Political polarization and the dysfunctional rhetoric it spawns doesn’t stop at the classroom door. If we are going to encourage students to engage the complex issues of our age, we need to create spaces of curiosity and productive vulnerability where listening and reflection are prized skills. We need to teach brave, says Dr. Jill DeTemple, drawing on our own courage even as we make space for students to lean into theirs.
Dr. Jill DeTemple is an Essential Partners Academic Associate as well as Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Religious Studies, and, by courtesy, Associate Professor of Anthropology. Her research focuses on religiously sponsored development in Latin America and on the uses of dialogue for teaching in higher education. She is currently working on two projects. The first is a book that examines the risks of social capital approaches to development, especially when they are based in religious and gendered identities, due to release with the University of Notre Dame Press in March 2020. The second is an edited volume that introduces Reflective Structured Dialogue and attendant approaches to dialogic classrooms in postsecondary contexts.
