Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues: Bridging Differences, Catalyzing Change

Intergroup dialogue has emerged as an effective educational and community building method to bring together members of diverse social and cultural groups to engage in learning together so that they may work collectively and individually to promote greater diversity, equality and justice. Intergroup dialogues bring together individuals from different identity groups (such as people of color and white people; women and men; lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and heterosexual people), and uses explicit pedagogy that involves three important features: content learning, structured interaction, and facilitative guidance. The least understood role in the pedagogy is that of facilitation. This volume, the first dedicated entirely to intergroup dialogue facilitation, draws on the experiences of contributors and on emerging research to address the multi-dimensional role of facilitators and co-facilitators, the training and support of facilitators, and ways of improving practice in both educational and community settings. It constitutes a comprehensive guide for practitioners, covering the theoretical, conceptual, and practical knowledge they need. Presenting the work and insights of scholars, practitioners and scholar-practitioners who train facilitators for intergroup dialogues, this book bridges the theoretical and conceptual foundations of intergroup relations and social justice education with training models for intergroup dialogue facilitation. It is intended for staff, faculty, and administrators in higher education, and community agencies, as well as for human resources departments in workplaces.