Page 414 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

Contributions to the Theoretical Literature

The research explored the aware experience of participants and facilitators engaged in what

are called Community Conversations and the literature defines as ‘civic engagement’ and

‘deliberative dialogue’ to explore the Metasphere created at the Albany NY gatherings on the topic

of “Implicit Bias’ that included discrimination, ethnicity, race and racism. Using grounded theory

method, a qualitative analysis of how individual participants and the collective group encountered

the Metasphere experience within participant interaction noting tension and conflict in the dialogue

process produced the following contributions to the current body of literature:

• Empirical insight and understanding about the ways in which participants processed their

thoughts, word usage, actions (TWA) and feelings about their Community Conversation.

• An understanding that Metasphere exists and is co-created to which an essential element

of safety is necessary to productively engage MEST confronting tension and disagreement.

• Occurrence of tension and disagreement is mitigated through sustained dialogue.

• Shifts in participant perspective and new insights stemming from deliberative dialogue is

aided by enhancing the Metasphere space allowing for introspection and reflection.

• Sustained deliberative dialogues on vital social issue topics such as racism offers a gateway

for bridging/healing the racial divide and relationship building through group interaction.

Any subject can be said to have a metatheory, a theoretical consideration of its properties,

such as its foundations, methods, form and utility, on a higher level of abstraction. In linguistics,

a grammar is considered as being expressed in a metalanguage, language operating on a higher

level to describe properties of the plain language (and not itself).

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