Deliberative Democracy in Teacher Education

This paper aims to contribute to the valuable conversation about the role of deliberative democracy in teacher education. I consider both using pedagogy that engages deliberative democracy in process, thereby enhancing teaching, and advancing deliberative democracy as a worthy goal in teacher education. I begin by looking at recent changes in society that have reshaped student goals, educational accountability, and the priority of democracy within higher education. I highlight these changes to issue a call for a thoroughgoing commitment to deliberative democracy both in theory and in practice, as a means and an end. I expand on the definition of deliberative democracy and the skills necessary to fulfilling it as they relate to the goals of teacher education. I close by turning to exemplary programs in teacher education and showcasing some smaller steps toward incorporating democratic practices and assignments.


Deliberative Democracy in Teacher Education
This paper aims to contribute to the valuable conversation about the role of deliberative democracy in teacher education.Deliberative democracy primarily involves democratic participation, inclusive dialogue, public reasoning and deliberation, and collaborative social and political decision-making.I consider both using pedagogy that engages deliberative democracy in process, thereby enhancing teaching, and advancing deliberative democracy as a worthy goal in teacher education.I focus on teacher education and coursework directly related to it rather than other subfields within education (such as educational psychology or educational administration) because I believe the training of future teachers will have the most direct impact on their practice of democracy in the classroom and thereby the perpetuation of a healthy democracy.
I begin by looking at recent changes in society that have reshaped student goals, educational accountability, and the priority of democracy within higher education.I highlight these changes to issue a call for a thoroughgoing commitment to deliberative democracy both in theory and in practice, as a means and an end.In this section, I expand on the definition of deliberative democracy and the skills necessary to fulfilling it as they relate to the goals of teacher education.I close by turning to exemplary programs in teacher education and showcasing some smaller steps toward incorporating democratic practices and assignments, including forms of social justice and service learning initiatives, into various schools of education.Finally, I expand on those ideas in order to invite other institutions to join these efforts and to point toward hopeful avenues for progress.

Education and its Ties to Democracy
Over the past century, colleges of education and public Kindergarten-12 th grade schools have upheld a tenuous and changing commitment to democracy.Many contemporary colleges of education trace their roots to normal colleges established at the end of the nineteenth century.Normal colleges were the first widespread centers for teaching training.Most adopted nurturing models of student-centered teaching influenced by the European philosophies of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Johann Friedrich Herbart, and Friedrich Froebel.These philosophies were made rigorous and incorporated into mass teacher training through American educational theorist and superintendent Horace Mann.It was also Mann who made the first major push toward democracy in teacher education by explicitly calling for future teachers to cultivate the abilities of consensus building, universal communication, community participation, and moral and civic virtues in youth so that future generations of active citizens could be ensured.
Competing notions of good education further emphasized the structural components of democracy by rigorously schooling children in the history of American rights and civic responsibilities.The work of John Dewey, the most significant educational philosopher in American history, valued the structural knowledge of government and civic virtues, but emphasized the cultural components of living democracy well.Dewey promoted community-based learning where knowledge comes about through working together to solve social problems.This process often entails self-reflection and changing one's own habits to meet the demands of living communally.As we will see, Dewey's longstanding ideas of democracy are closely aligned with deliberative democracy.
Notions of deliberative democracy were first made significantly explicit in colleges of education following the publication of Gutmann and Thompson's book Democracy and Disagreement in 1996.This book generated excitement and interest in more theoretical circles of teacher education (primarily the Philosophy of Education Society, where clarifications, applications, and criticisms have been regularly voiced over the last decade) and worked its way into the scholarship of the American Educational Research Association president Lorraine McDonnell.The work of Jurgen Habermas sustained some theoretical intrigue in teacher education and within the American Educational Studies Association, but also has only played out in limited ways in colleges of education.Unfortunately, few proposals for application have made their way into college classrooms, perhaps in part because more practice-oriented scholars have not sufficiently differentiated deliberative democracy from more generalist calls for "democratic education," nor have they put the notion into practice-application language.It seems then that professors of education have failed to fulfill the promise Gutman and Thompson see in schools as the most important institution for making democracy deliberative, outside of government (1996: 359).
