This course has two sections designed to teach people how to dialogue across differences: frameworks and approaches.
Part 1. A framework is a theory or a conceptual lens we will use to view religion and public life issues. Frameworks help us set parametersu2014the ground rulesu2014for our collaborative work, ensuring academic professionalism and integrity. These frames allow us to examine, test, refine, and adapt our thoughts and behavior, inspiring us to bring our best selves to this challenging learning process. Examples include:
- Practicing mutual understanding, aware that understanding need not imply agreement.
- Using the moral imagination to see an ethical dilemma through the perspective of all the stakeholders involved.
- Speaking from our standpoint, not for any other group or identity, and not expecting others to do the same.
Part 2. Disciplinary approaches are methods that learners, scholars, and professionals use to enrich how they construct knowledge in different academic disciplines or fields of study. These approaches provide blueprints of best practices for researching controversial topics. Examples include:
- Conducting thought experiments to investigate the boundaries of ideas;
- Listening for logic fallacies in our arguments while practicing intellectual humility; and
- Identifying the implicit biases that may undergird certain positions.