Civil Discourse Handbook by

Processes for Setting Norms

abertaska — 2025-05-06 14:08:04 UTC

This resource defines three types of process for setting norms and a guide for how to choose which process would work best for your classroom

Dream Civil Discourse Conversation

abertaska — 2025-05-06 14:10:55 UTC

A creative, fun exercise to excite students about facilitating or taking part in civil disagreements. Students create their “dream” civil disagreement conversation, deciding on their ideal facilitators, topic, and question.

Political Typology & Civic Self Portrait

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:03:20 UTC

This resource is meant to teach students about political typology to help them understand the complexity of their own and their classmates' political identities. A “civic self-portrait” is a visual representation of political beliefs, values, and background. Crafting a civic self-portrait equips students with a better understanding of themselves and could make them feel more comfortable engaging in political conversations.

Mapping Echo Chambers

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:08:06 UTC

Students will analyze their social and informational environments, create a visual "map" of their echo chambers, and reflect on how these networks shape their perspectives, assumptions, and understanding of nuance. This is best paired with structured debrief and an action plan for students to apply what they’ve learned about themselves into their daily lives.

Empathy Mapping

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:10:42 UTC

This exercise supports students in gaining a deeper understanding of a perspective different from their own in a specific scenarios like politics, social issues, or personal disagreements. Even if participants do not fully understand the opposing view, empathy mapping can help one identify gaps in understanding, challenge assumptions, uncover what they don’t yet know, and guide toward greater awareness.

Processing Civil Discourse

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:16:47 UTC

Unpacking individual and group dynamics after a political or heated discussion creates valuable opportunities for learning. It allows participants to reflect on the relevance of the discussion beyond the classroom, practice navigating disagreements, and foster a sense of collective care for everyone’s well-being. When practiced consistently and intentionally, these strategies become internalized, empowering students to apply them independently in real-world contexts.

Sample Reflection Questions

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:17:49 UTC

This is a document for instructors to use or adapt when facilitating reflection.

Sample Debrief Protocol

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:23:45 UTC

This is a series of questions meant to help participants debrief their conversation. It offers a script so that facilitators and/or instructors who want to facilitate a debrief do not need to come up with their own reflection questions.

Reflection Activity: Processing Emotionally Charged Conversations through Interviews

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:30:57 UTC

In this interview exercise, participants identify tools for processing strong emotions during dialogue and reflect on their emotional regulation skills. Facilitators may use this to prepare participants for engaging with emotionally charged topics, as an intervention technique, or to foster awareness for future dialogue.

Sample Feedback Structures

abertaska — 2025-05-16 17:36:02 UTC

These are three possible ways to gather feedback about dialogue or a class discussion as a way for instructors to inform future facilitations.

Types of Norms & Examples

abertaska — 2025-05-16 18:13:37 UTC

This resource defines norms, explains their importance in the classroom and in challenging conversations, and provides variations and examples of four key norms instructors should intentionally include while facilitating civil discourse.

Stories—

abertaska — 2025-05-16 18:33:27 UTC

Ways norms have helped TF's, professors, teachers in the past?

Mitigating Norm Violations

abertaska — 2025-05-16 18:45:58 UTC

This document gives strategies for mitigating norm violations and addressing them when they ultimately occur.

Lesson Guides for Setting Norms

abertaska — 2025-05-19 11:38:11 UTC

This guide has three lesson plans of different lengths (20 min, 30 min, 45 min) for instructors to use when establishing norms. This resource is helpful after deciding what process you want to use to construct norms with the class.

Apologies

abertaska — 2025-05-19 11:46:18 UTC

When facilitating dialogue and addressing norm violations, mistakes from yourself and your students are inevitable, so is some helpful information about effective apologies to present to your students.

Facilitator Tips & Advice

abertaska — 2025-05-19 11:56:23 UTC

This resource is a great place to start! it describes best practices and general advice for what to avoid as a facilitator.

Analyzing Classroom Behavior

abertaska — 2025-05-19 11:59:54 UTC

This resource provides a list of behaviors that individual students or groups may exhibit that could hinder their learning or the productivity of a conversation and gives examples of what may underlie the behavior and possible instructor responses.

Participatory Facilitation

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:08:35 UTC

Participatory facilitation is an approach that fosters shared power, collective decision making, and active engagement. This resource is a guide to consider how participatory facilitation (instead of conventional) could enhance class discussions and student engagement.

Facilitation Formats

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:17:45 UTC

As a facilitator, there are many ways to decide what format will work best for a particular discussion. These are some possible formats to use depending on your class and the topic.

Calling Out vs. Calling In

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:23:26 UTC

As the facilitator, it’s crucial to cultivate an environment that embraces moments of tension as opportunities for learning and acknowledges that mistakes are part of growth. This resource differentiates between a “call out” and a “call in," and gives examples of best practices

Disagreement Intervention Framework

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:26:17 UTC

This framework defines disagreement as a potentially productive part of dialogue and aims to manage or move through disagreements rather than avoid or minimize them. It gives language to define discourse as more or less heated and provides tools for each level of ‘heat’ to help control the conversation, prevent it from spiraling, and push it in an effective direction.

Facilitating "Hot Moments" in the Classroom

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:31:31 UTC

This resource gives facilitation strategies and example responses for when a "hot moment," a sudden eruption of tension or conflict, occurs in the classroom

PSA Model

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:38:14 UTC

The PSA model is another intervention technique for addressing norm violations or "hot moments."

Addressing Norm Violations

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:47:10 UTC

This resource has possible sample language and actions to take when a norm violation is committed and needs to be addressed.

The Heart of a Successful Conversation: Dialogic Questions

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:53:23 UTC

Questions can effectively elicit people’s thoughts, beliefs, values, and feelings and encourage more productive civil discourse. This resource gives instructors a greater understanding of the necessity of good questions and can be given to students to improve their dialogue skills.

Arguments About Facts & Intervening in Misinformation

abertaska — 2025-05-19 12:57:23 UTC

In an environment where students are constantly consuming a stream of information, understanding truth and fact is a crucial part of critical thinking and civil discourse. This resource distinguishes different types of misinformation and provides tools to address disagreements that stem from different beliefs regarding what constitutes knowledge and the way we should form beliefs about facts.

The Four Point’s of the Courageous Conversation Compass

abertaska — 2025-05-19 13:02:25 UTC

The four points of the Courageous Conversation Compass is a personal navigational tool for guiding participants through challenging discussions. It can be given to students in preparation for an upcoming conversation over a topic or as a way to debrief a difficult conversation

Small Group Discussion Guide

abertaska — 2025-05-19 13:05:50 UTC

This is a general guide for how to lead a small group discussion with key tips of facilitators and participants, and an example script with questions.