Nonetheless, some hope lies in the superb collection of essays by leading scholars (John Goodlad, Walter Feinberg, Henry Giroux, and others) in democratic education which appeared in the most recent issue of The Journal of Educational Controversy entitled "Schooling as if Democracy Matters."(Kasprisin, 2008).This collection considers recent changes to democracy, explores the place of democracy in the education of teachers, and envisions a laboratory model of democratic education.It offers the kinds of insight necessary for initiating larger conversations about both theoretical and practical applications of deliberative democracy in teacher education.

A Changing American Climate of Democracy
Recent changes in American life as well as changes within the field of education in particular have made teaching the arts of deliberative democracy in teacher education programs even more important.In 2004, many professors of education and practicing teachers turned to President Bush for a guiding vision of democracy in education.Unfortunately, his address to the educational community in Phi Delta Kappan, entitled "The Essential Work of Democracy," only mentioned democracy once in its opening and never referred to it again.Instead, he touted the success of No Child Left Behind for making schools a safe place that leads the world in a technology driven economy (Bush, 2004).These comments are quite aggravating to many teachers who have struggled to reclaim the democratic voice that has been stripped from them in current accountability policy making and in the climate of educational standardization (Stitzlein et al, 2007).
Overt discussions of democracy within universities that house teacher education programs are also changing.It was only about a decade ago that nearly five hundred university presidents called for more emphasis on the values and skills of democracy (Robertson, 2008).Aligned with that appeal, many mission statements for colleges of education once highlighted the importance of developing democratic citizens.I surveyed the mission statements of many of the top ranked education programs and in almost all cases no longer found reference to democracy or citizenship.1 Instead, there is a new emphasis on highly-qualified teachers with precise abilities to apply content knowledge through scientificallybased teaching approaches.At the extreme end, most threatening to democracy, are education programs housed at places like the University of Phoenix.Note how their executive chairman John Sperling describes the aim of the university: "This is a corporation, not a social entity.Coming here is not a rite of passage.We are not trying to develop [students'] value systems or go in for that 'expand their minds' bullshit" (Hasseler, 2003).
As disheartening as statements like this might be for the development of democratic ways of living and self-reflection, there are aspects of this comment that relate to the changing spirit of students as well.While situations vary based on location and type of university, colleges of education are, for the most part, being populated by larger numbers of students who are increasingly individualistic and out for their own gain (Colby et al, 2003).Some engage in community service, for example, but often for their own rewards as a resume enhancer, rather than to truly engage in a public effort.Relatedly, students increasingly see college as a pathway to a high paying career and therefore only want the barebones of what is going to get them a good job, rather than civics learning which they don't see as related or important.In this light, it could be argued that colleges now are serving less of a public role and more of a satisfaction of private desires.Increasingly, students believe that college classes should be about "hard" and scholarly material, rather than moral or civic learning, which they believe should happen in community service or in residential life programs.The status of both of these, however, is limited as larger and larger numbers of students are older students who commute to campus and are therefore not present for much of the civically-enriching life offered at many universities (Colby et al, 2003).
As anecdotally reported by many professors of education, teacher education majors seem to be especially driven by the practical.They want to know exactly what they can do in their future classrooms when it comes to teaching content.Some professors convey that their students see talking about democracy as neither helpful or applicable.It seems that only when issues of democracy are directly tied to specific problems or issues that teachers will definitely and regularly confront in their teaching that they will engage in such areas (Apple, 2008).Students' disinterest in learning about or through democracy is further exacerbated by the fact that they are seldom asked about their capacity to teach democratic skills during job interviews, unless they are becoming social studies teachers.Even those education programs who do manage to teach democratically and appease student demands for practical application by teaching content through deliberative democracy are still met with the complaint that this approach takes much longer than traditional content delivery methods and would not be practical for future teachers who must teach under the time constraints of No Child Left Behind (Robertson, 2008).
