"For both novice and experienced facilitators, this book responds to the urgent need to address complicated, intense, and oftentimes personal differences in a productive way. It offers concrete materials to use in classrooms and other settings, along with anecdotes, vignettes, and hard-earned lessons based on the authors' own experiences"--

This much-needed guide provides the specific skills and materials necessary to facilitate effective dialogues across identity differences. We are living through arguably one of the most divisive times in our country and the world. People do not know how to communicate across differences in a way that advances the public good—from the international halls of power to local city governments to classrooms to family dinners. The consequences are devastating—from hate-fueled conflicts and mass shootings to teachers who do not know how to address problematic comments in the classroom. This book responds to the urgent need to address complicated, intense, and oftentimes personal differences in a productive way. Written for both novice and experienced facilitators, it offers concrete materials to use in classrooms and other settings, along with anecdotes, vignettes, and hard-earned lessons based on the authors’ own experiences. By capturing conversations among leaders in the field and emergent practitioners, Facilitating Transformational Dialogues emanates optimistic energy and time-tested wisdom from the fields of Intergroup Relations and Intergroup Dialogue. Contributors: Daniel Alvarez, Charles Behling, Trelawny Boynton, adrienne maree brown, Mark Chesler, Erika Crews, Sara Crider, Tazin Daniels, Roger Fisher, Kristie Ford, Patricia Gurin, Rima Hassouneh, Emely Hernandez, Stephanie Hicks, Olive Jayakar, Donna Kaplowitz, Michael Kaplowitz, Charles Liu, Kelly Maxwell, Sariah Metcalfe, Alice Mishkin, Christina Morton, Taryn Petryk, Shana Schoem, Deborah Slosberg, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Monita Thompson, Meaghan Wheat, Anna Yeakley, Ximena Zuniga

In order both to prepare for an increasingly diverse society and to help students navigate diverse learning environments, many institutions of higher education have developed programs that support student learning and competencies around inter- and intra-group relations.Facilitating Change through Intergroup Dialogue: Social Justice Advocacy in Practicetraces the impact of Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) courses on faculty, staff, and peer-facilitators who delivered Skidmore College's IGD curricula over a five-year period. Through a series of in-depth qualitative interviews and auto-ethnographies, this book explores how former IGD facilitators are applying what they learned to their personal and professional lives three to five years post-college. By exploring facilitators' application of IGD skills, understanding of social justice, and the challenges inherent in this work,Facilitating Change through Intergroup Dialogueoffers concrete strategies for supporting undergraduate students in their enduring efforts towards justice.

Transformational Chairwork: Using Psychotherapeutic Dialogues in Clinical Practice is an exposition of the art and science of Chairwork. It is also a practical handbook for using the Chairwork method effectively with a wide range of clinical problems. Originally created by Dr. Jacob Moreno in the 1950s and then further developed by Dr. Fritz Perls in the 1960s, Chairwork has been embraced and re-envisioned by therapists from cognitive, behavioral, existential, Jungian, experiential, psychodynamic, and integrative perspectives. Transformational Chairwork builds on this rich and creative legacy and provides a model that is both integrative and trans-theoretical. The book familiarizes clinicians with essential dialogue strategies and empowers them to create therapeutic encounters and re-enactments. Chairwork interventions can be broadly organized along the lines of external and internal dialogues. The external dialogues can be used to help patients work though grief and loss, heal from interpersonal abuse and trauma, manage difficult relationships, and develop and strengthen their assertive voice. The internal dialogues in turn focus on resolving inner conflicts, combatting the negative impact of the inner critic and the experience of self-hatred, working with dreams and nightmares, and expanding the self through polarity work. Using both internal and external strategies, this book explores how Chairwork dialogues can be a powerful intervention when working with addictions, social oppression, medical issues, and psychosis. This is done through the use of compelling clinical examples and scripts that can be read, studied, and enacted. Chairwork’s central emphasis is helping patients express each of their voices as distinctly and as forcefully as possible. The book concludes with a review of the deepening technique—the strategies that therapists can use to help facilitate clarity and existential ownership.

How do Christian organizations, engaged in development work, effectively facilitate the holistic transformation of communities? In this important contribution to the field, Dr. Stephen Yashim reviews the participatory, problem-solving approaches commonly utilized by Christian relief and development organizations in Nigeria. Dr. Yashim highlights the failure of current methods to facilitate dialogue between the biblical worldview with its divine, transformative potential, and the worldview of local rural communities. In order for rural communities to progressively experience biblical shalom – the total well-being of the whole and its members – they must be equipped to examine and articulate their own perspective on development while also engaging with biblical perspectives. Dr. Yashim proposes an alternative approach of “participatory appreciative dialogue” to be used alongside more traditional methods in pursuit of community transformation. This is an excellent resource for anyone engaged in community development and transformation, and who longs to experience biblical shalom poured out among individuals and communities.

