Teaching for Implementation: Designing Negotiation Curricula to Maximize Long-Term Learning

If asked about their aspirations for a negotiation course, most adult students will likely say that they hope to improve their real-world negotiations after the course is over, and most instructors will probably agree. Both instructors and students may vary, of course, in how modest or ambitious their goals for improvement are and what on what “improvement” entails, but most no doubt hope that students will transfer at least some new skills or understandings from the classroom to the outside world (Knowles, Holton, and Swanson 2005). So, a well-designed negotiation course should focus not only on what students should learn but also on how they should learn it to maximize their ability to apply and adapt that learning in novel contexts both during and after the course. While there has only been limited (though encouraging) research on the long-term effects of negotiation training specifically (Movius 2008), education specialists have studied extensively the question of how to maximize learning that “takes,” regardless of the subject matter.

Simply including a topic in a negotiation syllabus (e.g., dealing with difficult tactics, or anchoring, or managing coalitions) does not guarantee whether or to what extent students will learn anything about that topic. Nor does doing so transfer any such learning to a nonclassroom context. Indeed, many education specialists lament the “tyranny of content” that drives some teachers to focus on the quantity of material they must cover rather than on whether and what their students are actually learning (see, e.g., Wankat and Oreovicz 1998: 15).

Thoughtful curriculum design, which would include the clear articulation of performance-oriented learning goals, the tailoring of learning activities to meet those goals, and the provision of opportunities for ongoing feedback, and which would have a reflective, metacognitive orientation, can help support meaningful student learning during the course as well as the continued development and application of that learning after the course is over.¹

Just as a negotiator cannot prepare a useful negotiation strategy without developing a sense of her own goals in the negotiation — for instance, the goal of “squeezing as much money as possible out of the other party” calls for a different strategy than “getting a fair deal this time while building a foundation for additional long-term business”— a negotiation instructor cannot design an effective curriculum without any sense of what the goals of the course should be. These goals may well be modified as the instructor learns more about the students as well as how their learning develops and may even be negotiated with students (see Nelken 2009 in this issue), but the point is that learning activities should be selected with clear learning goals in mind.

Defining goals from a performance perspective — that is, articulating what students should be able to do by the end of the course and not just what the teacher will “cover”— can help orient the curriculum toward learning that students can transfer to new contexts. The Teaching for Understanding framework, a research-based pedagogical framework developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, advocates framing curricular goals in terms of “understanding,” which is defined as a flexible performance capability. In other words, if a student truly understands something, he is able to do something with it, adaptively, in different contexts (Wiske 1998). For example, imagine an introductory, semester-length, graduate-level negotiation course in which the goals include something like “covering barriers to dispute resolution, including cognitive biases and principal — agent tensions.” This goal focuses on course content but not on what students will actually be able to do.

Reconceived with a performance orientation, the course's overarching performance-oriented goal might be that students be able to recognize and identify a range of cognitive, psychological, structural, and other barriers to resolving disputes, as well as to be able to develop and implement approaches for managing or overcoming these barriers. Within this overarching goal, the course might have the following performance-oriented subgoals:

1. Students will be able to demonstrate a practical understanding of the nature of the reactive devaluation bias by recognizing conditions under which this bias is likely to emerge and by developing and applying techniques for strategically avoiding and/or managing this bias.

2. Students will be able to recognize a number of variables that can contribute to tensions between negotiation agents and their principals, and will be able to develop and apply techniques for managing or minimizing these tensions.

Imagine that another goal for the same course is for students to learn about value-creation techniques, including logrolling (trading on differing priorities) and the use of contingent contracts. Pushed to redefine this goal in terms of what students will learn to do, the instructor might articulate the possible overarching performance-oriented goal to be that students will be able to create value in negotiation from a range of sources and through a range of techniques.

The possible performance-oriented subgoals could include

1. Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of the principle of logrolling (i.e., trading on issues with different priorities) by recognizing circumstances in which logrolling may be appropriate and will be able to create value through logrolling in appropriate circumstances.

2. Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of contingent agreements by recognizing circumstances under which contingent agreements can create value and by drafting value-creating contingent contractual clauses.

