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EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, 48(3), 392–402, 2015 Copyright C© University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education ISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 online DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2015.1057446

From Awareness to Action: College Students’ Skill Development in Intergroup Dialogue

Larissa E. Hopkins Dartmouth College

Andrea D. Domingue University of Massachusetts Amherst

A central goal of intergroup dialogue (IGD) is to strengthen individual and collective capacities to foster social justice commitments by supporting new ways of thinking about oneself, others, and the social structures in which we live. Relatedly, IGD assists individuals with building multicultural competencies and skill sets that support peoples’ capacities to take action and work towards social change. The following qualitative study contributes to current research by describing the types of skills undergraduate students report learning as a result of their IGD experience and the challenges they encounter as they develop communication, cognitive, and affective skills.

Demographic shifts, along with an evolving sociopolitical landscape in the United States, have motivated colleges and universities to consider various curricular and programmatic strategies to harness student diversity and minimize hostile campus climate concerns. Twice elected President Barack Obama, along with the 60-year anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, contributes to some perspectives of a post-racial society, or a climate in which race and racism are no longer critical issues. However, race within higher education remains a concern, as federal courts make decisions on the necessity and implementation of affirmative action and as campus administrators respond to racially charged incidents on their campuses. In the context of gender there are similar perspectives of contemporary society as being post-gender, or free from sexism. While recent studies indicate an increased numerical presence of women in social settings such as the workforce, politics, and higher education, studies also highlight discrepancies in women’s salaries, ongoing gendered expectations of caretaking, and women’s inferiority within the workplace, family, and places of worship (Gurin, Nagda, & Zúñiga, 2013; Shriver, Boushey, O’Leary, Podesta, & Center for American Progress, 2009). Relatedly, the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses has heightened attention from college administrators, and the Department of Education, as one in four women will be a victim of sexual assault during their college career (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2006).

Address correspondence to Larissa E. Hopkins, Dartmouth College, Carson Hall, Suite 125, Hanover, NH 03755-3529. E-mail: Larissa.E.Hopkins@dartmouth.edu

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Since the late 1980s, intergroup dialogue (IGD) has been used to promote social justice by bringing together differing social groups to engage in communication, make bridges across social differences, and foster relationships (Dessel, Rogge, & Garlington, 2006; Gurin, Nagda, & Zúñiga, 2013; Nagda & Gurin, 2007; Nagda & Zúñiga, 2003). The hope and goals of IGD are to help participants improve their intergroup communication, deepen their understanding of social identities and social inequality, and assist participants with developing skills for ongoing intergroup collaboration (Sorenson, Nagda, Gurin, & Maxwell, 2009).

The purpose of this article is to focus on the influence of intergroup dialogue on undergraduate students’ skill development. Studies (Nagda, Gurin, Sorensen, Gurin-Sands, & Osuna, 2009; Nagda, Gurin, Sorensen, & Zúñiga, 2009; Zúñiga, Torres-Zickler, Quaye, & Chang, 2010) suggest that students who participate in IGD courses develop a new sense of responsibility for their actions, a greater sense of responsibility for others, and a higher level of motivation to bring about social change. Lopez, Gurin, and Nagda (1998) similarly found that participation in intergroup dialogue courses increases students’ recognition of, and causal thinking about, structural inequalities in society. But what concrete skills do intergroup dialogue participants learn that support their ability to build bridges across difference or develop the capacity to challenge inequality?

IGD pedagogy asks participants to gradually engage in experiential structured activities through iterative cycles of immersion and reflection that end up supporting new learning, be- haviors, and skill development (Zúñiga et al., 2009). The acquisition of skills often requires learning from experience through trial and error from and with peers in a co-learning environ- ment. An enabling environment is necessary to support and challenge participants to learn from their mistakes as they reflect, try new behaviors, seek feedback, and try again (Vella, 1995; Wasserman & Doran, 1999). In this way, the IGD classroom becomes a location for students to develop multifaceted skills. Through the exploration of students’ skill development in IGD, researchers and practitioners alike can be better positioned to consider how to leverage pedagogy for the development of skills that improve people’s abilities to work across differences and work toward social change.