Finally, the accrediting agencies that oversee colleges of education have also relinquished their emphases on the skills of democracy.The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the largest accreditor of teacher education programs, does state that teachers should have training in the liberal arts and sciences to provide a "basis for the educator's shared values, understandings, and responsibilities in a democracy." 2 They also urge colleges of education to collaborate with other schools, develop learning communities, and have governance structures between the colleges and their faculty-aspects seemingly aligned with democracy.Yet despite these claims, there is no explicit mention of or connection to democracy or citizenship in its standards for teacher education graduates or in the criteria it uses for determining good teacher education graduates.Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC), NCATE's largest and more progressively-perceived competitor, also does not mention the need to cultivate democracy or citizenship in the teacher education programs it accredits.
Teacher education programs shoulder two levels of responsibility.The programs teach their courses in ways that embody and instill democratic virtues, while also teaching in democratic ways that can be emulated by their education majors who will one day lead their own K-12 classrooms.So, these programs have the opportunity to engage deliberative democracy as a process at both spacially and temporally immediate and delayed levels.Given the jeopardized position of democracy within American culture and in education programs, it seems that a renewed commitment to democracy and a more robust incorporation of deliberative democracy in particular might help overcome some of the present challenges and help teacher education programs fulfill their dual democratic commitments.
As part of living and engaging deliberative democracy, students develop civic virtues like honesty, toleration, and respect.These virtues are enacted through civic skills like seeking out alternative perspectives, privileging the status of the common good, and achieving fair consensus (Pamental, 1998).These capacities stand counter to or are capable of overcoming some of the pressures on democracy to be more individualist and consumer driven and prepare future citizens for delicately dealing with the seemingly irreconcilable differences of an increasingly diverse nation.
Deliberative communication, intricately connected to the work of Habermas and the work of neo-pragmatists in the spirit of forefather John Dewey, mentioned earlier, is at the heart of deliberative democracy.Within deliberative communication, each participant "takes a stand by listening, deliberating, seeking arguments, and evaluating, while at the same time there is a collective effort to find values and norms on which everyone can agree" (Englund, 2006: 503).Such communication, however, is not just talk for the sake of talking.It must be centered on real content and must be directed toward legitimate action.To be active and informed participants, education majors need to learn how to evaluate different ways of living.This involves critically reflecting on one's own way of living and learning to give good reasons to support it, while simultaneously being open to learning other, better ways from peers.Students, then, need to learn to listen to and appreciate the arguments and point of view of their peers.Appreciating someone else's perspective builds empathy and an awareness of social issues effecting people different from one's self, thereby moving away from individualism and toward collective appreciation of diversity, conflict resolution, and a common (as opposed to purchased) good.
Often students simplistically understand democracy to be a mundane activity of voting or a simple rule by the majority.Deliberative democracy strengthens democracy beyond voting because it welcomes the exchange of multiple viewpoints and storytelling of personal experiences, and works toward consensus building and informed action plans in a way that simply voting cannot.
Recent research on youth perceptions of democracy reveals that this shift away from simple voting actually complements students' current impressions that voting is ineffective and that public life needs to have less polarization and more difficult conversations about the grey areas in between perspectives (Kiesa et al., 2007).Surprising to many older adults who perceive their descendents to be disinterested and politically detached, many young adults yearn for honest and open conversations about knotty issues of shared life and want to see that their conversations will directly result in action and change.Not only, then, does deliberative democracy serve to rejuvenate communal experiences of decision making, but it actually fulfills the demands many youth hold for democracy today.

Deliberative Democracy in Education Programs
Let us now consider how some teacher education programs are working toward deliberative democracy.The most obvious setting for addressing issues of democracy in education programs are within classes in the social foundations of education.These are comprised of coursework in the philosophy, history, sociology, and anthropology of education.Most preservice teachers are required to take a small group of these courses in order to graduate or earn certification.The connection between the foundations fields and democracy has been much stronger than other subfields of education.In a 1949 speech at Teacher's College, Columbia University, famous curriculum theorist R. Freeman Butts suggested a deep relationship between foundations fields and democratic practice.Building on this claim, Dan Butin, author of a respected recent book on the teaching of social foundations of education notes, "Let me take this equivalence seriously to expand on this notion: namely, that the social foundations of education classroom can promote the basic attributes of liberal democratic societies-the ability to articulate and think through conflicting conceptions of the good" (Butin, 2005: 195).