The difference between a content-oriented course goal and a performance-oriented course goal will not be merely semantic if the instructor uses the performance-oriented goal as the basis for designing the course and the corresponding learning activities. In the same way that a party to a complex multiparty negotiation might articulate a target deal and then “map backward” in order to develop a logical strategy for obtaining that deal (see Lax and Sebenius 2006), a negotiation teacher can articulate target performances for the students and work backward from these goals to design and sequence learning activities oriented toward those goals (see Wiske 1998).

One consideration in developing learning activities tailored to performance-oriented goals is the role of mental models, or schemas, in learning. A number of educational psychologists have argued that knowledge is not simply transferred from once person to another but rather is actively constructed through the experiences and discoveries of learners, who develop mental models (or schemas) to explain these experiences (e.g., Piaget 1957; Anderson 1977; Merriam and Caffarella 1999; see also Gick and Holyoak 1983; Chen and Mo 2004; Knowles, Holton, and Swanson 2005). Conceptual change, or the development of new schemas, occurs when interactions between these existing cognitive structures and new experiences create disequilibrium or confusion in the learner so that new ways to organize thinking are needed (National Research Council 1999). In fact, new experiences and discoveries actually modify the structures of the brain to allow such conceptual change (National Research Council 1999).

From this perspective, one criterion for selecting transfer-oriented learning activities for a negotiation course is the extent to which those activities would help learners develop and apply effective schemas for negotiating in a range of contexts. For some learners, this could mean identifying and clarifying their existing schemas, which may be both powerful, due to their embeddedness in past thinking or experience, and also implicit and unexamined. For other learners, it could mean adapting or supplementing their preexisting schemas; for still others, it could mean revising them completely.

Research from such diverse disciplines as education, psychology, and anthropology has led to conclusions about the particular kinds of learning experiences most likely to affect the existing schemas that learners bring to the classroom and thus to promote learning transfer, the appropriate application of the learning, inside and outside the classroom. Some of this research has concentrated on understanding the differentiating characteristics of expert and novice approaches to problem solving in various disciplines; by definition, experts are expected to think and reason effectively.

Research to understand the nature of expert problem-solving schemas concludes that experts “have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environments. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, and solve problems” (National Research Council 1999). At the risk of oversimplifying a complex idea, it is useful to consider how one might teach this ability to notice relevant and important information and how this can assist the learner to construct a new model of thinking and decision making in negotiation practice. Helping learners develop the expert negotiator's nuanced ability to notice relevant data involves helping them to acquire both theoretical understanding and practical skills.

Because conceptual changes for students occur in part when some disequilibrium is present, we encourage curriculum designers to consider how to manufacture some of this disequilibrium (and encourage critical reflection on it). For example, scored exercises that demonstrate the advantages of integrative bargaining to maximize both individual and joint gain (e.g., Blockbuster or Pepulator Pricing Exercise) can produce profitable discomfort in students whose negotiation schemas assume that only distributive approaches maximize individual gain. Along the same lines, exercises in which missed information can prevent parties from fully meeting their interests (e.g., Bakra Beverage or DEC v. Riverside) can be useful for students whose schemas for effective negotiation interaction exclude information gathering, questioning, and listening techniques.²

Conversely, distributive exercises in which value-claiming techniques work well (e.g., Parker-Gibson or BioPharma-Seltek³) can disrupt the mental models of those who excessively privilege purely collaborative, value-creating processes.⁴ The power of these exercises lies not in the inherent interest of a surprise (nor in students' alertness to the possibility of a “gotcha” moment) but rather in their potential to nudge students to reinforce, clarify, adjust, or revise their existing, often implicit mental models about negotiation.

Students' reactions to these exercises are not infallibly predictable, of course: what astonishes some students may not even faze others. We should be wary of assuming that we can predict these preexisting schemas, or whether and how learners will want to modify them. For instance, one learner may enter a negotiation course with an implicit belief that either competitive or compromising behaviors are always appropriate negotiation strategies. Critical reflection of this belief may lead this learner to a more nuanced understanding of when such behaviors may be appropriate, or it might lead him to develop alternative behaviors (such as a problem-solving, integrative approach) that may be appropriate in certain contexts, or both.

Alternatively, another learner may enter a course with a mental model of negotiation that embraces integrative negotiation approaches and implicitly rejects distributive approaches. Depending on her perspective and how she experiences the course, this learner may reinforce her “integrative-negotiation-is-best” schema, or she may adapt it to acknowledge and accept the distributive aspects of many negotiations and hone her distributive bargaining skills. Still another learner may shift from an analytically oriented schema to one that encompasses the interpersonal, relational aspects of negotiation.