This qualitative study1 describes and analyzes the skills participants reported learning, de- veloping, or sharpening as a result of their experience in an IGD course. The IGD courses had structured activities and exercises, ground rules for discussion, a small classroom size, a diverse group of students across race or gender, and collaborative projects with peers. Our study seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What specific skills do students report learning from their IGD experience? 2. What challenges do students encounter while acquiring these skills?

For the purposes of this study, we defined skills as learned behaviors and ways of think- ing that support a person’s ability to communicate across difference and increase intergroup understanding.

METHODS

The student data used in this study are drawn from a larger Multi-University Intergroup Dialogue Research Project, which carried out 52 parallel intergroup dialogues to test the processes and effects of gender and race/ethnicity dialogues (Gurin, Nagda, & Zúñiga, 2013). Nine institutions

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participated in the study, seven public and two private, which had large and small student pop- ulations and were geographically spread out across the United States. The intergroup dialogue courses on each campus focused on either topics of race/racism or gender/sexism. Each course section had approximately 12–16 participants per dialogue with nearly even numbers across race (white people/people of color) and gender (men/women).

The subset of data analyzed for this study includes 229 interviews that were completed following 18 dialogue courses among the nine campuses. Of the 229 participants, 110 students participated in an intergroup dialogue course focusing on gender, and 119 students participated in a dialogue focusing on race and ethnicity. At the conclusion of each course, students participated in individual interviews that ran from 45–60 minutes. All interviews were audio-recorded and were transcribed verbatim.

The University of Massachusetts—Amherst research team developed a coding schema for the post-dialogue interviews and coded the interviews for all nine campuses. The initial coding schema is fully described in the Multi-University Intergroup Dialogue Research Project (MIGR) Guidebook (n.d.). The inductive developmental process for the interview coding schema used in this current study depended on the establishment of inter-rater reliability among the research team. The co-authors of this article were part of the larger research team that tested, revised, and systematically applied the final coding schema to 229 interviews. The co-authors analyzed data within large thematic codes and identified the most salient themes, such as “suspending judgment” and “active listening”—that is, skills that were reported in the interviews by the participants.

Before moving to our data, we provide one example of our inductive process. One large thematic code that emerged from our initial coding of the data was SKILL-OTHER-COMM or, skills reported that focused on one’s ability to communicate with others. The data we categorized as SKILL-OTHER-COMM included participants’ descriptions of skills learned, such as actively listening, asking questions, communicating empathy, being honest with others, working with conflict, and challenging other’s misinformation, to name a few. The second review of the data allowed us to identify the most salient themes and determine clear categories that were used for recoding the data in research pairs using inter-rater reliability to ensure consistency. The most salient themes serve as organizers for this article.

FINDINGS

The skills that participants described learning are interconnected and include communication- based skills, cognitive skills, and affective skills. Participants consistently emphasized learning the skills of active listening, suspending judgment, perspective taking, voicing, working with conflict constructively, and recognizing social identities and social oppression.

Active Listening

Active listening is a communication skill participants commonly described learning and honing during the intergroup dialogue course. Ellinor and Gerard (1998) describe active listening as “the doorway through which we allow the world to enter” (p. 98), which requires us to listen without resistance and listen for collective shared meaning. Participants were first introduced to the skill

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of active listening through a “speak and listen” exercise facilitated at the beginning of the dialogue course. During this exercise, participants were placed into pairs and asked to take turns speaking while the other listened intently without any interruptions, and with the expectation that they would be able to accurately summarize the information shared back to the speaker. Participants found honing the skill of active listening challenging because it often required the use of other skills and the strength to hold back previously developed conversation habits. One participant explained,

One of the biggest things that I took away from the dialogue is active listening, which I don’t think I really knew much about or did or practiced before this class . . . I’m now able to sit there, and when I want to jump in I just won’t let myself, and I’ll just hear the person out fully and then have my chance to reflect, paraphrase, and just kind of really make sure that I fully understand what the other person is trying to say because that really helps. (white woman, gender dialogue)

The participant’s quote is representative of a broader theme across the data, which is that participants express needing to practice new skills and new behaviors in order to engage in active listening. For example, the above participant explained that she needed to sit with patience, engage in reflection, and paraphrase other people’s stories back to them. Participants also described having to refrain from certain actions, such as not interrupting someone else while that person is speaking, and not jumping to quick conclusions about peoples’ comments. Participants’ increasing ability to listen without resistance seemed to coincide with and support the development of other skills.

