March 1, 2011 IF Reports: Multiple Metaphors One of IF’s central activities is to produce discussion reports. We have since the beginning emphasized that these reports are different from other texts, such as conventional policy reports,...
February 3, 2011 Extending the Student-Centered Approach to Public Discussions IF’s approach to classroom discussion is “student-centered” both in the sense that students do the facilitating and in the sense that students shoulder much of the responsibility for shaping the...
February 1, 2011 Jay Stern, Activist People are naturally curious about IF’s founder, Jay Stern. They want to know what sort of man he was, and why he started IF. Here’s my own perspective, based...
January 5, 2011 The Value Added of IF’s Public Discussions Normally I avoid metaphors and even language that might conjure up economic images where I don’t intend them, but I think everyone would admit that there are “values” that...
December 10, 2010 Crossing Sanctuary and Public Discussions for Hybrid Vigor I grew up in the Upper Midwest. It’s a place where people love to talk about dominant ethnic traits (usually German or Scandinavian). I’d guess that it’s a habit that...
December 10, 2010 Audio and Visual Alternatives to Textual Discussion Starters In previous posts I’ve emphasized that successful exploratory public discussions tend to have more to do with the facilitator than with the Reports that are used to get them going. ...
November 3, 2010 Who’s the Audience for IF Discussion Reports? —Some First Steps Toward a Practical Answer “Know your audience.” It’s the first rule of rhetoric, and no less relevant to IF’s Discussion Reports than to ad copy in a Google pop-up. So who is IF's intended...
November 3, 2010 Deepening Public Discussion In all it does, IF tries to both widen and deepen democratic discussion. Widening discussion seems pretty straightforward. But what does “deepening” democratic discussion mean? —The short answer is that...
October 14, 2010 A Little Emotion Goes a Reasonably Long Way Among the most distinctive features of the IF discussion process is how it deals with emotion. Rather than treating emotion as the "opposite" of "reason" and subordinating one to the other,...