Nearly every education department requires at least one core course in the foundations of education and many colleges require more.Often these courses will be called "Social Foundations of Education," but some colleges give them names such as "School and Society" or "Schools and Social Change."A collection of foundations of education syllabi used by prominent professors throughout the country reveals that deliberative democracy skills and approaches are relatively often incorporated in these classes. 3Some professors devote significant amounts of their course to innovative projects that are democracy driven.Kathleen Knight Abowitz of Miami University, for example, uses a semester long "Dialogue & Democracy Project" where students engage in extended discussion about a controversial topic in education (school tracking, sex education, etc.) and come to a consensus about how the issue impacts the development of K-12 students' democratic voice.
Problematically, however, these social foundations courses are often the most dreaded requirements for education majors who find the theoretical orientations of these courses to be unimportant and not relevant to teaching in the real world (Goodlad, 1990).It seems that this is a perception that foundations professors must work hard to overcome by making direct connections between the topics they discuss and actual problems in schools, as well as showing how engaging in democracy pays off in action and improved schools.
Responding to student complaints that their foundations courses were too theoretical, irrelevant, and boring, Natasha Levinson and Kim Sembaly of Kent State University have innovatively restructured their courses.The new courses engage students in overt discussions of the deliberative process and then enact the deliberative process, as students work together to tackle complicated, real-life school situations.For example, one class had to reach consensus regarding a proposed restructuring for a K-12 school that was designated as failing by NCLB standards.The students had to present their proposal to a Board of Education composed of community leaders.Related assignments required students to reflect on the deliberative process, problematic aspects of reaching consensus too quickly, participation patterns, and on their own changing positions throughout the endeavor.Another version of the course uses a "think tank" approach where students deliberatively review controversial education policies and then council educational leaders based on their conclusions.These courses offer terrific suggestions for creative, interactive, and practical ways to engage deliberative democracy in foundations courses, while still achieving traditional content understanding.
One of the major movements related to deliberative democracy that many teacher education programs now support is social justice.This movement strives for fair treatment and recognition of all individuals and is especially sensitive to the position of those who have historically been oppressed in America.Social justice incorporates deliberative democracy's emphasis on the perspectives of diverse individuals who need to be included in public decisions about the common good.Social justice works its way into many education courses that confront aspects of inequality within schools or into typically state mandated courses in multicultural education.Education majors are introduced to the personalized struggles of individuals who are poor, minority, or disabled.Education programs have been trying to familiarize students with "the other" and make students more ethical in their approaches to understanding and appreciating difference at the current moment and in their future classrooms.
For example, in my courses I use narratives like Lost in Translation to teach my teacher education candidates what life is like for an English language learner or the stories of Jonathan Kozol to expose students to the schooling conditions of students often different from themselves, namely poor, minority kids (Hofman, 1990;Kozol, 2005).Other professors are also using literature and film to introduce students to the plight and worldviews of their future students or of people in other places.This is helping students to become more empathetic and also to have criteria for discerning and arguing for the good life.
Social justice was recently dropped from NCATE's description of teacher dispositions, much to the dismay of many education professors who responded with petitions and complaints.Many continue to teach it, but fear social justice is being marginalized because it is no longer a measurable expectation of the accrediting agency.Additionally, professors who persist must ensure that social justice commitments do not fall prey to the types of indoctrination feared by some social critics. 4ducation majors are in a unique position to explore deliberative democracy by virtue of their program design.As an applied professional field, most colleges of education require their students to spend extensive time observing or practicing in local schools.Because of this, students are exposed to some contentious issues and sometimes come anxious to share stories and perspectives about issues of public life.Professors of education are learning how to use those experiences more effectively and democratically in the classroom.Some are drawing on the field of critical pedagogy, including the work of Paulo Freire and his contemporaries, to help students see that teaching is necessarily a political endeavor and is not value neutral, thereby enabling education majors to better understand their location in the political landscape.Other professors are making use of debate and group projects, which build collaborative skills or argument justification as ways of responding to the real life situations students witness in local schools.
