Sociocultural Conversations: Examining the Influence of Difficult Dialogues on Leadership Development
Abstract
In this chapter, the authors review the factors that contribute to sociocultural conversations, their outcomes, and potential new directions for research and practice. They also provide ways to incorporate sociocultural conversations in practice.
On college campuses across the United States, tensions related to social class divides, racism, and isolating nationalist sentiments negatively influence students’ experiences. At the same time, higher education offers a unique opportunity for students to engage in sociocultural conversations with diverse peers in a meaningful way, which can help students navigate a divided, global society with the continual capacity to grow as ethical leaders who work for positive change. Sociocultural conversations include the frequency with which students have discussions outside of class with one another, especially with peers from diverse backgrounds, about sociocultural issues such as human rights, religious beliefs, and diversity (Inkelas, Vogt, Longerbeam, Owen, & Johnson, 2006). While researchers have highlighted many influential practices that promote leadership development (e.g., mentorship, community service), sociocultural conversations have been shown to be the primary predictor of students’ leadership development and capacity for collaboratively pursuing social change (Dugan, Kodama, & Correia, 2013 Johnson, Dugan, & Soria, 2017). Given the empirically-supported importance of sociocultural conversations for leadership development, in this chapter, we provide an exploration of such conversations by reviewing their precursors, outlining theoretical grounding for sociocultural conversations’ influence on leadership development, offer suggestions for reconceptualizations of sociocultural conversations, and highlight implications for fostering sociocultural conversations.
Precursors to Sociocultural Conversations
Scholars have revealed three major precursors to sociocultural conversations: students’ precollege characteristics, campus environments, and pedagogical conditions for sociocultural conversations. Below, we explore each of these precursors.
Students’ Precollege Characteristics
Both precollege experiences and identity often determine students’ likelihood to engage in sociocultural conversations while in college. In fact, a key indicator of college students’ openness to diversity in college is a similar openness before enrollment in college (Whitt, Edison, Pascarella, Terenzini, & Nora, 2001); however, many students graduate from homogenous high schools where they have interacted with relatively homogenous peers and thus might not have developed an openness to diversity (Milem, Umbach, & Liang, 2004).
One's identity also relates to one's propensity to engage in sociocultural conversations; students of color are more likely to engage in sociocultural conversations than their peers (Milem & Umbach, 2003). Marginalized students typically face a society that systemically privileges dominant identities, and thus, those students may engage about and across differences more frequently due to their experiences navigating systemic oppression, microaggressions, and other forms of harassment and discrimination (Thom & Blades, 2014).
Campus Environments
In addition to precollege characteristics, campus environments—both curricular and co-curricular—can foster sociocultural conversations (Hurtado, 2005; Klofstad, 2010). While many students encounter a general education curriculum where all students take a class in some sort of sociocultural topic (Brint, Proctor, Murphy, Turk-Bicakci, & Hanneman, 2009), students in certain majors, such as those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), are less likely to engage in sociocultural conversations than their peers (Milem & Umbach, 2003; Whitt et al., 2001). Additionally, STEM majors tend to require demanding courses, potentially limiting the ability of STEM students to participate in co-curricular opportunities that foster sociocultural conversations. Yet, co-curricular opportunities, such as civic engagement (Hurtado, 2005; Klofstad, 2010), the pursuit of leadership roles (Blom & Johnson, 2018; Dugan & Komives, 2007), and opportunities within living learning communities (Inkelas et al., 2006) also provide exposure to sociocultural conversations. The presence of diverse others in the classroom also influences students’ engagement across diversity in their co-curricular activities (Milem & Umbach, 2003), suggesting the importance of the compositional diversity of curricular spaces for students’ engagement in sociocultural conversations in the co-curriculum.
Pedagogical Conditions
Finally, no matter the setting of sociocultural conversations, certain conditions can make sociocultural conversations more effective for developing leadership capacities. A key condition for effective sociocultural conversations is the existence of students sharing experiences together and the presence of an underlying value for diversity (Cook-Sather, 2015; Perez, Shin, King, & Baxter Magolda, 2015; Thom & Blades, 2014). Developing an openness to having meaningful and engaging conversations with diverse individuals is important for students’ capacity to develop as socially responsible leaders (Dugan et al., 2013; Gurin, Dey, Gurin, & Hurtado, 2003) and students gain intercultural maturity when engaging with others (King, Perez, & Shim, 2013).
