ademic Citizenship is a community-wide project in which faculty, staff and students work side-by-side to address issues affecting the Bridgewater community. Faculty can become involved by facilitating discussions, working with the student Dialogue Club to plan extracurricular events, or by hosting the club in their classrooms to aid in discussions of controversial material. For more information on getting involved as a faculty or staff fellow, please contact Jamie Frueh or Betsy Hayes.
The Annual Pedagogy Project
This project gives faculty the time, resources and incentives to develop approaches to teaching that encourage active and collaborative learning. As they do this, they learn how to encourage perspective taking, public reasoning and self-authorship skills.
Perspective-taking involves attending seriously to multiple, often contradictory points of view, navigating differences, and acknowledging that all perspectives should be respectfully heard and critically evaluated.
Public reasoning is the purposeful airing of ideas and positions so that they can be evaluated and refined. As you engage in civil discourse, you must be able to weigh the competing views of others and provide persuasive evidence and arguments to support your own claims.
Self-authorship is the practice of not only taking seriously the perspectives of others but cultivating your own voice to add to the public dialogue.
Past Pedagogy Projects:
- 2012-13: Collaborative Learning
- 2013-14: Writing across the Curriculum
- 2014-15: Public Discourse
- 2015-16: The Flipped Classroom
The Bridgewater Academic Citizenship program has formed a partnership with the Public Conversations Project, an organization based in Massachusetts whose primary goal is to “prevent and transform conflicts driven by deep differences in identity, beliefs, or values.” In addition to leading dialogue training sessions at BC, the Public Conversations Project leads events and dialogues focused on mediating discussions in sectors of global society that need help coming together to work on their differences. Read about some of the projects they are involved in on their website.
Questions? Contact Us!