While it is important that all future teachers have a good understanding of democracy, the skills of deliberative democracy, and democratic teaching techniques, some teaching fields require more extensive emphasis in these areas than others.The most overt discussions and implementation of democracy occur within social studies education classes, especially social studies methods courses.Because those students will soon be K-12 teachers overtly tasked with teaching about the legacy and role of democracy, attention to those issues is key at the college level.According to The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, "Since 1998, there has been a significant decrease in the percentage of 8th and 12th grade students who had community members come to their social studies classes to discuss important events and ideas.There has also been a drop in the percentage of 8th graders who read extra material beyond the textbook (such as newspapers, magazines, maps, charts, or cartoons) and a drop in the percentage of 12th graders who watch television shows, videos, or filmstrips in class" (Hugo and Lopez, 2007).There have been obvious changes to the ways in which social studies is being taught, suggesting, in part, further isolation and insulation of the very classroom that is supposed to be preparing kids for public life.
As a response, some professors are calling for a new form of issues-based social studies education where students critically and collectively engage social questions and problems that are directly relevant to the students' lives.These endeavors allow students to make informed judgments about facts and arguments presented by their peers and teacher, to develop confidence with publicly expressing one's opinion, to come to a consensus about the issue, and to take action on the issue, often by raising consciousness of the problem (Chilcoat and Ligon, 2004).This approach to teaching social studies education in university and K-12 settings exhibits many of the most important aspects of deliberative democracy.

A Call for Additional Preparation
While a significant number of education professors are employing deliberative democracy in their classrooms, they certainly are the minority.There is substantial room for improvement in their approaches and for spreading their support into other areas of teacher training.
One current trend in teacher education programs, service learning, seems to be a mixed bag of democratic results.Service learning is well-suited for education programs given that it exposes students to struggles in the community and prepares students for their futures as public servants via their position as teachers.Service learning can be well aligned with deliberative democracy insofar as it exposes students to new and different perspectives.And, when done well, service learning can lead to thought-provoking communication, community consensus building, and collaborative action.Moreover, professors can bring the activity back into the classroom as a springboard for self-reflection and class growth.Unfortunately, however, recent studies have shown that service learning is not living up to its full potential (Colby et al., 2003).
Too often, service learning is individualist and doesn't get people working together.It is undertaken in a spirit of volunteering and sometimes with selfinterested intentions.Many contemporary youth, in the changing way of life mentioned earlier, turn to service learning projects as a "safe" way to be active in the community, make friends, or enhance their resumes.If colleges of education are going to use service learning well, they must place more emphasis on political engagement and reveal the connections between service, power and policy (Colby et al., 2003), some of the very aspects that frequently lead students away from political activism and toward self-gratifying volunteering (Lopez et al., 2006).Students need to understand the power implications of their work and to appreciate the ways in which they are invoking deliberative democracy for the betterment of all.
Along with making service learning more political, teaching for deliberative democracy requires that students learn about the power they will soon hold in their own classrooms.Education majors need to learn how they, as future teachers, will lead discussions that are necessarily asymmetrical because they are led by the teacher and focused on content most often introduced by the teacher.Preservice teachers need to learn to acknowledge this fact and learn how they can use their power in the best ways by ensuring that the conversation is open to and respectful of the largest number of perspectives (Penny et al., 2001).Along with this, future teachers need to become familiar with their role as boundary keepers.They need to learn about laws and cultural customs guiding the boundaries of what is acceptable and permitted in school conversations so that they can insure that their classroom conversations do not veer into inappropriate areas (Robertson, 2008).Or, if necessary, they need to learn when and how to break those boundaries to bring attention to problems often swept under the rug, to push conventions, or to dissent against policies that restrict their teaching practices (Stitzlein, 2009).
