University of Colorado at 麻豆影院 School of Education researchers are hosting 16 public forums about affirmative action over the next several weeks in 麻豆影院 and Denver in an effort to find out what the public knows and could learn about the controversial topic.
The project's objective is to study the process of public dialogues on controversial education policy, in this case affirmative action, according to Associate Professor Michele Moses, the project's principal investigator.
Moses said researchers also want to see whether or not discourse and dialogue change people's positions either way on affirmative action as a matter of public policy. The idea for the project came from prior research by Moses that showed public confusion on what affirmative action is and what it is meant to do.
"We are not advocating any one position or seeking that our participants come to any shared decisions or consensus at the end of these forums," Moses said. "Through this research process, we are trying to figure out what happens to individual views of a single public policy issue when people come together, communicate and exchange with one another on that issue. The best-case scenario would be an equal mix of participants with pro and con views of affirmative action to open the conversation."
Upon arrival at each forum, participants will fill out a survey about their beliefs and knowledge about affirmative action. They will then see pro and con videos about affirmative action, and will discuss the topic with help from forum facilitators. After the forum, participants will fill out another questionnaire and then can decide if they want to be interviewed in the following weeks to help the researchers determine the effectiveness of the forum.
Moses is conducting the project with education Professor Ken Howe and CU-麻豆影院 graduate students Kristen Davidson, Jarrod Hanson, Darrell Jackson, Lauren Saenz, Michael Seymour, Amy Subert and Adam VanIwaarden.
"We want to figure out whether or not a thorough and direct discussion of a controversial public issue has an effect upon individual views of that issue, or whether people's opinions stay pre-formed and pre-set," Moses said.
In 2007, Moses was one of 36 people from around the world to receive a Fulbright New Century Scholars Award to study "Higher Education in the 21st Century: Access and Equity." Moses traveled to the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to study affirmative action policy in collaboration with Brazilian scholars.
The forums will take place through Oct. 23.
For more information, including times and locations of upcoming forums, call Moses at 303-492-8280.