A third alternative to thinking about public discussion as debate or as the immediate prelude to decision-making is to understand it as a means of testing contrasting conceptual possibilities. Testing of contrasting conceptual possibilities—whether these have been developed in sanctuary… Read More »
Category Archives: Perspectives
Public Discussion of Possible Practical Consequences—Testing*
Also posted in Education Tagged choice, consequences, prediction, public discussion, statistics, testing Comments closed
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Room For Growth
“Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.”
Kenko (Buddhist monk), from Essays in Idleness, circa 1330
I’ve been thinking a lot about this notion as I struggle with a final… Read More »
Teaching How to Think About Policy
One of the things that the Interactivity Foundation does is to teach people how to think about public policy possibilities. This will sound patronizing only if you misunderstand why, what, and how we do it.
I heard an interview with… Read More »
Posted in Perspectives Tagged challenges, citizen discussion reports, citizen discussions, civic engagement, communication skills, conceptual possibilities, contrasting possibilities, deliberation, discussion process, Discussion Reports, facilitation, IF discussion process Comments closed
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Public Discussion of Contrasting Conceptual Possibilities*
IF’s public discussions typically move from exploration of an area of concern to exploring and developing contrasting conceptual possibilities for addressing it.
The purposes of exploring and developing contrasting conceptual possibilities. Public discussion of contrasting conceptual possibilities serves the immediate… Read More »
Public Discussion of an Area of Concern*
Citizen dialogue and decision-making processes can take many forms, depending on the objectives of participants, their place in the policy-making process, and the constraints within which they are working. Still, citizen dialogue continues to be thought of almost exclusively in… Read More »
Discussion as Improv: Serve the Others
New participants in an Interactivity Foundation discussion project often wonder how to act when taking part in the discussion. Often when people hear that we’ll be engaged in thoughtful civic discussion, they think of this in terms of “debate” or… Read More »
Posted in Perspectives Tagged attitude, creativity, discussion process, facilitation, IF discussion process, Project Discussions Comments closed
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Social Science and Public Policy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The task of social science is to provide true causal explanations of our most pressing social problems. And when social science works this way—taking into account competing hypotheses about the causes of our social problems, and testing them against all… Read More »
Area of Concern*
Rather than issues or problems, IF public discussions focus on what we generally refer to as an “area of concern.” This isn’t a mysterious label, but it is meant to signal one of the distinctions between IF’s approach and that… Read More »
Contrasting Conceptual Possibilities For Public Discussion
The goal of IF is to promote thoughtful consideration of a wide range of contrasting conceptual possibilities for public policy in our selected areas of public policy concern. We try to achieve this goal by conducting in depth ‘sanctuary’ discussions… Read More »
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