Method 5: Without ulterior motives (Open, sincere expression)

(State of mind for engaging in dialogue, Open, sincere expression, dialogue scene 6)

The goal is to learn how to express one's thinking openly and sincerely while engaged in dialogue and collaborative knowledge creation. The objective is to learn to talk about one's personal views and opinions. This is how participants learn to contribute to the dialogue and collaborative knowledge creation with their own, unique way of seeing things. Another objective of the task is to get novel ideas from the others.

Instructions

• The participants form groups of 3-4 persons.
• The topic of the dialogue or knowledge creation process is chosen. This ought to be a text, picture, problem, chart, plan etc. that the groups can see and that is relevant from the perspective of learning goal and collaborative knowledge creation, but something that they are not already very familiar with (the topic of knowledge creation could be, for instance, the picture that another group drew when describing a group where the actions are reciprocal).
• Each participant writes down 1-5 quick reactions or thoughts about the topic, for example, the picture that another group drew of a group with reciprocal actions.
• The reactions can include words, short comments and questions.
• Each participant shares the thinking evoked by the text, picture etc. with the other members of the group.
• The participants talk about these reactions for about 15 minutes.
• In small groups, the participants form questions or perspectives that show the participants' open and sincere reactions to the topic of the dialogue or knowledge creation.

Reflection in the learning community: The whole group jointly reflects upon their experiences of the task and thinking that it caused. One useful question for this reflection is ”What did you become aware of during this task?” Another, more demanding, question is ”What did you learn from this task?” The purpose of the reflection is that several participants, not only some, share their thinking and experiences. When the reflection part is completed, every participant has gained an understand-ing of what it means to express their thinking in an open, sincere manner when engaged in dialogue with other group members. This enables them to continue practising in real life situations.