Participants consistently shared that when actively listening they also had to (1) refrain from jumping into a debate, (2) hold themselves back from interrupting someone else’s story, (3) set their own opinions aside, and (4) practice empathy. For example, the following participant describes how she learned to practice empathy through active listening.

I think, for active listening, it made me become a little better of an empathizer because I’m not much of an empathizer whatsoever . . . but it helped increase my ability to empathize through actually really listening to people. (white woman, race dialogue)

The multilayered and powerful skill of active listening provides opportunities for the devel- opment of additional skills that can collectively help move people toward greater individual and societal understandings and deeper relationships. Participants expressed how actively listening increased the effectiveness of their communication and their ability to better build relationships with friends, family members, boyfriends/girlfriends, and people unlike themselves. Similar to active listening, participants also underscored the value of learning how to suspend judgment during their IGD experience.

Suspending Judgments

Suspending judgment in the context of intergroup dialogue illustrates how a person refrains from making assumptions about other people or perspectives, without much consideration or information. Weiler (1994) suggests that suspending judgment is about bearing witness to one’s thinking before speaking: “[The] suspension of judgment is not saying that we can’t judge, because we are always going to judge. That is how the mind works. But we are going to hold the judgment very softly, so that we can hear each other” (p. 6). Participants were encouraged by

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facilitators to practice the skill of suspending judgment throughout the intergroup dialogue course during activities like the sharing of student testimonials (personal life narratives) and sessions, where students engaged in hot topic dialogues on issues such as affirmative action.

Participants found suspending judgment valuable because it assisted them with seeing how much there is to learn about different social identities, and the multitude of perspectives that exist in the world. For example, one white male participant in a gender dialogue explained,

I realized just how many more different opinions and how many different ways there are to think about the same thing that I never learned about. And I guess I take away that you learn not to judge so quickly or even not to judge at all . . . because there’s so much more out there that you can never fully get your hands on.

Suspending judgment assisted this participant with realizing that each person’s perspective is worth considering, and that being dismissive perpetuates preconceived notions and a personal lack of information. For many participants, suspending judgment was importantly connected to their ability to make meaning of other people’s stories and experiences by refraining from making generalizations about people based on social identities. Many students described harnessing this skill through their process of learning how to actively listen as mentioned and as indicated in the following statement:

I’m a pretty judgmental person, and I’ve always been that way. Through this dialogue and hearing people out, I was made to hear people out for the entire semester. I couldn’t just hear something and then decide I didn’t want to hear anymore. I think that showed me to be a little slower to make judgments and decisions on people. (man of color, gender dialogue)

For some participants, active listening was often paired with suspending judgment, which assisted them with being more attentive to what their peers were vocalizing in the dialogue rather than rushing to preconceived assumptions or judgments that might have been based on limited information or internalized biases. And for other participants, suspending judgments meant being able to attend to and listen to others in order to practice another intergroup dialogue skill, that of perspective taking.

Perspective Taking

Perspective taking is the ability to take into consideration or to entertain other people’s viewpoints or experiences. As such, perspective taking can be defined as a cognitive skill that enables individuals to take active consideration of the views, experiences, and feelings of others in conversations across lines of difference (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). Perspective taking also can be construed as an emotional capacity to identify or connect affectively—to empathize—with someone else’s thoughts and feelings.

Many participants expressed appreciation for the opportunity to acquire and learn about the skill of perspective taking and its relationship to empathy.

