In this pilot study, we began the process of exploring the potential of the “deliberative exchange” as a novel forum for mutual learning. We define a “deliberative exchange” as a facilitated one-to-one conversation between two persons from disparate social groups, in which the participants discuss important ethical or policy issues. In this study, the two groups of participants were academic scientists and members of the local community in Newcastle upon Tyne. Each participant took part in a series of exchanges in which he or she was invited to discuss environmental issues with a member of the other group.
The project had two related aims:
- to explore the potential of the deliberative exchange as a forum for facilitating and studying mutual learning between individuals with different backgrounds and experience
- to study the process of discussion between academic scientists and members of the public and the effects of that discussion on the participants.
Our five key objectives were:
- to compare the conceptions of the environment held by the scientists and the non-scientists
- to examine the conditions for effective communication between the scientists and the non-scientists
- to assess the effects of a series of one-to-one deliberations about environmental issues on the environmental beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of the participants
- to investigate the effects of a series of formal one-to-one deliberations on participants’ deliberative behaviour, including their informal deliberations to assess the merits and defects of the deliberative exchange as a new deliberative institution
Our significant achievements were:
- developing and piloting a new forum for facilitating and studying discussion between participants from disparate social groups, which can promote trust and break down stereotypes
- important findings about the different ways in which scientists talk to non-scientists about science-related issues, including the relevance of their conceptions of the nature of science and their conceptions of themselves
- a paper studying the change in the environmental values and behaviour of one of the participants in the study, which argues that for some people the seriousness of environmental problems may be an obstacle to pro-environmental behaviour
- a paper examining the idea that genetic modification is unnatural, which draws on our empirical research to argue that the claim that scientists reject the “natural-unnatural” distinction is mistaken
- dissemination of material from the project at nine events to both academic audiences and mixed audiences of academics and non-academic research users
- successful organisation of an end of project workshop for research participants
- the collection of a very fruitful dataset, comprising 24 individual interviews and 33 exchanges (all recorded and transcribed), which is suitable for further analysis
- completing a research project in which all of the research participants enjoyed taking part working very successfully together as a multi-disciplinary team (two political theorists, an ethicist, a geographer and a marketing specialist)