Additional concerns with power relations within deliberative communication must also be addressed in university courses.For example, education majors need to be exposed to Iris Young's critique that some forms of democratic exchange tend to be aligned with more white and dominant conceptions of reason and participation (Young, 2002).If colleges uphold deliberative democracy as a good, they must prepare teachers for encountering classrooms that are stratified by race, class, sexuality, religion, and gender and therefore they will need to know how to invite different speaking styles and ways of participating to the table.Future teachers need to become aware of cultural differences and the social structures that limit who feels comfortable participating in deliberation and who is most listened to.Knowing this will shape their own participation in democracy and how they conduct it in their classrooms.This knowledge comes in part from university coursework that makes cultural privilege and dominance more clear.Teacher candidates need to be able to recognize when deliberation is being usurped by those in power and to know when to turn to alternative forms of activities and dissent (for more discussion, see Enslin et al., 2001).Finally, the ability to employ conflict resolution techniques learned through deliberative democracy programs will help teachers deal with unequal power relations in classroom arguments, school violence, and racism within schools.
Other avenues for teaching deliberative democracy in education programs entail building off of some current initiatives, mentioned earlier, that focus on problem-or issue-based learning.Such approaches embody deliberative democracy while simultaneously meeting student demands that their college experience be true to the real world and adequately prepare them for the teaching profession.One potential place for these activities would be in a capstone course in issues of democratic education.This course could be offered at the end of the college career or simultaneously with the student teaching experience.At that point, the teacher candidates will have had plenty of exposure to real classrooms and are prepared to think directly about how they might put theory into practice and keep the big picture goals of citizenship in mind as they confront their first lengthy exposure to the real world of teaching.Deliberating about problems and issues confronted in schools allow them to establish praxis between theory and practice and to do so with the goals of democracy in mind.
Throughout teacher education coursework, a commitment to developing skills of dialogue and deliberation should be clear.Many of these skills entail learning to deeply engage in deliberation.In order to do so, students must master that ability to carefully listen to the ideas and arguments expressed by others.They should learn how to ask insightful and respectful questions that clarify an interlocutor's perspective or request more explanation.Students must learn to identify underlying assumptions and biases.Teacher education professors can instill some of these skills through group work that entails listening to and sharing individual's perspectives through face-to-face as well as written communication, including, for example, class debates and online discussion boards.Other approaches include presenting students with difficult situations facing schools (consult Everyday Democracy and Choices for the 21 st century for examples and curriculum).Preservice teachers could use collaborative decision making to work toward consensus about the best plan for addressing the situations.This discussion should listen to and consider the needs of all stakeholders.Students must also cultivate an appropriate spirit for deliberation.They must learn to approach others with civility and respect, while still being critical when necessary.They must be open-minded about the arguments of others and must be able to place their own views in doubt.Teacher education professors must then simultaneously develop skills of self-confident independence and openness to the expressions of a group.These skills and spirit of deliberation should ultimately be directed toward, in Dewey's terms, coordinated action and harmonious living with the best interests of all in mind (se Colby et al., 2008).
Curricular emphasis on deliberative democracy is strengthened when complimented by extracurricular activities, campus culture, and institutional leadership that affirm the curricular initiative.Colleges of education committed to deliberative democracy should work alongside residence life and student programming to encourage activities aligned with their democratic goals.Research suggests that students who are engaged in university clubs, especially those that bring together diverse students, are better participants in democratic conversations, value conflict's role in democracy, and are more willing to work toward social change (Hurtago et al., 2002).When these democratic virtues are supported across the campus, class work and long term effects are likely to be more successful.Moreover, engaging in democratic activities across campus is more likely to develop a student's sense of political efficacy, their hope and compassion for democratic change, and their sense of self as a civic participant (Colby et al., 2003).Additionally, the commitment of institutional leadership to cultivating democracy is critical.Those leaders can ensure the necessary infrastructure for providing student resources (like speakers, funding for service learning work, and residence halls that promote community) and supporting faculty (through training in deliberative democracy and rewarding such endeavors in promotion reviews).University leaders can also model deliberative democracy in how they handle problems on campus or establish affiliations with other institutions.

