IDEAS, NEWS AND RESOURCES | March 2022 |
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The Taos Institute's mission is to bring together scholars and practitioners concerned with the social processes essential for the construction of reason, knowledge, and human value, and their application in relational, collaborative and appreciative practices around the world. |
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The Many Ways to Get Involved! |
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Brief Encounter with The Taos Institute |
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"Understanding is not a passive activity. Its development involves checking to clarify if you have grasped or heard what the other hoped you heard."
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"Dialogue is not necessarily harmonious or product producing. What is important is dynamic sustainability."
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A Collaborative-Dialogic Perspective on Dialogue as a Conversation Partnership
Taos Institute Co-founder and Board Member
A dialogic process can occur whether we call it dialogue, conversation, or chit-chat. Regardless of the occasion, it provides the opportunity and space for people to speak and listen to themselves and each other—perhaps as they have not been able to do before.
Dialogue invites the reflexive, intricately intra-twined actions of speaking, listening, hearing, and understanding with genuine presence. I speak to invite the other to speak so that I can listen to them attentively, carefully, and with interest and without interrupting. I respond to what is said with comments, questions, and bodily movements. I want my response to signal that I am curious and want to learn more. The other’s response helps me know if I am hearing and understanding their meanings.
Dialogue invites responsive understanding—an interactive-emergent process. Understanding is not a passive activity. Its development involves checking to clarify if you have grasped or heard what the other hoped you heard. Checking is not paraphrasing or parroting back the other’s words. We must use words for comparison and contrast to see if our understanding is close or not.
Dialogue requires trust, openness, and carefulness, especially to the other and their difference. This assumes that we, the professionals, can be questioned, critiqued, and not agreed with by the other.
Dialogue invites us to not presume we know what the other person means nor to fill in the blanks of their story. We want to understand from their sense-making or logic map, not ours, as best we can.
Dialogue entails asking curious questions to learn more, which invites the other to clarify, expand, and detour—or not. Questions are not asked to gather facts or data, but rather to invite a reflective-reflexive process that is part of both professional and client beginning to think and act differently. The process of learning more provides the opportunity for each to rethink and reflect, which is integral to the generative and transformational process of dialogue.
Dialogue invites and welcomes pauses and silences, providing time for all to be aware of their inner thoughts, to consider what they think they heard, and to contemplate their response.
Dialogue invites a collaborative sensitivity that informs ways of being and becoming in the relationship and conversation in which a sense of togetherness and equitability invites participating, contributing, and sharing ownership and responsibility.
Collaborative sensitivity invites collaborative design. Collaborative design is part of the co-being and withness process of co-generating the potential for newness in meaning, understanding, and action. Think of collaborative design like taking a walk with someone and together deciding where to go, when to pause, and when and where to detour.
Differences are part of everyday life. They introduce the tension of non-clarity, ambiguity, incoherency, uncertainty, and misunderstanding that naturally inhabit dialogue. Differences and their inherent tension are a resource for shared exploration of the conversation’s focus. Dialogue is not necessarily harmonious or product producing. What is important is dynamic sustainability: a generative process is created that can endure outside the immediate conversation partnership.
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"The course content allowed me to understand concepts in more depth. I had certain ideas from reading but the opportunity to discuss this on the online
platform or in class or with a learning partner or to hear the facilitator speak directly to the content was so helpful to really start to understand the material."
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August 29 - October 10, 2022
A 6-week online course with Taos Institute Board Member
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Featuring videos and writings of Ken Gergen, Mary Gergen, Sheila McNamee, Harlene Anderson, Barnett Pearce, John Shotter, Saliha Bava and more, this course introduces the framework of Social Constructionism and presents cutting edge ideas and concepts on the collaborative construction of realities, reason and value. It introduces common premises and orienting ideas central to dialogue and meaning making. The course provides the groundwork for understanding how groups and organizations can work in the context of continuous, and sometimes radical change, and how innovation takes place by embracing dialogic approaches.
Participants engage in meaningful dialogue each week on a live video call, and deepen their learning through reading, interactions with the group in our virtual community platform, as well as during meetings with a new learning partner each week. This course is for those familiar with constructionist ideas as well as those new to these concepts. It is a unique opportunity to engage in deep reflection with others from a diverse range of experiences, while exploring how Social Construction applies to their own life and practice.
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Education as Relating - Ongoing Dialogue |
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Next interactive gathering coming in May 2022.
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Education as Relating: Topics and Practices in DEIJ, Indigenous Ways,
and Youth Voices in Education
These informal conversations are for educators, practitioners, change agents and all who are interested in relational practices in education. Those who presented at the November 2021 conference will host breakout rooms and share a bit about their presentations. We invite you to watch the recordings before the meeting. All the "featured videos" will be available soon.
