| This is a story of a diverse group of ordinary citizens who participated in an experiment in deliberative democracy. The case is of the Citizens' Conference on Food Biotechnology which followed a process called a consensus conference---a mechanism of participatory technology assessment. It explores the nature of the citizen's learning that was embedded in the process, and the influence on that learning by the social, institutional and procedural contexts within which the experience was situated.; Building on Kilgore's (1999) theory of collective learning in social movements and Kluver et al.'s (2000) study of public deliberation in Europe, the model of learning presented here is a model of practice, of how learning happens in a deliberative process and how the learning environment may be designed to foster collective learning. Learning in the Citizens' Conference is dual in nature, characterized by a reciprocal relationship between individual learners and the collective who move through four stages: scoping, sorting, transforming and negotiating. Collective reflection and an imperative to reach consensus are key elements that help to shape the collective consciousness and trigger the emergence of a collective identity. The collective then assigns meaning to the experience from which decisions are made and actions taken.; The collective learning process is significantly influenced by the degree to which the conditions are democratic. The societal, institutional and procedural contexts also have an important impact on collective learning and the ability of citizen participants to take socially meaningful action. Collective learning is enhanced and democratized by the inclusion of a comprehensive suite of disciplines and perspectives, including the tacit knowledge of the participating citizens. The Citizens' Conference, through the inclusion of a broad array of participants and perspectives, provided the opportunity for a critical and collective assessment of the topic reducing the uncertainty inherent in the technology and the mitigating the unequal distribution of power, knowledge and access. |
