My first deliberative event
I was privileged to be on the staff of the Yarra River Values Forum, held last weekend in Melbourne. The event was organised by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, a research centre in the University of Technology, Sydney. Twenty-six citizens of the catchment region, representing over three million people, were the audience to several expert speakers about water resource management and conservation. The event was sponsored by SmartWater, an consortium of the water authorities and the Victorian state government. After three days of learning and deliberation, they presented their recommendations about what was important to them about the future management of the Yarra River. All did not all go smoothly. The market research company that recruited the participant didn't follow the protocols necessary to satisfy representative distribution, undermining the legitimacy of the event. Many came as advocates of particular positions rather than as open-minded citizens. Also, the learning included a bidding game modelling exercise used by economists called "willingness to pay", to which participants reacted with resentment. My role was official dogsbody. My observer status was unofficial, so I missed a lot when I was out of the room carrying out administrative and other tasks. I was particularly interested in seeing how learning occurred, both as a result of the presentations and through their collaborative discourse and deliberation. Importantly, the event revealed some questions which I hope to address in my research. At the top of that list is the challenge of epistemic fluency, at term coined by Morrison & Collins (1995) and more recently considered by my supervisor at University of Sydney, Peter Goodyear. Epistemic fluency is the capability of an individual to view a situation using a variety of perspectives and conceptual models. For those of us in university, it is our stock and trade (there, I've just used a metaphor). But many ordinary people, like those who participate in citizen deliberation, are very literal and are unfamiliar with such mental gymnastics. During the learning phase, I think some participants didn't even realise that they were completing exercises, as there was repeated complaint about simplifications and other scaffolding.
Morrison, D. & Collins, A. (1995). Epistemic Fluency and Constructivist Learning Environments. Educational Technology, v35 n5 p39-45.
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