I hope you are all doing well. I look forward to seeing everybody on Saturday. Today we celebrate Yakima Nation Treaty Day. You can read the actual articles of the Yakama Nation Treaty of 1855.

Unit Introduction and What You Will Learn

Week three is a synchronous class week, with class taking place on Saturday (06/14/25). In reading Edin and Shaefer (2016), students will have the opportunity to learn about the challenges faced by those who live on $2 per day, and there will be a forum for them to relate to rural and migrant communities. In Linquiti (2022), he focuses on understanding cognitive dissonance and its effect on biases. There are forums for students to consider their way of thinking and reflect on the textbook content. During class, we will be TBD. The agenda for the in-person class includes:

• TBD

The learning objectives this week include:

• Share relevant experiences and challenges faced by people in our community.
• Engage in critical thinking related to our thinking styles.
• Define cognitive dissonance and describe how trying to avoid it may create bias in policy analysis.
• Explain how the speed of cognition, the nature of an analyst’s motivating objective, and the affective content of cognition can have adverse impacts on the quality of policy analysis.

Unit Assignments

Read

• Edin and Shafer (2016) Chapter 2: Perilous Work
• Linquiti (2022) Chapter 4: Using Metacognition to Check Your Own Biases and the Biases of Others

A-01 Weekly Online Discussion Forum

The expectation is that each of your replies will be substantive and provide meaningful perspectives, contributing to the forum’s conversation and scholarship. They can be related to the prompts or building on conversations shared by peers. There are six forums for this week, and you are expected to make at least three replies across any of the forums. These forums include the following:

• The forum, Perils for Rural and Migrant Population, asks students to relate the perils of extreme poverty discussed in the textbook to rural and migrant populations.
• System 1 Versus System 2 Thinking provides a space for students to engage in metacognition about fast and slow thinking.
• The textbook author provides questions that help the student consider their thinking related to the content of the textbook; these questions are open for students to engage with in Chapter Four Discussion Questions.

Unit Resources

I will upload the lecture slides and any additional resources as we get closer to class on Saturday.

To-Do List

• Read chapters 4 of the textbook and Perilous Work in the $2 per day book
• Complete at least three replies across any of the three forums