Second, the simultaneous use of effective content and critical thinking alongside interactive or engaging strategies contributes to students’ learning (Nagda, 2006; Schoem, 2003). Therefore, pairing conversation with appropriate content (e.g., factual information or content regarding systematic patterns related to individual differences) can be key for students’ holistic learning (Buckley, Quaye, Chang, & Hentz, in press). At the same time, negative interactions across difference are negatively correlated with student outcomes including cognitive skills, socio-cognitive outcomes, and democratic sensibilities (Hurtado, 2005), suggesting that effective conversations may benefit from facilitators or engaged participants who manage conflict and educate others on how to navigate such conflict (King et al., 2013). King et al. (2013), in fact, found that creating safety within a conversation, for example, by creating conversational ground rules that everyone can agree upon, is important for students’ continued dialogue participation. At the same time, simple exposure to conversations about topics like race does not necessarily increase students’ comfort with such conversations (Ashby, Collins, Helms, & Manlove, 2018), suggesting that while safety may be important, it does not automatically yield a group comfortable with the conversation. In fact, preparing students to accept some level of discomfort is perhaps ideal for productive leadership development (Ashby et al., 2018; King et al., 2013; Whitt et al., 2001).
Therefore, effective dialogue conditions invite participants to feel able and willing to share with others but remain open to the conflict, tension, and awkwardness that may accompany conversations across and about difference; in other words, a balance of both support and challenge is key in dialogue.
Why Sociocultural Conversations Contribute to Leadership Development
Sociocultural conversations likely contribute to students’ leadership capacity because they afford the opportunity for the development of self-authorship (Abes, Jones, & McEwen, 2007; Baxter Magolda, 2009; Baxter Magolda & King, 2012) and intercultural maturity (King & Baxter Magolda, 2005; Perez et al., 2015). Sociocultural conversations offer the opportunity for development in all three dimensions associated with one's holistic development and development of intercultural maturity, as students reflect on sociocultural issues that require critical thinking (cognitive dimension), engage with others around those issues (interpersonal dimension), and have the opportunity for continued critical reflection on their own identities and values within a diverse society (intrapersonal dimension). In addition, sociocultural conversations offer a ripe venue for the maturation of students’ meaning making capacities, the strength of which is associated with individuals’ internally, rather than externally, defined identities (Abes et al., 2007) because sociocultural conversations allow students to test and explore diverse perspectives, critically reflect on their own beliefs or identities, and potentially experience dissonance with which they must grapple. Those who possess more developed meaning-making capacities may, too, be able to more maturely respond to conflicts that can be natural within any diverse group and work collaboratively for social change in group, communal, and institutional levels, aspects key to culturally relevant leadership learning. In summation, sociocultural conversations allow students to better understand themselves and others who are different from them, which can lead to greater ability to engage thoughtfully with others in the world.
Considering New Conceptualizations of Sociocultural Conversations
While sociocultural conversations are crucial to leadership development, opportunities for new empirical and practical conceptualizations of sociocultural conversations exist, especially concerning the role of safety, the continua of sociocultural conversations, and the potential for measurement adaptation.
Noting Identity and Troubling Safety
The concept of safety is an important condition for sociocultural conversations (King et al., 2013; Roper, 2019), yet scholars have suggested that students who are most likely to engage in sociocultural conversations often come from marginalized or minoritized backgrounds—those who are more likely to experience micro- and macro-aggressions on campus and beyond, especially in the midst of sociocultural conversations (Leonardo & Porter, 2010; Park, 2012). Therefore, some students may experience a greater degree of risk or discomfort because of their identities and understudied inequitable costs of sociocultural conversations may exist. Thus, the use of terms like safe spaces and comfort without attention to concepts like brave spaces (Aroa & Clemons, 2013; Roper, 2019) and risk (Leonardo & Porter, 2010) may overlook inequities in conversations. Scholars should examine the potential inequitable costs of sociocultural conversations for students and how to foster the most inclusive pathways for such conversations.
Considering the Continuum of Sociocultural Conversations
Scholars might also more effectively examine variations that exist in types of sociocultural conversations and students’ developmental capacities related to sociocultural conversations.
Variations in Types of Conversations
While common measures of sociocultural conversations feature the word discussion (Inkelas et al., 2006), scholars have described the importance of a similar, but perhaps more transformational, concept of dialogue to foster leadership development (Nagda & Roper, 2019). Yet, different types of dialogue with different purposes also exist. One approach to dialogue involves providing rare opportunities for people to engage in a space of openness, inviting all to suspend assumption, share meaning, and seek ultimately to listen and come to shared appreciation of others rather than some specific conclusion (Bohm, 1996). Another type of dialogue, such as the pedagogically structured intergroup dialogue, includes conversation among different identity groups (e.g., people of color and White people) to foster social justice and encourage consciousness raising. Still other dialogues might more specifically work toward anti-oppression. Each of these types of dialogue requires different facilitation techniques and structures (Buckley & Quaye, 2014). Thus, types of sociocultural conversations, from debate to discussion to dialogue, and the goals of such conversations may vary, yet more research is needed to understand those types, factors, and conditions that most effectively yield the intended goals, and the likely differential outcomes of varying types of conversations on students’ leadership capacity.
