what is Isee! Scotland?
I SEE! Life Skills for a Changing Scotland is an empirically validated multi-media, participatory, experiential, active educational course that increases participants' capacities to respect difference and work with those with whom they disagree while holding on to their core values.
Guided and supported by trained Co-Facilitators, participants learn to recognise the role of their own reactions (biological, cognitive, emotional, and social) that can lead to destructive conflict.
They experience using IC management, in the midst of difference and disagreement, to find ways forward that will benefit all involved as well as their wider communities. While acquiring new tools and skills that support IC management, participants explore real life tensions (ethnic, religious, gender, educational, work-related, and others). The course engages deep brain processes, working at a less than conscious level, to increase capacities to respect and work pro-socially with difference.
Participants grow in ‘meta-awareness’ of themselves, other people, groups, and their wider social environment. They experience the impact of individual and group attitudes and behaviours on their social world: 'see' their own thinking ('meta-cognition'), experience the role that their bodies play in how they think ('embodied cognition'), learn to monitor and regulate their emotions (‘meta-affective reasoning), and develop complex problem solving skills.
Through carefully designed activities, participants recognise the power of social identity and how quickly it can be established and used destructively or constructively, even in role play. In these multi-levelled ways, I SEE! Scotland equips participants to build social cohesion through the co-creation of new community narratives that respect differences. Destructive feed-back loops among polarised groups are replaced with intentional, pro-social feed-back loops that support constructive collaboration.
Guided and supported by trained Co-Facilitators, participants learn to recognise the role of their own reactions (biological, cognitive, emotional, and social) that can lead to destructive conflict.
They experience using IC management, in the midst of difference and disagreement, to find ways forward that will benefit all involved as well as their wider communities. While acquiring new tools and skills that support IC management, participants explore real life tensions (ethnic, religious, gender, educational, work-related, and others). The course engages deep brain processes, working at a less than conscious level, to increase capacities to respect and work pro-socially with difference.
Participants grow in ‘meta-awareness’ of themselves, other people, groups, and their wider social environment. They experience the impact of individual and group attitudes and behaviours on their social world: 'see' their own thinking ('meta-cognition'), experience the role that their bodies play in how they think ('embodied cognition'), learn to monitor and regulate their emotions (‘meta-affective reasoning), and develop complex problem solving skills.
Through carefully designed activities, participants recognise the power of social identity and how quickly it can be established and used destructively or constructively, even in role play. In these multi-levelled ways, I SEE! Scotland equips participants to build social cohesion through the co-creation of new community narratives that respect differences. Destructive feed-back loops among polarised groups are replaced with intentional, pro-social feed-back loops that support constructive collaboration.
How the ISEE! Scotland course is taught
Over 16 contact hours with trained Co-Facilitators, participants explore a range of topics, including:
Role play, mime, games, and other experiential group activities enable participants to recognise their own reactions during perceived threat from other groups that can lead to group polarisation ('our group is right, your group is wrong!').
Group polarisations often involve each group focusing on one value as the most important value. Other values that would normally be deemed as also important get excluded. For example, one group may espouse 'belonging' as their most important value and polarise against another group espousing 'independence' as their most important value. Normally each group would affirm the importance of both ‘belonging’ and ‘independence’. But when polarised, each group sees themselves as the guardian of their one most important value.
While exploring their reactions in diverse situations, participants learn to access a wider range of their own values. Wanting to honour two important values in tension, like belonging and independence, can motivate and energise us to do the hard work of thinking with more complexity. This enables them to find ways to honour both values (Tetlock, 1986).
The experiential learning about critical thinking and strategies for self-regulation equip participants to honour more of their own values. They are able to work more constructively with opposed groups. This enables them to overcome destructive polarisations and create more peaceful communities.
Participants practice these processes over and over in a range of true to life situations. This practice equips them to manage their IC outside the course context, in their communities, workplaces, schools, and homes. As a result, participants apply their IC learning between sessions and report experiencing the benefits of IC management when they come together again. Feeling empowered, they become increasingly committed to the IC journey. They have experienced the benefit of IC management and want to find ways to work with those who are different.