Learning about empathy, when I was younger, you were always told to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. In this class, I actually read that you’re not supposed to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. You’re supposed to put yourself next to them so that you can stand by them and listen

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to their story and recognize the pain they’re going through and be a shoulder to hold them up and, like, be an ally to that person. (man of color, race dialogue)

For this participant, perspective taking had greater meaning than being able to put himself in someone else’s shoes. His observations suggest that when dialoguing across social identity and status differences, it is not really possible to wear the other person’s shoes, but listening is a way to bear witness to other peoples’ realities, which allows for deeper understandings to emerge.

Through the development of perspective taking skills, participants shared that their ability to emotionally connect to another person grew considerably. Participants reported this taking place especially during testimonial and fishbowl activities where some described how listening with empathy seemed to facilitate their ability to understand the experiences of the other social identity group in the dialogue:

When we were listening to each other’s testimonials in the fishbowl, I cried a couple times . . . when [students of color] were talking about their pride in their cultural background . . . I felt like that was really important to be able to use that empathy to listen to each other and really understand where we were coming from. (white woman, race dialogue)

Similarly, other participants shared that reading personal narratives during the dialogue further assisted them with developing the skill of perspective taking.

Some participants shared that learning perspective taking was very difficult because they had to work hard to surpass the urge to be judgmental or to be dismissive of other people’s opinions and perspectives. Participants expressed that it is difficult to monitor one’s triggered emotions, such as frustration or anger, when faced with a different opinion, but that it is important for dialogue purposes to try and put aside certain feelings in order to take in another person’s perspective. Students’ explained how the process of perspective taking requires people to fully listen to another person’s perspective, attempt to take the information in by suspending one’s judgments, reflect on it, and reach some understanding. Perhaps the most challenging skill participants reported learning was the ability to voice their thoughts and feelings.

Voicing

Voicing is a dialogue skill that captures how participants think about what they are going to say, when and how they will speak, and how asking questions is crucial for increasing their understanding of others. The capacity to voice one’s thoughts and feelings develops gradually in the dialogue setting and is often used in conjunction with, or following, the skills of active listening, suspending judgment, and perspective taking. This theme is captured by the comments of a white woman in a gender dialogue who explained, “I learned, probably, to ask more questions and get more of an understanding of where people are coming from rather than just assuming that they’re coming from the same perspective I am.” The dialogue course was the first opportunity for many participants to practice speaking with confidence, to ask others intentional questions, and to share their thoughts and experiences related to issues of difference and power in a group setting.

Several participants talked about how voicing was a skill they had little practice with or were unaware of until participating in dialogue. As a result, many participants initially approached

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voicing with some hesitancy or fear. They highlighted a common internal struggle to develop the confidence to speak up and feel that one’s contribution was of value and relevance. Similarly, participants faced challenges with identifying appropriate ways to share their thoughts without offending others. For example, one woman of color described how she felt she had to really think before speaking so that she would not offend others. She stated, “I, too, wanted to make sure that I didn’t offend anybody because the way I would speak around my friends, and how they would take it, is completely different from the way I would speak with strangers.”

Similarly, a white man in a race dialogue expressed overcoming fear in using the skill of voicing. He concluded after finishing the dialogue course: “I feel like I could ask questions instead of being scared to ask them questions because I don’t want to get them angry.”

Participants’ expressed difficulty is of no surprise to Issacs (1999), who argues that voicing is one of the most difficult skills to develop in a dialogue because societal messages influence how we behave and what we believe is acceptable or safe to say in various life situations. Despite these challenges, participants revealed that the important components of gaining the skill of voicing include (1) making a conscious effort not to offend others when speaking, (2) monitoring airtime, and (3) not being afraid to ask questions. Another skill that participants found important but challenging was working with conflict constructively.

Working with Conflict Constructively

Intergroup dialogue is designed to create a space in which participants strive toward being able to work with conflict constructively. The capacity to work with conflict in a positive way builds upon many intergroup dialogue skills. It requires the cognitive capacity to recognize how and why our social identities, interpersonal relationships, and group dynamics can become sources of conflict, and how to identify areas of understanding, disagreement, and common ground. Participants often reference the inherent value that is achieved when they successfully work with conflict, specifically across differences of identity.