The point is not to assume that all learners will enter with a predictable set of assumptions about negotiation (e.g., that negotiation is always distributive) or that they will have predictable needs in terms of what they should learn (e.g., that they need to appreciate the value of integrative negotiation) but rather to provide opportunities for critical examination of whatever their existing assumptions and schemas may be, along with opportunities for reinforcement, adaptation, expansion, or revision of these schemas as appropriate. For many learners, this may require a higher order of self-reflection than that to which they are accustomed (Manwaring 2006). Openness to working with the student reactions that actually emerge rather than those that an instructor hopes or predicts will emerge can help instructors avoid being constrained by their own mental models about classroom dynamics.

The disequilibrium that can emerge from inconsistencies between existing schemas and new experiences is not the only source of schema development. A number of studies have demonstrated the power of analogical thinking to help learners internalize their understanding by developing new schemas.

During the 1980s, Mary Gick and Keith Holyoak designed experiments to test the use of analogies in problem solving. Noting that the development of new theories was often based on analogy (e.g., the hydraulic model of blood circulation, the planetary model of atomic structures), Gick and Holyoak (1980) hypothesized that analogies can promote schema development (as well as the transfer of problem-solving skills) by pushing learners to organize information in new ways. Building on prior work on geometric analogical learning, Gick and Holyoak (1980) studied analogical learning transfer in experiments using two problems with analogous structures and ideal solutions.

Their first problem was presented as a learning task in a military context and involved the storming of a castle from which roads radiated outward. The scenario concluded that the army would fail at its task of taking the castle if it used only one road, but could succeed with multiple, small forces converging at the center (a dispersion strategy). The second scenario was presented as a new problem in a radiation context, and involved the destruction of a tumor. Radiation strong enough to kill the tumor would damage skin tissue if directed at one place, but could succeed if multiple, less-intense rays converged on the tumor simultaneously — another dispersion strategy (Gick and Holyoak 1980).

Gick and Holyoak (1980) found that learners who were explicitly directed to notice the commonalities between the two problems were much more likely than learners given no additional guidance to develop an effective analogous dispersion strategy to solve the second problem. Beyond supporting the principle that analogical reasoning promotes effective problem solving, the results of the study suggest that the transfer of learning by analogy works best for more abstract schemas rather than for similar sets of facts (Gick and Holyoak 1980; see also Sander and Richard 1997; Chen and Mo 2004; Moran, Bereby-Meyer, and Bazerman 2008). This is relevant for negotiation teachers who seek to help their students cultivate an understanding of abstract negotiation principles (e.g., “differences between negotiators can be a source of value creation”) and an ability to apply these principles in a wide range of factual contexts.

At the same time, transfer using analogical commonalities can be limited by a learner's ability to recall relevant examples of past problem solving — and negotiators outside of the classroom (or the laboratory) are rarely given explicit prompts to look for analogies between two negotiation situations. Moreover, if learners have a highly contextualized and situation-specific understanding of a past negotiation, the past negotiation may not prompt recall (or analogical transfer) in the context of a current negotiation if the surface details of the two problems are dissimilar (Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson 2003; see also Chen and Mo 2004). This is, of course, especially true for novices who do not know what is important to “notice” in the first case (National Research Council 1999).

Given this dilemma, Dedre Gentner, Jeffrey Loewenstein, and Leigh Thompson conducted a series of studies on analogical encoding, in which learners compared and contrasted two case examples in order to “notice” and understand the abstract structural features of negotiations (e.g., the existence of value-creating opportunities) and not just factual details (e.g., an intra-organizational negotiation setting) (Loewenstein and Thompson 2000; Thompson, Loewenstein, and Gentner 2000; Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson 2003). The studies were premised on the assumption that an understanding of abstract structural commonalities is central to the learner's ability to clarify new concepts and develop abstract problem-solving schemas that transfer to new situations (Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson 2003; see also Schwartz and Bransford 1998; Wiske 1998).

