewal, a focus on Africa and its cultures, identities and values, and the new imperatives for education in a postcolonial and post-apartheid era. The idea of an African Philosophy of Education has been much debated in South Africa. Not only its content and purpose but also its very possibility have been, and continue to be, the subject of understandably passionate exchanges. In this paper, after discussing some of the constitutive features of African Philosophy of Education, we indicate aspects with which we are sympathetic. Our central question is whether African Philosophy of Education is the revisioned, ‘typically African’ philosophy of education that it is claimed to be. We argue that it has revealed certain tendencies that are remarkably similar to characteristics of Fundamental Pedagogics, the repressive doctrine complicit in apartheid education that it claims to replace. More substantially still (and this is a feature that has wider ramifications for philosophy of education internationally), African Philosophy of Education, by labeling itself uniquely and distinctly ‘African’, runs the risk of insulating itself not only from interaction with the wider (i.e. non-African) world but also from any critical interrogation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]