Variations in Developmental Capacities
At the same time, students have different capacities to engage in varying types of sociocultural conversations. While many developmental factors might influence students’ engagement in sociocultural conversations, we highlight again models of intercultural maturity (King & Baxter Magolda, 2005; Perez et al., 2015), which specifically describe students’ growing capacities to recognize, appreciate, and interact across cultural difference. The models include developmental progress in cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal domains, with descriptions of initial, intermediate, and mature levels as well as markers of transitions between levels. Those in early stages of development may simplify cultural differences, have little self-awareness about their identities or values, or overlook the importance of cultural differences, while those in advanced stages likely understand and value diverse cultural perspectives, engage in continual self-reflection and growth, and value interaction across difference. Therefore, students engaging in sociocultural conversations likely both enter with differing capacities and develop them in different ways or at varying rates. Yet, current scholarship using existing measurements often overlooks differential development and capacity to engage in conversation.
Educators and scholars, therefore, might attune to conversational type and purpose as well as student developmental level. Scholars might explore whether different types of conversation lead to different developmental capacities and outcomes, features of conversations that are more likely to yield development of intercultural maturity, and the relationship of students’ intercultural maturity to leadership capacity.
Adapting the Measurement of Sociocultural Conversations
Finally, given the variation that exists in sociocultural conversations, opportunities exist to adapt the measures of sociocultural conversations to examine more closely the different outcomes and opportunities arising from variation in conversations. Many scales currently center the frequency with which students engage in sociocultural conversations. Additional research might provide insight into qualitative aspects of the concept of sociocultural conversations, especially in three areas. First, an adapted scale might define and account for the quality of sociocultural conversations, especially given research showing that students often struggle with how to untangle issues of quality and quantity when answering survey questions about interaction across difference (Park, Buckley, & Koo, 2017). Second, measurement adaptations might take into account students’ developmental growth across conversations, especially their ability to initiate or lead conversations, ability to navigate conflict, or growth in self-authorship—all capacities that might change the ways they act within or respond to sociocultural conversations. Finally, continued empirical examinations may separate two constructs that are commonly combined in the measurement of sociocultural conversations—diverse content versus diverse conversational partners.
Implications: Fostering Sociocultural Conversations for Leadership Development
Given the importance of sociocultural conversations, alongside opportunities to develop continued empirical understanding of such conversations and how they may differently foster leadership capacities, we offer four recommendations to educators.
Considering Compositional Diversity of Community
First, scholarship has shown that students have different exposure to sociocultural conversations based on their social identities and backgrounds. Therefore, when inviting sociocultural conversations, educators might consider the compositional diversity of student groups, their likelihood of having engaged in prior sociocultural conversations, the appropriate level of needed support or challenge, and the potential need to seek greater compositional diversity to ensure student development. At the same time, leveraging existing compositional diversity (in light of institutions and spaces that lack elements of diversity) is important as well, simply encouraging groups to purposefully invite conversations where they may be lacking or to incorporate different perspectives in conversations. Campus leaders might additionally seek opportunities to train faculty, staff, and student peers to consider how group makeup may impact propensity to engage in sociocultural conversations.
Inviting Opportunity to Engage in Social Change
Additionally, because campuses ought to foster opportunities for sociocultural conversations “everywhere” (Dugan & Komives, 2007, p. 17) and social change behaviors promote sociocultural conversations (Johnson et al., 2017), educators might consider new opportunities to invite social change behaviors into both curricular and co-curricular spaces, especially in ones that may not regularly or naturally include these opportunities, such as STEM majors. These opportunities could include incorporating diverse identities into curricula, facilitating a discussion about different sociocultural experiences and perspectives, and encouraging action after discussions. For example, an engineering instructor might discuss how certain technologies affect individuals with various identities and cultures differently, facilitate a dialogue on how that might advantage or disadvantage certain populations, and encourage students to work within internships or community projects to bring awareness about cultural implications of design through an engineering lens. In addition, while scholarship concerning sociocultural conversations does not heavily feature the growing online student population, some researchers have suggested that civic engagement even in online classes is key for student learning (Purcell, 2015); therefore, ways of fostering sociocultural conversations for populations of students who may not often be physically on campus could be an important consideration for the future of student leadership development.