Initially, these researchers concluded that analogical encoding did facilitate learning and transfer for fairly experienced negotiators (Thompson, Loewenstein, and Gentner 2000). Then they expanded their research to test whether novices could learn specific value-creating negotiation strategies (trade-offs and contingent contracts) and then transfer this learning to new contexts (Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson 2003). Students first read a case in which the application of logrolling or contingent contract strategies created more value than an alternative strategy such as compromises, then read a second case applying the same principle(s), and finally were tested on their ability to apply those principles in a novel negotiation case. After giving and testing differing degrees of guidance for the case comparisons, the researchers concluded that

1. case comparison analysis results in more learning and transfer than separate analysis of the cases because it strips away the surface features of cases and highlights the principle(s) to be applied in new contexts (Loewenstein, Thompson, and Gentner 1999; Loewenstein and Thompson 2000), and

2. students guided by instruction that facilitates active comparison (e.g., juxtaposition of cases and questions about their similarities) develop a greater ability to learn and transfer the principles involved than students without such active instructional guidance (Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson 2003).

The researchers concluded that analogical encoding promoted “the abstraction of schemas, which in turn promote recall and transfer,” and speculated that analogical encoding in experiential learning could yield broad conceptual change in learners (Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson 2003: 403).

More recent experimental research has extended the knowledge about analogical encoding by showing that case comparisons can help learners to understand and transfer the more general and abstract principle of value creation to multiple contexts (Moran, Bereby-Meyer, and Bazerman 2008). The experimenters guided students to compare cases that used divergent value-creation techniques such as logrolling and contingent contracts and found that this not only supported the students' understanding and transfer of those particular value-creation techniques, but it also helped the students improve their ability to notice opportunities to apply new value-creation techniques that they had not yet been explicitly taught (Moran, Bereby-Meyer, and Bazerman 2008). Presumably, the comparison across contexts of different techniques for accomplishing the underlying principle of value creation pushed the learning to a deep level of abstraction that was more effective for transfer than the more superficial level of abstraction required for comparing factually and structurally similar cases. Analogical learning across highly variant contexts tends to be slower initially than analogical learning across more similar contexts, but the former “allows for the construction of a less context-embedded and/or procedure-bound, and thus more flexible and powerful, schema” (Chen and Mo 2004: 596). Thus, this educational technique takes time, and negotiation curricula drawing upon analogical learning for schema development should incorporate multiple opportunities for students to construct analogical connections.

Additional experimental research in the negotiation context has compared students trained via analogical learning (reading two negotiation vignettes with divergent fact patterns but structural similarities; i.e., priority trade-offs were needed to produce a favorable outcome) with students trained via three other learning methodologies: didactic learning (reading a synopsis of negotiation principles), learning via information revelation (reviewing the confidential instructions and “pay-off schedule” for negotiation counterparts after a first negotiation task was completed), and observational learning (viewing a videotape modeling the best outcome for a previously examined negotiation scenario) (Nadler, Thompson, and van Boven 2003). Joint negotiation outcomes, used here as a measure of performance, were highest in the observational and analogical learning groups. It was only in the analogical learning group, however, that students were able to articulate the underlying negotiation theory or principle — that is, the schema — upon which they had relied in their second negotiation task. In the observational group, the video model promoted demonstrable skill development, but only implicit (or “tacit”) knowledge; those students were unable to articulate their strategy or explain why their performance improved.

In assessing the intriguing result of the observational learning group in the research described above — that is, the fact that their skills improved but that they were unable to articulate why — Hal Movius has suggested that the group's implicit learning is supported by “a fairly large literature regarding human memory and the neuroscience of memory systems,” that “different kinds of knowledge are encoded and stored in different ways,” and that “it may be that learning to negotiate requires more than the mere recognition of new frameworks or ideas; rather, it may require seeing and undertaking complex sequences of interrelated behaviors” (Movius 2008: 520–521). Research thus supports the value of a variety of learning activities, including observational learning for behavior skills as well as the more conceptual and insightful learning that results from analogical encoding and is better understood as contributing to enhanced performance on subsequent transfer tasks (Bransford and Schwartz 1999: 64). Indeed, the literature on “high-road” and “low-road” transfer of learning (discussed below) sheds additional light on why the successful teaching of negotiation usually requires attention to both theory-building and behavioral skills.

