Lyn Carson

Raising the Bar on Criticality: Students’ Critical Reflection in an Internship Program:

Critical reflection promotes the questioning of assumptions, the rendering visible of the otherwise invisible. This article describes and analyzes the teaching and learning of critical reflection in the context of an internship program at the University of Sydney within the framework of completing a reflexive report for assessment. The authors review the literature on critical reflection and the frameworks they favor for their team-teaching approach. Their specific teaching strategies are outlined, and their students’ writing is examined for evidence of indicators of critical reflection and transformative learning. They speculate that their teaching strategies, combined with what the students themselves bring to the classroom, along with the unique workplace experience provided by an internship program, led to genuine critical reflection and transformative learning for most, though not all, students.

Random selection of citizens for technological decision making

Random selection provides a way to overcome some of the usual problems of citizen participation in technological decision making. It offers representativeness with a minimum of bias and susceptibility to vested interests. There are a number of requirements for the effectiveness of the random selection approach, such as that citizens are interested and capable of rational deliberation. A number of recent experiments with policy juries and planning cells are assessed to see how well they satisfy the requirements for the effectiveness of the approach. While random selection shows great promise as a means for involving citizens in technological decision making, there are obstacles to promoting the use of this approach for policy purposes, perhaps especially because it so effectively circumscribes the role of political elites. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Deliberative public participation and hexachlorobenzene stockpiles

This paper is concerned with the quality of citizen involvement in relation to the governance of industrial risks. Specifically, it explores the hexachlorobenzene (HCB) case relative to best practice public participation, which is consistent with deliberative democratic theory. The case could be judged a public participation failure given that the community committee in combination with the corporate sponsor was unable to agree on a mutually acceptable technological pathway. This stalemate might have been attributable in part to the time spent on the task of review. A diligent participation working party could have created a much more effective public participation plan, grounded in the core values of professional public participation practice.

Deliberation within Sectors. Making the Case for Sector Mini-publics

Abstract In this paper it will be argued that a particular type of collaborative governance, sector mini-publics, has tremendous utility for policy formulation or evaluation. Sector mini-publics can be situated between traditional mini-publics and enclave deliberation, and should be evaluated using the same criteria applied to mini-publics in general, i.e. those that select from amongst the entire population. Inclusiveness, deliberation and influence are just as important as criteria for evaluation. Drawing on three examples of sector mini-publics, each involving a particular sector (young people, people with disabilities and the elderly), the authors build their argument that sector mini-publics have proven value, and should be encouraged, as well as subjected to further research.

Art of conversation as an antidote to cultural exclusion

Teaching foreign students can be difficult, especially those from a non-English-speaking background (NESB). No matter in which discipline we teach or in which country, we know when we look out into that sea of familiar and unfamiliar faces that there are some who are struggling to understand our language, our accent, our discipline, our culture and even the norms of our educational system. Before we can begin to engage those students in our subject matter, we (and they) are confronted by a series of linguistic and conceptual obstacles. Teaching applied politics to economics and business students, as I do, has its own challenges and these are compounded when students come from a country where there is no translatable word for familiar Western concepts such as democracy.