Orientation 2025 Day Three
During a fulfilling, engaging retreat at Mt. Olivet, us fellows woke up Wednesday morning to a fun day of discussion and community centered around conflict prevention, moral foundations, and digital citizenship. Having spent the past two days engaging in similar activities, we were excited to continue to put our learning to practice.
To start off the day, we began with Session 11: Conflict & Cognitive Shortcuts, led by Jasmine. Consider this: How does a zipper work? Write the steps as if you’re telling someone who has never seen or heard of one. (Yes, this is a question being posed to readers!) As a warmup, Fellows were posed this question to get us ready to engage in the following discussion. After about 5 minutes of sitting and staring into space, I realized it was much more complicated than I anticipated. I could easily visualize a zipper sliding up and down, but couldn’t name the individual parts that contribute to the swiping motion. This was a good example of Illusion of Explanatory Depth, a concept that illustrates how our own knowledge may be elusive at times and that we think we know more than we actually do. To help combat this during our bridging practice, we were encouraged to utilize bridging techniques such as a curiosity mindset and “I wonder” questions.
After a quick break, we transitioned into Session 12: Moral Foundations Theory with Jasmine. To define the theory, developed by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, our development workbook posed this as: “Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) proposes that moral judgment stems from several innate, evolutionary-based moral foundations.” These foundations included:
Care/Harm: Protection of vulnerable individuals and empathy.
Fairness/Cheating: Justice, equality, and reciprocity.
Loyalty/Betrayal: Group loyalty and betrayal.
Authority/Subversion: Respect for hierarchy, tradition, and social order.
Sanctity/Degradation: Purity, sanctity, and the avoidance of moral contamination.
Liberty/Oppression: Protection of individual freedom and resistance to tyranny.
Fellows came up with examples of situations that we see in reality, and then exercised the skill of identifying which moral foundation(s) are rooted in this situation. For instance, we discussed how conversations around the death penalty may be grounded in Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Authority/Subversion, Liberty/Oppression, etc. This workshop was especially important for bridging work because effectively navigating divisive conversations can start with finding common ground. People on opposite sides of an argument may value the same moral foundation, but see that realized in different ways. Understanding a perspective different than our own is key in our work as Civic Bridgers.
We then took a break for lunch, which always included some interesting bird watching and fun conversations.
Resuming sessions in the afternoon, we jumped into Session 13: Media Literacy – again, led by Jasmine. As native digital citizens, many of us Fellows reflected in our engagement with social media as young twenty-somethings who grew up in the digital age. We named different ways we learned about media literacy in school and how we aim to practice this in our everyday lives. Using the SIFT Method developed by digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield, we added another tool in our toolbox to aid in our bridging. This session went hand-in-hand with our last session of the day: Session 14: Digital Citizenship. Jasmine encouraged us to think critically about what it means to be a digital citizen and what conduct/etiquette accompanies our role. Educational Technology Leader, Mike Ribble, published Digital Citizenship in Schools: Nine Elements All Students Should Know in 2015, naming 9 elements: Communication, Access, Commerce, Literacy/Fluency, Etiquette, Health/Welfare, Rights/Responsibilities, Security/Privacy, & Law. By identifying these facets of digital citizenship, we brainstormed ways to engage these ideas during our Civic Bridgers work. Even if our fellow Hosts weren’t centered in journalism or media realms, we all had some digital outreach or engagement responsibilities in our work.
It was a packed discussion day, but it proved fruitful. We left the sessions more knowledgeable about intervening and self regulating during stressful discussions, and engaging in the digital world responsibly. The day energized us to do meaningful work at our Hosts!