Participants described learning to explore and bridge conflicts due to the structure of dialogue that opposes debate and argumentative approaches. A woman of color from a gender dialogue described her experience identifying and working through a conflict that surfaced in her inter- collaborative project (ICP) team project through the use of dialogue:

I remember one of the conflicts we had to deal with was we wrote each other e-mails trying to get together at a time all four of us [could meet], and I was personally frustrated because all of us didn’t really have times that worked out with each other . . . And like, I think both of us were like . . . oh, you know, like we came out of that conflict totally fine, non-, not judgmental, and I think we were able to dialogue about it really logically after the e-mails were sent . . . because of dialogue. (woman of color, gender dialogue)

In this situation, the participant was frustrated with the difficulty of scheduling meetings, but also with a member of her group who had made assumptions about her priorities and investment in the group. This participant shared how through the use of general dialogue skills along with perspective taking they were able to work though the conflict and maintain group cohesion.

Many participants also spoke about the importance of self-regulating their emotions, such as anger and frustration, in order to address conflicts effectively. The act of reconciling conflict while

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simultaneously regulating one’s emotions is an important skill for group work in particular. Khuri (2004) explains that working with emotions is a key component that exists as a “background layer” in intergroup dialogue, while readings, assignments, and in-class activities serve as the “foreground layer” (p. 600). The background layer of working with emotion is critical for helping student’s manage conflict in diverse groups.

As with the other skills, participants described a few challenges in learning or practicing the skill of working with conflict. Most of the challenges centered on the self—particularly around fear (of offending others, for example), comfort, and trust. One participant explained, “You really had to be comfortable with who you were, and you had to trust your dialogue group and working through that I believe was difficult for me. It was difficult for the entire class” (woman of color, race/ethnicity dialogue). Other participants expressed concern about saying the wrong thing and offending others—”I had to be careful because I did not want to come off as someone who was disrespectful of another person’s culture or another person’s gender” (white man, gender dialogue). Although working with conflict was difficult, participants who worked through these challenges described the results to be rewarding. The final skill participants’ emphasized learning was a keen awareness for recognizing social identities and the corresponding intersections with social oppression.

Recognizing Social Identities and Social Oppression

The ability to recognize social identities and manifestations of social oppression, such as racism or sexism, requires developing awareness about the complexities of social identities and how social group membership affects the way people see the world and their status in society (Okazawa-Rey & Kirk, 2001; Tatum, 1997). It also means developing awareness about specific manifestations of privilege and oppression at personal, interpersonal, and structural levels in order to be better positioned to challenge prejudicial thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors (Hardiman & Jackson, 1997). As participants developed and practiced the previously discussed dialogue skills, they also started to recognize social identities and manifestations of sexism and racism in their social environment in a broad manner and with specific detail. Participants categorized social identities and “ism” awareness as new knowledge and as a skill they can apply now and in the future.

In describing their increased awareness of social identity dynamics, they explained that there is a pattern of reflection about one’s own social location and reflection about other people’s identities. The participants’ process of self-reflection involved them recognizing their membership in privileged and oppressed groups, comping up with new ways to handle having societal privilege, and reconsidering how they feel about people from different identity groups based upon their newfound social awareness. For example, one participant explained,

After taking this course, I view systems of privilege and oppression so much more in that I have a deeper understanding of what that means to be in a privileged group versus being in the group of oppression. So, by taking this class, I learned to be able to voice when a privileged group is saying oppressive words. (white woman, gender dialogue)

Participants’ reflections about people from other social identity groups often focused upon the similarities and differences across groups and the realization that they previously held mis- conceptions about people different from themselves. A woman of color from a race dialogue illuminated how intergroup dialogue helped her rethink her assumptions about white people:

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I just feel more awareness with not so much people of color because I am a person of color and I can relate to them, but . . . like I just learned a lot how they don’t feel so prideful that they’re white but they just have to accept it because it’s not something that you can change.

