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Topics: Dialogue; dialogue facilitation; societal participation
Disciplines: Communication; interdisciplinary
Admission requirements:
This course is an (extracurricular) Honours Class: an elective course within the Honours College programme. Third year students who don’t participate in the Honours College, have the opportunity to apply for a Bachelor Honours Class. Students will be selected based on i.a. their motivation and average grade.
Description:
We live in a crazy and polarized world, where we increasingly seem to take up entrenched positions around issues such as migration, climate change, ethical religious issues, distrust of the government, conspiracy thinking, etc. We prefer to stay in our camp (‘us’ vs ‘them’) and do not listen anymore to dissent voices. Polarization is a dangerous development possibly harming democracies and economies, and pulling apart families, friends, neighbours, and colleagues.
A constructive way to prevent polarization is enhancing dialogue. The dialogue method developed by philosopher and theoretical physicist David Bohm (2004) is a structured and attentive conversation that has set rules, such as careful listening, suspending judgment and asking in-depth questions, allowing different perspectives to be presented and acknowledged. In Bohm's dialogue space is created for connection and new insights, with the aim of making every participant feel seen and heard. By recognizing each other's perspectives, the dialogue is the opposite of discussion or debate, which revolve around convincing others and cause poor listening. Bohm’s dialogue is based on ‘non-duality’ (being one together) instead of separate thinking and touches on a deeper layer of connection.
In this course, you will not only get a deep understanding and practical experience of Bohm’s dialogue method through various dialogue sessions and exercises, but also be trained as a dialogue facilitator. The capstone will be the facilitation of a dialogue session outside the university walls, e.g., in your neighborhood, at the workplace or within your student association. Dialogue will be extensively practiced in each session. Two optional zen meditation classes are offered to deepen your dialogue experience, since it increases your attention, calm and focus and creates an open mind.
Students who have successfully completed the course will receive a dialogue facilitator certificate issued by Dialoogcentrum (www.dialoogcentrum.nl). They are furthermore encouraged to become member of the Leiden University Dialogue Facilitators Network, an inspirational hub for lecturers and students being trained as dialogue facilitator.
This Honours Class is part of Karin Nijenhuis’ Comenius Senior Fellowship, a 2-year fellowship for education innovation, aiming at integrating dialogue as an educational method at Leiden University in order for students to feel more connected with each other and for their well-being to improve durably.
In this course, students will do the following things:
Practice Bohm’s dialogue method;
develop relevant communication skills, such as attentive listening, suspending judgments, choosing your words carefully, and asking deepening questions to identify assumptions;
improve their attention, awareness, and concentration to develop an open mind and welcoming attitude; - stimulate reflection and creative thinking; and being able to tolerate dissenting opinions;
learn how to facilitate a dialogue and deal with issues such as safety and group tensions;
facilitate small-group dialogue sessions inside and outside class.
Course objectives:
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to have and to facilitate meaningful group conversations by applying the dialogue method developed by David Bohm (2013) through the training in four main skills (output) that lead to an open mind:
1) Suspend judgment;
2) Listen carefully;
3) Identify assumptions;
4) Reflect and investigate (inquiry).
On the level of outcomes, the students will gain a sense of connection and community. Ultimately, this will have the impact of making students more open and flexible, enabling them to enter into conversations with dissenters in other contexts and facilitate such dialogue, which may help to prevent polarization in society.
Programme and timetable:
The sessions of this class will take place on Wednesdays from 17:15 to 19:45.
The two optional meditation classes are on Wednesdays from 15:30 to 16:30 in LAK, K.031, Lipsius
Part I: Bohm’s dialogue in theory & practice
Session 1: 5 February, 2025
Workshop 1: Bohm’s dialogue method in a nutshell
Session 2: 12 February, 2025
Workshop 2: Practicing Dialogue (I)- Attentive listening and the role of projection
Optional: 26 February (15.30 - 16.30) in LAK
Meditation class
Session 3: 26 February
Workshop 3: Practicing Dialogue (II) – Non-duality, suspending judgement & asking deepening questions
Session 4: 5 March
Workshop 4: Practicing Dialogue (III) – Open mind, stirring creativity and participatory thought
Part II: Becoming an effective dialogue facilitator
Optional: 19 March (15.30 - 16.30) in LAK
Meditation class
Session 5: 19 March
Workshop 5: Preparing and Facilitating Dialogue
Session 6: 26 March
Workshop 6 : Creating a safe and inclusive environment
Part III: Student-led dialogues
Session 7: 9 April
Student-led dialogue – 1
Session 8: 16 April
Student-led dialogue – 2
Session 9: 30 April
Student-led dialogue – 3
Session 10 7 May
Student-led dialogue – 4
Location:
Lipsius building, room 1.23
Reading list:
Bohm, David (2004) On Dialogue. Routledge.
Ritskes, Rients & Remko de Beer (2024) 21 Secrets to a Strategic Dialogue. Uitgeverij Aanpak.
Other possible literature will be announced in class or via Brightspace.
Course load and teaching method:
This course is worth 5 ECTS, which means the total course load equals 140 hours:
Seminars: 10 x 2.5 hours = 25 hours (participation is mandatory)
Literature reading: 30 hours
Practical work: 55 hours
Final assignment: 30 hours
Assessment methods:
The assessment methods will look as follows:
40% Participation assessed continually through participation in seminars, including the facilitation of at least one in-class dialogue and participation in peer group review of the in-class dialogue sessions. Participation should have been graded at least 5.5.
60% Facilitation of an external 1-hour dialogue session and a final reflection report of 2500-3000 words, Deadline: 9 June (09:00 hrs). The facilitation and final report should have been graded at least 5.5.
4 individual reflection reports (assessed with PASS/FAIL) of 500-750 words on the homework assignments that are given after each class and the effect on conversations you have in daily life. All reports must have been assessed with a PASS. Include in your report:
a description of the action(s) you undertook, including at least one concrete example;
how it went;
what the effect of your action(s) was on you/the other person(s)/the conversation;
what the effect of your action(s) was on other conversations in daily life;
what you have learned about yourself with regard to dialogue.
**Deadlines are 24 February (09:00 hrs), 17 March (09:00 hrs), 7 April (09:00 hrs), and 12 May (09:00 hrs).
All reflection reports have to be submitted on Brightspace.
Students can only pass this course after successful completion of all partial exams.
Brightspace and uSis:
Brightspace will be used in this course. Upon admission students will be enrolled in Brightspace by the teaching administration.
Please note: students are not required to register through uSis for the Bachelor Honours Classes. Your registration will be done centrally.
Application process:
Submitting an application for this course is possible from Monday 28 October up to and including Sunday 17 November 2024 23:59 through the link on the Honours Academy student website.
Note: students don’t have to register for the Bachelor Honours Classes in uSis. The registration is done centrally before the start of the class.
Contact:
Dr. Karin Nijenhuis
African Studies Centre Leiden,
Herta Mohr Building, room 0.56
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden
c.t.nijenhuis@asc.leidenuniv.nl