All are welcome, even if you did not attend the conference.
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Watch the Videos
All the presentation recordings from the conference are available on our
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The Narrative Therapy Initiative presents
April, 13, 2022 - 10:00 am -5:00 pm EST (New York time)
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This online workshop is for people who are new(er) to narrative therapy and interested in learning (or learning more) about its collaborative, respectful and socially just ways of understanding people and problems. By refusing to locate problems inside of people, and by always seeing problems in the broader cultural context in which these problems were produced, narrative therapy stands against the individualizing and pathologizing of people’s suffering. The intention of this workshop is to offer participants a taste of the politics and ethics that guide narrative therapy practices, and to consider how and in what ways these values and ethics fit and/or don’t fit with their own values, ethics and preferred ways of being in this work (and in life). Click here for details and registration.
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The International Certificate in Collaborative-Dialogic Practices Network presents |
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May - November 2022
Free and open to all
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ICCP, HGI and The Taos Institute are pleased to announce this series of free online workshops, where leading voices in Social Constructionism and Collaborative-Dialogic ideas will engage in conversation with practitioners and scholars from different parts of the world. We will explore the principles and the applications of these practices in a variety of contexts and with different populations. The workshops will be in English with simultaneous translation. Details and registration are available here.
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The Interfas Foundation, Argentina, in collaboration with The Taos Institute, USA and CINDE-University of Manizales, Colombia presents |
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This yearly program (186 hours credit) offers professionals interested in expanding their understanding and skills of generative practices, the opportunity to learn a perspective and new resources that allow them to work with relational and dialogic creativity. Geared to professionals working with people and groups in different fields, it has an international faculty, all Taos Associates. It provides an exceptional space for dialogue, reflection, and learning, as well as the opportunity to belong to a multidisciplinary network of professionals who work with innovations and creativity in various domains of practice and social contexts. |
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The East Side Institute Presents |
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With deepening social, environmental and political crises worldwide, many who want to make a difference in the world are finding that they need new tools to make social change, to grow, and to develop their communities. The East Side Institute’s International Class is a 9-month virtual immersion in creative and cultural approaches to human development, learning and social change. The course introduces and examines social therapeutics, a philosophically informed, practically oriented method in which human beings develop themselves while building the ensemble, group and community. Details and registration available here.
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Library Journal recently reviewed this brand new book very positively, saying, "Readers of such volumes as How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk will find further help here in developing strong relational communication." Rebecca Rolland is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is on the faculty at the Harvard Medical School. She also serves as an oral and written language specialist in the Neurology Department of Boston Children’s Hospital.
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Organization of the month |
A group of psychotherapists and organizational consultants bring together their vast amount of experience in systemic thinking about organizations, culture, therapy and counselling training, research and management to decolonize psychotherapy and counselling. One way of doing this is by re-thinking all therapeutic theory to situate the individual in wider contexts and systems. We ask how everything is connected, by whom and with what consequences.
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ISSUE 12 Available Now!
This free journal brings together members of a growing international community of practitioners, scholars, educators, researchers, and consultants interested in postmodern collaborative practices.
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FREE downloadable books in 12 different languages. Like all of the Taos Institute Publications, WorldShare Books represent significant contributions relevant to social constructionist theory and practice. With over 30 books in English and many more from around the world, you will enjoy reading about education, spirituality, organizational life, community building, group dynamics, leadership and more.
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By focusing on the positive aspects of aging and the availability of resources, skills, and resiliencies, research brings useful insights into the realm of practice, creates hope and empowers action among older people. By moving beyond practices of repair and prevention, to emphasize growth-enhancing activities, practitioners also contribute more effectively to the societal reconstruction of aging. For 20 years, late Taos Institute co-founder Mary Gergen, Ph.D. has inspired and driven the publication of this free newsletter - also translated in 9 languages!
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Access hundreds of articles and papers on topics such as:
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Collaborative Practices
- Dialogic Practices
- Creativity and Change
- Narrative Practices
- Relational Research
- Relational Learning
- Qualitative Research
- and so much more!
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Donate to the Taos Institute
In the current global context, the work in which we engage is more important than ever. You can make a difference by supporting our mission to create a promising future through social construction. Read more
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Also choose The Taos Institute on
Amazon Smile:
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In loving memory of Taos Institute co-founder and board member Mary Gergen, Ph.D.. Mary was an innovator in feminist theory, social constructionism, and qualitative methods. She was an inspiration and mentor to thousands of people around the world. She deeply cared about making the world a better place and her contributions will be felt for generations. Read more
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