Deliberation with Working College Students Influencing Civic Learning, Opinion Formation and Engagement

Abstract

This article describes the results from the use of deliberation in the classroom where a majority of students are working. The course included college students from Framingham State University. They discussed the issue of the economic impact of a big-box store. This analysis includes a study of the deliberative polling literature; research of the data on civic learning; an examination of the data comprising net changes in the participants' opinions and gross changes in the participants' opinions; and finally a discussion of the implications for engagement. The results illustrate that the process of deliberation affects changes in attitude items at both the individual and aggregate level.