Composting Harm, Cultivating Flourishing: Reflective Dialogue as the Soil of Just Educational Renewal

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Method as Relational Disruption: Dialogue, Refusal, and Emergence in Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

Grounded in program evaluation scholarship, research, and practice, this paper advances a framework of Reflective Practice (RP) with Reflective Dialogue (RD) as its living essence. Drawing on seven years of NSF‑funded work, we define RD as the soil of RP: a relational practice that refuses neutrality, addresses harm, and resists extractive logics. We identify the enabling conditions that allow RD to flourish, including time, trust, and relational safety, and show how it animates context and reflexivity into practices of accountability rather than backdrop or self‑analysis. From this interplay emerges phronēsis, practical wisdom that equips researchers to render context‑sensitive, justice‑oriented judgments and to cultivate co‑created knowledge for democratic and flourishing futures.

Authors

• Tiffany Lee Smith Tovey, University of North Carolina - Greensboro

• Hannah Johnson, University of North Carolina - Greensboro

• Stacy R. Huff, University of North Carolina - Greensboro