Intergroup Dialogue as Pedagogy Across the Curriculum

INTERACT Pilot Project: Download a copy of the Fall 2003 syllabus: WORD | PDF

Download a copy of the Spring 2003 syllabus: WORD | PDF

The INTERACT pilot project, a two year exploratory grant ($250,000) from the Ford Foundation, is a funded facilitated learning opportunity for primarily University of Maryland, Prince Georgešs Community College, and Prince Georgešs County Public School faculty to develop knowledge, skills, and abilities in intergroup dialogue and the application of its pedagogical style to teaching in various disciplines. Guided by experts in intergroup dialogue and teaching methodologies, participants Scholars˛ intergroup dialogue through a variety of both individual and collaborative learning activities.

The project begins with certain assumptions that it will set out to prove:

• that there is a connection between increases in student learning and achievement and the use of non-traditional educational processes
• that students are more motivated and more engaged when non-traditional educational processes student-centered pedagogies
• that since students learn through the study of examples, the use of examples that they bring from their every day experiences will increase their learning and, concomitantly, add to their educational achievement.

In order to test out these hypotheses, a University of Maryland faculty member will be included as an ethnographer/participant in the project. S/he will develop case studies on each of the INTERACT Scholars which record where each is developmentally with respect to the use of student-centered pedagogies at the outset of the pilot project, and where they are at its conclusion. The Scholars will engage in meta-cognitive journal writing to facilitate and to complement the qualitative analysis of the ethnographer. Further, the project ethnographer will look for possible tangible results to emerge from the pilot that support its apriori assumptions. If s/he can identify such results, s/he will discern the degree to which they emerge across different contexts represented in the pilot (i.e,, P-12 schools, community college, research university, and subject areas), as well as the extent to which they are localized within a context.

This pilot project is funded out of two different funding portfolios within the Ford Foundation, a higher education-focused portfolio and a P-12 education-directed one. In being dually funded in this way, this project represents a new funding priority protocol for the Ford Foundation pilot, the Ford Foundation will consider funding an extension of the project at a higher level and over a longer period of time.

For more information about the INTERACT project, please contact:

Dr. Christine Clark, Executive Director
Office of Human Relations Programs, University of Maryland
1130 Shriver Laboratory, East Wing, College Park, MD 20742-4321
301.405.2841 (tel)
301.314.9992 (fax)
cclark1@umd.edu

Sivagami Subbaraman
Office of Human Relations Programs, University of Maryland
1130 Shriver Lab, East Wing, College Park, MD 20742.
shivas@umd.edu

www.umd.edu/OHRP