Given the power of analogical learning and the often-cited ability and desire of adult learners to connect classroom experience with what they already know, to promote effective transfer, teachers should consider explicitly encouraging students to compare their classroom experiences with their real-life negotiating experiences. Whether the “classroom experience” derives from observing a lecture, reading a case study, participating in a role simulation, watching video or live demonstrations, or some other experience, students can look for connections and/or distinctions between the dynamics of that classroom experience and the dynamics they have experienced in their own negotiations. This form of analogical thinking might be very open-ended (“What similarities do you notice between this exercise and the negotiations in which you typically engage?”) or more focused (“Now that you've seen this video on coalition-building in multi-party negotiation, can you think of a negotiation situation in your own life in which you either built a coalition or had the opportunity to do so? Would the coalition-sequencing strategy you saw in the video have made sense in your own situation? Why or why not?”).

We cannot assume that students who demonstrate negotiation skills or conceptual understanding in the classroom will automatically transfer these skills or understandings to appropriate contexts outside the classroom. Explicit analogical training is no guarantee, either, but it can help support transfer in many cases. The research suggests that students will more thoroughly internalize negotiation principles that they can apply outside the classroom if they experience those principles in multiple contexts, so that the learning goes deeper than the surface features of a particular fact pattern.

Analogical reasoning is particularly effective for supporting “high-road transfer,” that is, the ability to abstract, understand, and apply general principles to different contexts (Perkins and Salomon 1992). Depending on the student performance goals for the course, the instructor should also consider designing learning activities to support “low-road transfer,” which is the triggering of reflexive responses in sufficiently similar learning conditions without the need for deliberate application of abstract principles. Examples of teaching for low-road transfer include the use of practice dummies in a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) class (intended to prepare participants to perform CPR on humans), the use of driving simulators in a driver's education course (intended to prepare students to drive a real car), or evidentiary objection drills as part of law school moot court exercises (intended to prepare future lawyers to make proper evidentiary objections in a real court). Because low-road learning transfer is semiautomatic, requiring less mindful effort than high-road learning transfer, it has the benefit of freeing a negotiator's cognitive resources to attend to other things.

Low-road learning transfer works when the stimulus (e.g., some aspect of a particular negotiation situation) is highly similar to the learning context, so it would be particularly appropriate for participants who are likely to share common negotiation experiences (e.g., a negotiation course for urban planning students or a workshop for an in-house legal department) and thus encounter similar stimuli. Because low-road transfer is more behavior oriented than conceptually oriented, activities tailored toward low-road transfer are more appropriate for discrete behavioral learning goals than for cognitive, conceptual learning goals.

One example of a low-road approach to behavioral skill development is that of deliberate practice, an approach widely used in the performing arts, chess, medicine, and other arenas that require high levels of skill. Under conditions of deliberate practice, subjects attempt “(1) a well-defined task that is (2) challenging but achievable; (3) the subjects receive immediate feedback on their performances and outcomes; (4) they correct their errors; and (5) they repeat the tasks until performance becomes routine” (Williams, Farmer, and Manwaring 2008: 71). In a negotiation course, the well-defined task might consist of a common, observable, discrete negotiation skill such as “reframing demands as options” or “demonstrating active listening” (Williams, Farmer, and Manwaring 2008: 77).

As one application of deliberate practice for low-road negotiation transfer, students might attempt to apply discrete negotiation skills in the context of a video-recorded negotiation exercise. They then review video recordings of their performances, receive individual feedback on what they were already doing well and how they might improve, and then repeat their performances until their skills improve. Gerald Williams and Larry Farmer have applied this approach to the teaching of negotiation and client interviewing and counseling, finding that it resulted in measurable improvements in students' skills and performances (Williams, Farmer, and Manwaring 2008).

While “skill drills” and other activities oriented toward low-road transfer may help students develop discrete behavioral skills, they are almost certainly insufficient for teaching students to apply behavioral skills appropriately in negotiations outside the classroom. Negotiation is not like driving, in which certain behaviors (e.g., putting on the turn signal or applying the brakes) should be reflexive and nearly automatic under certain contextual triggers (e.g., approaching one's exit on the highway or approaching a stop sign). The relational and situational nature of negotiation tends to resist universal contextual triggers, such as “when my counterpart says X, I say Y” because while Y might be an appropriate response to a certain counterpart under certain circumstances, it may be an inappropriate response to a different counterpart — or even to the same counterpart under different circumstances. We should not “assum[e] that transfer ‘represents the degree to which a behavior will be repeated in a new situation’ ” because “[i]n many cases, repeating an old behavior in a new setting produces what has been labeled ‘negative transfer’ ” (Bransford and Schwartz 1999: 80). In negotiation, effective transfer involves not only the ability to apply certain behaviors outside the classroom; it also involves the ability to recognize when those behaviors are likely to be relevant, and when they should be adapted — or not used at all (see Williams, Farmer, and Manwaring 2008).