Due to continuing immigration and increasing racial and ethnic inclusiveness, higher education institutions in the United States are likely to grow ever more diverse in the 21st century. This shift holds both promise and peril: Increased inter-ethnic contact could lead to a more fruitful learning environment that encourages collaboration. On the other hand, social identity and on-campus diversity remain hotly contested issues that often raise intergroup tensions and inhibit discussion. How can we help diverse students learn from each other and gain the competencies they will need in an increasingly multicultural America? Dialogue Across Difference synthesizes three years’ worth of research from an innovative field experiment focused on improving intergroup understanding, relationships and collaboration. The result is a fascinating study of the potential of intergroup dialogue to improve relations across race and gender. First developed in the late 1980s, intergroup dialogues bring together an equal number of students from two different groups – such as people of color and white people, or women and men – to share their perspectives and learn from each other. To test the possible impact of such courses and to develop a standard of best practice, the authors of Dialogue Across Difference incorporated various theories of social psychology, higher education, communication studies and social work to design and implement a uniform curriculum in nine universities across the country. Unlike most studies on intergroup dialogue, this project employed random assignment to enroll more than 1,450 students in experimental and control groups, including in 26 dialogue courses and control groups on race and gender each. Students admitted to the dialogue courses learned about racial and gender inequalities through readings, role-play activities and personal reflections. The authors tracked students’ progress using a mixed-method approach, including longitudinal surveys, content analyses of student papers, interviews of students, and videotapes of sessions. The results are heartening: Over the course of a term, students who participated in intergroup dialogues developed more insight into how members of other groups perceive the world. They also became more thoughtful about the structural underpinnings of inequality, increased their motivation to bridge differences and intergroup empathy, and placed a greater value on diversity and collaborative action. The authors also note that the effects of such courses were evident on nearly all measures. While students did report an initial increase in negative emotions – a possible indication of the difficulty of openly addressing race and gender – that effect was no longer present a year after the course. Overall, the results are remarkably consistent and point to an optimistic conclusion: intergroup dialogue is more than mere talk. It fosters productive communication about and across differences in the service of greater collaboration for equity and justice. Ambitious and timely, Dialogue Across Difference presents a persuasive practical, theoretical and empirical account of the benefits of intergroup dialogue. The data and research presented in this volume offer a useful model for improving relations among different groups not just in the college setting but in the United States as well.

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement. It is becoming less straightforward for people to move forward together. They face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people from across more divides. In such situations, the most common ways of advancing—some people telling others what to do, or everyone just doing what they think they need to—aren't adequate. One better way is through facilitating. But the most common approaches to facilitating—bossy vertical directing from above or collegial horizontal accompanying from alongside—aren't adequate. They often leave the participants frustrated and yearning for breakthrough. This book describes a new approach: transformative facilitation. It doesn't choose either the bossy vertical or the collegial horizontal approach: it cycles back and forth between them. Rather than forcing or cajoling, the facilitator removes the obstacles that stand in the way of people contributing and connecting equitably. It enables people to bring their whole selves to the process. This book is for anyone who helps people work together to transform their situation, be it a professional facilitator, manager, consultant, coach, chairperson, organizer, mediator, stakeholder, or friend. It offers a broad and bold vision of the contribution that facilitation can make to helping people collaborate to make progress.

The first textbook written for learning Voice Dialogue facilitation, a method for working with consciousness created by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone, authors of "Embracing Our Selves," "Embracing Each Other," "Embracing Your Inner Critic," and "The Shadow King." This Handbook is designed to make Voice Dialogue facilitation easy and rewarding. Every part of a Voice Dialogue session is described in detail with lots of sample facilitations that explore the energetic dynamics between a facilitator and his/her client.

Intergroup dialogue is a form of democratic engagement that fosters communication, critical reflection, and collaborative action across social and cultural divides. Engaging social identities is central to this approach. In recent years, intergroup dialogue has emerged as a promising social justice education practice that addresses pressing issues in higher education, school and community settings. This edited volume provides a thoughtful and comprehensive overview of intergroup dialogue spanning conceptual frameworks for practice, and most notably a diverse set of research studies which examine in detail the processes and learning that take place through dialogue. This book addresses questions from the fields of education, social psychology, sociology, and social work, offering specific recommendations and examples related to curriculum and pedagogy. Furthermore, it contributes to an understanding of how to constructively engage students and others in education about difference, identities, and social justice. This book was originally published as a special issue of Equity & Excellence in Education.