When Elizabeth A. Bennion asked students in her political-controversies course to discuss gun control, the conversation could have dissolved into fractious debate. Her class included strong supporters and staunch opponents of gun-control legislation.

Equipping the class with readings and a list of gun-control measures, Ms. Bennion, a political-science professor at Indiana University at South Bend, asked the students to devise a policy. The catch? They were divided into groups that deliberately had both proponents and adversaries of gun control.

When they were forced to seriously consider an opposing view and to listen to their classmates’ concerns, Ms. Bennion says, students were able to move beyond rhetoric and arrive at a reasonable compromise. “What’s amazing,” she says, is “every team ends up with multiple policy changes on which they agree.”

 

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