This ability to recognize when and how to apply certain negotiation behaviors almost certainly requires some level of conceptual understanding in addition to behavioral abilities. The key to increasing the likelihood of positive (situationally appropriate) transfer and decreasing the likelihood of negative (situationally inappropriate) transfer is developing conceptual understanding at the “appropriate level of abstraction” (Bransford and Schwartz 1999: 64–65). Too little abstraction and too much contextualization (e.g., “use anchoring when you're buying a car from a dealership”) hinders transfer in that learners will not recognize situations in which there are superficial factual differences but deeper structural commonalities. Too much abstraction (e.g., “use anchoring whenever a negotiation involves numbers”) runs the risk that the learner will overapply behaviors in situations in which the behaviors may be inappropriate.

Research on the effects of different negotiation teaching methodologies suggests that both theoretical understanding and behavioral skill development are important for the transfer of learning (Stulberg 2000; Barnett and Koslowski 2002; Macfarlane and Mayer 2005). As John Wade (1994) has noted, “Without theory, skills are shallow and ephemeral” (14). Wade has suggested that the following techniques, culled from the research on teacher training, can be instructive for any skill-building endeavor, including negotiation teaching:

1. “presentation of theory . . . [so that the] trainee knows, in terms of theory, when, how, and why an instructional strategy is used” (Wade 1994: 11),

2. demonstrations (e.g., modeling and numerous examples) to help translate theory to practice and to imagine adaptations and modifications to model(s),

3. simulated practice,

4. structured feedback (e.g., learning “interaction analysis” and using checklists to reinforce a cycle of “teach-analyse-reteach”) (Wade 1994: 12),

5. unstructured feedback (e.g., informal discussion with peers), and

6. coaching to assist with the adaptations of model(s) to real life.

Of course, the teacher should tailor the choice and/or sequencing of these elements in response to the course goals and the students' needs. Importantly, even if the stated goal of a negotiation course is to promote (only) behavioral changes, theoretical understanding should not be given short shrift. The theoretical understanding of negotiation helps practitioners to recognize when particular behavioral skills are appropriate.

John Bransford and Daniel Schwartz have developed an alternative view of the concept of transfer based on “preparation for future learning” that also supports the need for both theoretical and practical learning. This frame incorporates a broad view of transfer, not measured solely by a learners' ability to apply knowledge in sequestered environments such as psychology laboratories. Rather, Bransford and Schwartz recognize that the development and transfer of expertise occurs over many years during multiple types of learning experiences, each with a contribution to the “noticing” needed for future problem solving. Bransford and Schwartz acknowledge, for instance, the value of the sometimes-denigrated lecture as an effective teaching tool when used in combination with other more active, learner-centered approaches.

In experiments to help college students understand memory concepts, Bransford and Schwartz hypothesized that the analysis of contrasting cases would better prepare students for future learning from an expert than would the act of summarizing textbook material. In a well-designed study, the contrast-based analysis in this experiment did not itself lead to deep understanding and new application. Rather, “[s]tudents needed an explanation for the patterns of data they discovered and it seemed unlikely that they could generate one without help from an expert” (Bransford and Schwartz 1999: 76). The contrast-based analysis did, however, create a learning experience for students that allowed them to understand (“notice” the right things about) a subsequent theoretical lecture about memory. In other words, after both a case analysis and an organizing lecture, students were better prepared to perform a subsequent task than after the case analysis alone. Schwartz and Bransford (1998) write that “. . . novices needed both the discovery and the telling” for deep understanding, and that “a synergy [may exist] between the opportunity to differentiate one's knowledge of the phenomena at hand and the opportunity to hear a conceptual framework that articulates the significance of those phenomena” (502–503; see also National Research Council 1999). In short, the organizing lecture can bring clarification and understanding to bear on the disequilibrium created by an experiential exercise and can help the student to develop a more sophisticated mental schema for the material being studied.