Exemplars
A few education programs have made significant strides toward incorporating a commitment to deliberative democracy.Several of those programs are located abroad and have been backed by support of their governments.For example, in 1998 England's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority issued the Crick Report.This report called for emphasis on deliberative democracy as a process of deliberation on public issues in education colleges and in public schools.The governmental organization makes public a list of schools throughout England that are achieving those goals. 5Sweden also made a national push for deliberative communication in 2000, which led to the establishment of programs like Orebro University's "Education in Democracy and Social Justice." In 1999, the US Department of Education launched a study of factors that affect students' "ability to see the world from someone else's perspective, beliefs about whether conflict enhances democracy, and views of the importance of engaging in social action activities during college" (Hurtado et al., 2002: 164).While this study suggested national interest in deliberative democracy, the United States has not experienced such a significant countrywide call for deliberative democracy in higher education from our government.Nonetheless, some universities have established their own related programs.The University of Massachusetts has perhaps the most noteworthy graduate program in social justice and education, which emphasizes intergroup dialogue, conflict resolution, and deliberation.Antioch University Santa Barbara also displays a superb commitment to democracy through its master of education degrees in social justice and educational leadership.Core courses in this program include: Social Justice and Educational Reform (defining social justice); Sociological and Curricular Perspectives in Schools as Organizations (power structures and change in schools); Educational Leadership (students develop a personal action plan geared toward constructivist leadership); and Resilience in the School Community (building community that supports all individuals through intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences).Courses are also offered in conflict resolution.In addition to curriculum, students participate in "councils" which convene throughout the year to provide feedback on the quality of teaching, suggest different educational experiences, and offer input on departmental issues.Students also participate in a book club, reading works about injustice and conflict in schools.Finally, the program invites local members of Congress to engage in a conversation about democracy and local issues with the students. 6ogether, these aspects create a robust program well aligned with deliberative democracy.
Other institutions have not developed comprehension programs, but have key courses led by excellent faculty personally committed to deliberative democracy.Meira Levinson of Harvard University, for example, offers a course entitled Civic Identity and Education in a Multicultural Context.This course covers the democratic roots and purposes of U.S. public schools, the challenges to those purposes in recent years (especially after 9/11), and the differences in civics achievement and activity amongst various populations.Teachers College at Columbia University also offers a collection of related courses in democratic education: American Politics and Education, Comparative Politics and Education, Political Thought and Education, Urban Politics and Education, and Modern Political Theory.These courses would provide a comprehensive introduction to the importance of and challenges faced by democratic schooling for future teachers.
Unfortunately, many of the finest education programs and courses that advance deliberative democracy are only at the graduate level, including Antioch and UMass, or are in areas like educational foundations and educational leadership that are closely related to teacher education but do not lead to teacher certification.The absence of an explicit undergraduate emphasis in teacher education suggests that a focus on democracy is not essential for undergraduate preparation, but perhaps is more appropriately pursued "after the basics" rather than alongside them, or by scholars rather than practitioners.These distinctions are troubling from the perspective of deliberative democrats who see democracy as infused throughout the basics of practice as well as advanced theoretical exploration.
The University of Pennsylvania stood poised to achieve this balance between practice and theory across the university and especially in teacher education when it came under the direction of a primary proponent of deliberative democracy, Amy Gutmann, in 2004.Gutmann tried to instill her own commitment to democratic education by further involving Penn with the West Philadelphia school district and through other global activities as part of what she calls the "Penn Compact."Work with the West Philadelphia schools originally began in 1998 as a joint project of the School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Education.The schools joined together for an interdisciplinary minor in Urban Education, which involved university students doing service learning work with the school district.Though the Penn Compact is still in place, the democratic aspects of this commitment within the Graduate School of Education are not explicit.There are aspects of democracy discussed as parts of a handful of courses, as described online, but the commitment to democracy does not seem to be expressed deeply or across the curriculum, as evidenced by their courses titles and descriptions.Additionally, the focus of school collaborations, particularly through the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School, seems to have shifted away from democratic ideals to establishing a high quality and academically rigorous school as evidenced by the current mission of this partnership.What deserves to be applauded and replicated is the university-wide approach instituted by Gutmann and her insistence that ensuring a good democracy requires intimate interaction with public primary and secondary schools.Teacher education programs are especially well poised for pursuing and benefiting from this approach.