She further explained that she developed a better understanding of her white peers’ experiences from hearing their stories in the dialogue, and that she plans to apply this information in her life by becoming more open to making friends across different social identities, something she said she was not open to exploring prior to the dialogue course.

Participants additionally described trying to apply the skill of recognizing social identities and social oppression by being mindful of oppressive language and behavior. These participants discussed grappling with the use of language, their increased awareness about what oppressive language and behavior entails, and the importance of interrupting oppressive language. For example, when one participant was asked if he applied any of his learned skills in the dialogue, he commented, “Already in my reflection papers I’ve tried to stay away from gender bias language, his or her, and I’ve consciously been trying to avoid saying girls when I could be saying women” (man of color, gender dialogue). The intergroup dialogue experience provided participants with an opportunity to think critically about the language they use when referring to different groups of people and how to be more inclusive and empowering in their use of language.

CONCLUSION

The study’s findings describe several acquired skills reported by students as a result of their partic- ipation in an intergroup dialogue classroom environment. Students explored their understanding and development of skills, such as active listening, suspending judgments, perspective taking, voicing, working with conflict constructively, and their capacity to recognize social identities and social oppression. These findings suggest that supporting students with the development of multifaceted skills is a critical component of social justice learning in the classroom. With the development of interpersonal and intrapersonal communication skills, students develop the capacity to dialogue about taboo topics across lines of difference and learn to engage the whole self—the heart, the mind, and the ability to act (Zúñiga, Nagda, Chesler, & Cytron-Walker, 2007).

Our findings underscore the pragmatic dimension of skill building in engaged experiential learning processes that gradually encourage, support, and challenge participants to find a voice in the dialogue and to develop the capacity to listen and work with different perspectives and experiences constructively. The IGD experiential learning process further supported participants learning not only about their own and their peers’ social identities, but also how their identities contribute to a broader social setting and systematic oppression. These outcomes are pedagogi- cally significant for educators across academic disciplines with a social justice education focus and a desire to affect social change.

Our research suggests that there is a benefit in shifting from a content-only curriculum to an IGD-type curriculum that blends theory with practice via structured interactions and activities, ground rules for discussion, small classroom sizes, diverse groups of students, and collaborative projects for students to practice and implement new skills. A follow-up study, however, is needed to determine more specifically what components, activities, and processes of the IGD curriculum support students’ skill development.

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In addition to key insights for social justice educators, universities and colleges are seeking ways to minimize tension between diverse student populations and address campus climate issues that negatively affect the experiences of students of color, low-income students, queer students, and other marginalized groups. Our findings reveal how the multifaceted communication, cogni- tive, and affective skills participants develop in IGD leave them better equipped to constructively participate in conversations with diverse peers in the classroom, residence halls, dining halls, on social media, and within student organizations, which can collectively shape a more inclusive campus environment and create a positive collegiate experience for our students. By offering intergroup dialogue courses on our campuses we can help students develop and hone skills for respectfully engaging across social difference and begin to deconstruct campus cultures of si- lence, avoidance, hostility, and divisiveness. It’s time to help our students move from awareness to action, by equipping our students with skills essential for addressing interpersonal and group conflict productively, for harnessing campus diversity, and for becoming thoughtful leaders in our multicultural world.

NOTE

1. Data from this study were presented at the NERA Conference in 2008 and 2009. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Ximena Zúñiga, Shuli Archer, and Taj Smith, as well as the support of Alina Torres-Zickler.

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Larissa E. Hopkins is an Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Students at Dartmouth College where she advises students on academic, personal, and social issues; helps students navigate college policies and procedures; and assists students with harnessing campus resources and opportunities for college and career success. Larissa received her B.A. in Women’s Studies and Education from Hamilton College and her M.Ed. and Ed.D. in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she assisted with intergroup dialogue (IGD) facilitation and research.

Andrea D. Domingue, Ed.D., is a scholar-practitioner who focuses on minoritized college student services, critical pedagogy, and college student leadership development. She is currently a visiting assistant professor and is the current chair of the Commission for Social Justice Educators, an entity within the American College Personnel Association (ACPA).

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