Promoting Effective Pedagogical Environments
Educators may also consider at least three strategies to ensure effective pedagogical environments for fostering sociocultural conversations. First, facilitators might initially work to foster openness to diversity and change. Educators can lead students in ongoing reflections on what they hope to learn about diversity or how they hope to work toward positive change. In small communities, facilitators might also ask students to engage in a 360-degree review related to a topic such as self-awareness, both stating their own beliefs or development and receiving feedback from others on the same topic. Students could then compare the two and reflect on the similarities or differences.
Second, educators might invite simultaneous content learning and student engagement (e.g., active learning strategies) given both are key to effective development. At times, co-curricular dialogue might more easily center engagement and conversations about individuals’ experiences and opinions, without attention to factual information or information about broad, systemic sociocultural issues. On the other hand, curricular conversations might more easily center content about sociocultural issues at the expense of opportunities for students to engage about their experiences. Yet, a consideration of both pedagogical content and student engagement is important for fostering students who understand and then maturely interact across sociocultural differences (Buckley et al., 2020; King et al., 2013; Nagda, 2006; Schoem, 2003).
Third, while facilitators of dialogue already often invite students in to create ground rules or engage in other practices to create a “safe” space, they might also more intentionally invite students to consider inequitable “risks” different students assume in such conversations. For example, alongside ground rules, facilitators might also ask students to brainstorm the various risks that groups bring when discussing certain topics. For example, what might be the different risks be for White students versus students of color when discussing racism? Or for Muslim students versus students of other religious traditions be when discussing the U.S. war on terror and Islamophobia? The creation of both lists—ground rules for “safe” spaces and possible “risks” students may take—may help students develop a shared sense of how to collaboratively create a welcoming space for dialogue while recognizing all spaces have some element of differential risk for students. An ongoing assessment and updating of such co-created lists throughout ongoing sociocultural conversations may itself provide an opportunity for students’ growing awareness of others and internal metacognitive awareness.
Acting With a Developmental Model in Mind
Lastly, we invite scholars and educators to practice and research with a developmental lens in mind when approaching sociocultural conversations, considering whether the goals of the conversation include receptivity to others, awareness of structural systems of inequity, or perhaps anti-oppression. The goals might then inform strategies and structures of conversations. At the same time, educators might ask how conversations can effectively promote students’ development of progressive skills related to engaging in dialogue. Sociocultural conversations serve as opportunities to build students’ competencies in fostering dialogue and serving as peer mentors in conversational settings. Therefore, growing not only students’ efficacy to engage in sociocultural conversations but also to value, invite, and facilitate such conversations may be key (Guthrie, Bertrand Jones, & Osteen, 2016). Educators might invite such opportunities by helping students learn to manage conflict or asking students to create questions about sociocultural issues and work in groups to critique and improve questions (with attention to group-generated lists of the conditions of safe spaces and of differential risks) that might be inattentive to complex dynamics existing within a diverse group. However, mere interactions among diverse people about diverse topics do not necessarily result in positive or effective outcomes; negative interactions can lead to negative outcomes. Thus, encouraging those involved in sociocultural conversations to account for diverse identities, consider others’ experiences, and attune to systemic oppression is important. Yet, research is clear that despite such risk, having sociocultural conversations is important for leadership development of students from many identities.
Conclusion
Sociocultural conversations have proven to be a key way students develop leadership capacities in a diverse and often divisive world. Thus, in this chapter, we reviewed students’ precollege characteristics, campus environments, and pedagogical conditions that seem to promote sociocultural conversations and theoretical grounding for why sociocultural conversations are crucial for leadership development. We also offered critiques that may deepen a current conceptualization of sociocultural conversations, especially expanding our knowledge about the potential importance of the quality of sociocultural conversations. Lastly, we offered implications and ideas for practitioners and scholars seeking to promote sociocultural conversations as a tool for developing students’ leadership capacity.
In a complex world, full of intercultural tension and division, postsecondary institutions have a mission to develop the capacity of students to learn, engage, and lead in the midst of diversity and tension rather than despite or around it. Sociocultural conversations are indispensable tools educators and institutions can use to foster students’ learning and leadership capacity.
Biographies
Jessica Belue Buckley is a clinical assistant professor of higher education administration at the University of Louisville. She studies campus climate for students of diverse backgrounds, the role of dialogue in social justice education, and academic approaches to teaching sustainability in higher education. Her work is published in journals including the Journal of College Student Development, Race Ethnicity and Education, and The Review of Higher Education.
Natalie Oliner is an assistant director of retention and assessment at the University of Louisville's J.B. Speed School of Engineering. She is also a doctoral student in the UofL counseling and personnel services program with a concentration in college student personnel. Her research interests include underrepresented students’ sense of belonging, identity navigation, persistence, and success in curricular and co-curricular science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) environments.