- living well in Scotland as individuals and in communities
- handling difficult emotions in tense situations
- having close relationships in the midst of conflicting messages
- feeling confident in times of change and uncertainty
- using social, emotional, and critical reasoning skills in tough spots
- working with people who learn and see things differently
- discovering how non-religious, religious, and people of different religions can live together to promote a flourishing Scotland
Role play, mime, games, and other experiential group activities enable participants to recognise their own reactions during perceived threat from other groups that can lead to group polarisation ('our group is right, your group is wrong!').
Group polarisations often involve each group focusing on one value as the most important value. Other values that would normally be deemed as also important get excluded. For example, one group may espouse 'belonging' as their most important value and polarise against another group espousing 'independence' as their most important value. Normally each group would affirm the importance of both ‘belonging’ and ‘independence’. But when polarised, each group sees themselves as the guardian of their one most important value.
While exploring their reactions in diverse situations, participants learn to access a wider range of their own values. Wanting to honour two important values in tension, like belonging and independence, can motivate and energise us to do the hard work of thinking with more complexity. This enables them to find ways to honour both values (Tetlock, 1986).
The experiential learning about critical thinking and strategies for self-regulation equip participants to honour more of their own values. They are able to work more constructively with opposed groups. This enables them to overcome destructive polarisations and create more peaceful communities.
Participants practice these processes over and over in a range of true to life situations. This practice equips them to manage their IC outside the course context, in their communities, workplaces, schools, and homes. As a result, participants apply their IC learning between sessions and report experiencing the benefits of IC management when they come together again. Feeling empowered, they become increasingly committed to the IC journey. They have experienced the benefit of IC management and want to find ways to work with those who are different.
ISEE! Scotland uses integrative complexity
How does I SEE! Scotland help you to lower the tension in conflict and work peacefully in the midst of disagreement or opposition?
‘I SEE!’ rhymes with ‘IC’, which is short for ‘Integrative Complexity’. Based on over forty years of research by Professor Peter Suedfeld and colleagues (Suedfeld and Tetlock, 2014), integrative complexity refers to a person’s thinking style while solving problems, processing information, or making decisions.
The IC Thinking® Method focuses on our thinking style in the face of difference, disagreement, or opposition.
More technically, IC can be thought of as the cognitive lens through which we see our social world during conflict: a narrow, constricted lens creating tunnel vision (low IC) or a widening lens that sees the big picture (raised IC).
Low IC sees the world through black and white, us versus them thinking, while raised IC honours each party’s core values, acknowledges multiple dimensions on a topic or issue, tolerates ambiguity, accepts that reasonable people can have different viewpoints, sees some validity despite disagreement, and finds a way to work with opponents for the benefit of all.
A drop in IC predicts destructive and even violent conflict, while raised IC predicts more peaceful outcomes to conflict (Suedfeld, Leighton, Conway, 2003)
‘I SEE!’ rhymes with ‘IC’, which is short for ‘Integrative Complexity’. Based on over forty years of research by Professor Peter Suedfeld and colleagues (Suedfeld and Tetlock, 2014), integrative complexity refers to a person’s thinking style while solving problems, processing information, or making decisions.
The IC Thinking® Method focuses on our thinking style in the face of difference, disagreement, or opposition.
More technically, IC can be thought of as the cognitive lens through which we see our social world during conflict: a narrow, constricted lens creating tunnel vision (low IC) or a widening lens that sees the big picture (raised IC).
Low IC sees the world through black and white, us versus them thinking, while raised IC honours each party’s core values, acknowledges multiple dimensions on a topic or issue, tolerates ambiguity, accepts that reasonable people can have different viewpoints, sees some validity despite disagreement, and finds a way to work with opponents for the benefit of all.
A drop in IC predicts destructive and even violent conflict, while raised IC predicts more peaceful outcomes to conflict (Suedfeld, Leighton, Conway, 2003)
