Facilitating Conversations

Discussion of controversial issues with people who have different perspectives from ones’ own can be challenging. Behavioral health professionals, professionals in training, and others need ways to foster civil discourse. The following resources can assist in these conversations.

Resources, Handbooks and Guides

• The Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center (DDNRC) was founded in 2011 to ensure that college and university campuses remain places where we protect freedom of expression, sustain academic freedom, promote pluralism, and expand opportunities for constructive communication across different perspectives.
  
  • Guidelines for Dialogue (PDF)
  • DDNRC Blog

• The Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University offers information on Difficult Dialogues to help teachers feel more confident leading difficult dialogues by encouraging reflection on how such discussions connect with larger learning goals, and by providing specific strategies and resources that teachers can use to create more productive conversations in their classrooms. This guide includes "The Basics," some "Specific Tools and Strategies," and a collection of "Additional Resources."

• The University of Alaska Anchorage offers two handbooks to help faculty, faculty developers and university leaders more effectively engage campus communities in conversations about the most important issues of our times.

  • Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education addresses strategies for introducing controversial topics into the classroom.

  • Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education looks at ways to apply indigenous pedagogies in western learning environments and some of the tough topics between indigenous and academic communities.

• Handbook for Facilitating Difficult Conversations, University of Florida, Center for Teaching Excellence (Retrieved October 2020)

• Guide for Parents of Asian/Asian American Adolescents, a guide for parents created by faculty and students in the William James College Asian Mental Health Concentration. Available in multiple languages.