One set of schools ripe for partnership are those belonging to the League of Small Democratic Schools under the direction of democratic theory pioneer, John Goodlad.This growing set of schools is guided by an admirable mission: "Members of the school community believe the primary purpose of schooling is the development of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions in our nation's youths that support renewal of our nation's social and political democracy." 7They achieve this mission by developing democratic dispositions within their students as well as through ongoing authentic dialogues amongst the teachers who themselves undergo continual professional development in aspects of democratic teaching methods and democratic outcomes.Many of these outcomes closely parallel the skills and attributes of deliberative democracy described earlier.The League of Small Democratic Schools invites partnerships with universities and especially with teacher education programs as one aspect of strengthening the school community.
The teacher education program and Center of Pedagogy at Montclair State University has been especially devoted to fulfilling Goodlad's Agenda for Education in a Democracy.From the earliest exposure to future teachers, Montclair State scans applicants to ensure they meet the criteria of understanding and promoting democratic values and communication in the classroom.Once admitted, the curriculum is shaped by the democratic agenda.Outside of the classroom, students engage in activities like the Annual Advance sponsored each year by a collection of 25 educational professionals from the public schools, arts & sciences, and college of education called the Leadership Associates.This group leads intensive seminars that engage in dialogue around contested issues in teaching.Their work is also driven by two other Goodlad initiatives, the Institute of Educational Inquiry and the National Network for Educational Renewal.
Envisioning all of the ways that universities connect with deliberative democracy is far broader than the scope of this paper.Nonetheless, I want to highlight a few suggestions as complements to the efforts I recommend within teacher education programs.Some universities express a democratic commitment through offering centers on campus, such as the New England Center for Civic Life at Franklin Pierce College.Other universities host ongoing discussions about democracy through speakers, thought-provoking papers, and films, such as the University of New Hampshire's 2007-2008 University Dialogue on Democracy.Still others are slowly incorporating these themes through particular coursework that gets students out and participating in the community.Spelman College and several others do this through their Urban Education courses.More classes that allow students a hands-on opportunity to see and experience community work, paired with classroom discussion and debate are excellent ways to gradually introduce the deliberative democracy perspective into a college of education.Finally, colleges may consider joining forces with large national initiatives.One noteworthy example is Project 540, which has allowed over 140,000 high school students to define and deliberate their own topics of interest since 2002 (Robertson, 2008).Another example is the U.S. Department of Education sponsored organization, Deliberating in a Democracy, which works with hundreds of practicing high school teachers to develop democratic skills in domestic and international schools.Using similar approaches or working alongside of high school students is an apt way to prepare future teachers.Moreover, the existence of such programs, which expect teachers to be attuned to the cultivation of democracy, suggests that teacher education programs should be working harder to prepare graduates for their potential future involvement in such programs.

Conclusion
The process and goal of deliberative democracy in teacher education programs may help professors, community members, and K-12 schools deal with the recent changes in U.S. culture and in education in particular.Recent studies, such as the 2006 work of Michael McDevitt, confirm the effectiveness of deliberative education approaches for enhancing community-based learning, confidence in self-expression, knowledge of political issues, ability to validate opinions, civility between people with different views, and political conviction (McDevitt and Kiousis, 2006).Teacher education programs that adopt deliberative democracy as their guiding framework are likely to instill civic knowledge and virtues.These will not only serve the current world through producing active, informed and engaged citizens, but also will lead to a generation of teachers who cultivate the same characteristics in the children of America.