Meaningful Civic Conversation requires more than exchanging opinions. It asks people to listen carefully, consider unfamiliar perspectives, explore complex ideas, and learn from one another. The Forum is gathering approaches that help citizens move beyond surface-level discussion toward conversations that strengthen understanding, relationships, and participation in democratic life.
Explore the Approaches
The Hawkins STEM Approach
Lawrence Hawkins
The Hawkins STEM Approach uses science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as common ground for community learning, conversation, and problem-solving.
Through hands-on projects, public discussions, educational programs, media, and collaborative learning experiences, people of different ages, backgrounds, and levels of expertise come together to explore how STEM affects their communities and everyday lives.
The approach is based on the idea that STEM is not only for scientists and technical professionals. It can also help citizens understand public issues, solve problems together, build relationships, and participate more confidently in civic life.
Best suited for: Communities seeking an accessible, nonpartisan way to bring people together around learning and shared problem-solving.
Explore the Hawkins STEM Approach →
Deep Conversations
Larry Richards and Valarie Lamont
Deep Conversations uses small-group conversation and facilitated discussion to help participants move beyond casual exchanges and examine ideas more thoughtfully.
The approach explores the role conversation plays in everyday life and democratic governance. It also draws on cybernetics—a way of understanding how people, organizations, and social systems communicate, respond, and adapt.
Topics may include:
- Conversations on the U.S. Constitution
- Conversation and Democracy
- Cybernetics and Democracy
- Everyday Cybernetics
- Working with “wicked” or highly complex problems
These conversations encourage participants to think differently, question assumptions, and explore how people can make decisions and adapt together in complex democratic environments.
Best suited for: Small groups seeking thoughtful dialogue about democracy, social systems, public decision-making, and complex civic questions.
Explore Deep Conversations →
What These Approaches Share
Although their subjects and formats differ, these approaches recognize conversation as a form of civic learning.
They are designed to help people:
Listen with greater curiosity
Develop a shared understanding of complex ideas
Learn across differences in knowledge and experience
Connect abstract issues to everyday life
Build relationships through collaborative learning
Strengthen their ability to participate in civic life
Issue Discussion Process
Daniel Wolk and Linda Sepe
A structured Forum approach for helping participants examine a public issue, consider different perspectives, and develop a clearer understanding of the choices involved.
Additional materials, examples, and demonstrations will be added as the process is further documented.
Best suited for: Groups seeking a practical framework for thoughtful and inclusive issue discussion.
Explore the Issue Discussion Process →
Topic-Focused, Invited Citizens Assembly
John Niles
The Institutional Compass is a decision-support method that combines different kinds of data, values, time horizons, and stakeholder perspectives into a clear visual assessment.
The process can include economic, social, environmental, cultural, and personal forms of value. It also allows citizens and other stakeholders to contribute information that may be missing from standard institutional data. This can help decision-makers better understand conditions on the ground and recognize gaps between expert analysis and lived experience.
Best suited for: Institutions, regions, and public systems evaluating their direction, priorities, or policy choices.
Explore the Institutional Compass →
Another?
What These Approaches Share
Although their subjects and formats differ, these approaches recognize conversation as a form of civic learning.
They are designed to help people:
- Listen with greater curiosity
- Develop a shared understanding of complex ideas
- Learn across differences in knowledge and experience\
- Connect abstract issues to everyday life
- Build relationships through collaborative learning
- Strengthen their ability to participate in civic life
Which Approach Fits Your Interests?
Begin with the Hawkins STEM Approach if you want to:
- Bring people together around a shared project
- Make technical subjects more understandable
- Connect learning with community problem-solving
- Engage participants across generations and backgrounds
Begin with Deep Conversations if you want to:
- Facilitate a thoughtful small-group discussion
- Explore democracy and social systems
- Move beyond debate or casual conversation
- Examine a difficult issue from new perspectives
- See the Approaches in Practice
Videos, interviews, sample conversations, and demonstrations will provide a closer look at how these approaches work and how they might be used in different communities.
Watch Interviews and Demonstrations
Contribute to the Collection
The Forum’s collection of citizen conversation approaches will continue to grow. Members, facilitators, educators, and visitors are invited to recommend additional models or share examples from their own work.
Join the Conversation
America’s 250th anniversary is a time to look back — and to think seriously about what kind of democracy we want to carry forward. The Forum invites citizens, educators, community leaders, and others interested in civic renewal to explore new essays, emerging models, events, and conversations about how we can talk, think, and participate more constructively in democracy’s next chapter.