None of these approaches represents the single best approach to helping students learn negotiation skills that they can transfer to real-life contexts. In general, a transfer-oriented negotiation curriculum should include some theoretical learning activities for high-road transfer as well as some behaviorally oriented activities for implicit learning and low-road transfer, but the nature and proportion of these activities should depend on the particular learner group. Moreover, the effective teacher will adapt the curriculum design in response to what and how the students are learning. For example, a short lecture on a particular negotiation framework prior to a simulation can give students the opportunity to explicitly attempt to apply the framework in the simulation. During a post-simulation debriefing, students can be asked to reflect on the extent to which they did or did not apply the framework, or the extent to which the framework was or was not relevant, thus promoting both metacognition and critical reflection, both important for effective transfer (see below). Alternatively, instructors might choose to let students “mess about” negotiating a simulation without being guided (or constrained) by a previously presented theory or framework and might then use the debriefing to help students induce theoretical principles from their own reflections. Regardless of whether theory is taught deductively or inductively (or through some combination), student learning about negotiation will be deeper and more transferable if it includes an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of their work.

In addition to performance-oriented goals and tailored learning activities designed to promote schema development, behavioral skills, and explicit theoretical understanding, a learner-centered negotiation curriculum should incorporate multiple opportunities for ongoing feedback. There is remarkable consensus among education experts regarding the importance of regular feedback, including assessments of current performances and suggestions for improvement. The Teaching for Understanding framework discussed above, for instance, identifies ongoing assessment as a critical factor in effective curriculum design, stating that such assessment should be based on relevant and explicit criteria (such as that set out in a rubric), should be from multiple sources (e.g., self, peers, instructor), and should be forward looking, with specific suggestions for improvement (Wiske 1998). The National Research Council (1999) describes effective learning environments as “assessment-centered,” with “opportunities for feedback and revision [and with assessment] congruent with one's learning goals” (127–128). Effective assessment should be ongoing and public, connected to learner goals; incorporate feedback and suggestions for improvement; and include some self- and peer-assessment (Mason 2002). Ongoing assessment serves a number of purposes, such as enhancing learner self-awareness, offering external benchmarks for learners to internalize, and motivating learners to continue their understanding (Garrison and Anderson 2003).

As much as possible, negotiation course designers should incorporate opportunities to give students regular, constructive feedback on the learning activities in which they engage. Such feedback can take any number of forms and could include written feedback on written assignments such as essays, quizzes, or journals; verbal comments during class demonstrations, debriefings, or other discussions; private discussions of video-recorded exercises; software-enabled annotations of video-recorded exercises (see Williams, Farmer, and Manwaring 2008); or written comments on class blogs or online discussion boards. Moreover, not all feedback need come from the instructor — classmates (particularly counterparts or observers in particular exercises), teaching assistants, or other observers can offer constructive feedback from additional perspectives, particularly with some guidance as to the criteria for feedback. And as discussed below, students should be encouraged to assess their own performances on an ongoing basis.

To maximize the likelihood of transferring classroom learning to the outside world, negotiation students should attend not only to what they learn but also to how they learn (National Research Council 1999). Not only will increased self-reflection and metacognitive abilities allow learners to monitor their current levels of skill and understanding and provide critical feedback to the teacher about what they need to know (as discussed above), but these abilities also will help learners continue to practice and refine their skills and understandings after the course is over.

Learning is an intentional and continuous process of constructing meaning from information and experience; thus, (new) knowledge must become “integrated with the learner's prior knowledge and understanding, [or] this knowledge remains isolated, cannot be used most effectively in new tasks and does not transfer readily to new situations” (American Psychological Association n.d., par. 3; see also, Hedeen 2005; Barton, Hedeen, and Raines 2007). Self-reflection, the ability to reflect on, analyze, evaluate, and learn from one's performance, can help facilitate the integration of old knowledge and understanding and experience with new knowledge from simulated and other experiential training activities. To be most effective, self-reflection should be purposeful and have as its goal the transfer of new insights to new situations (National Research Council 1999; see also Merriam and Caffarella 1999).

Focused debriefing activities can help support this self-reflection and integration. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) has published a suggested structure for debriefing activities with questions designed to encourage self-reflection (1996; see also Barton, Hedeen, and Raines 2007). These questions can, of course, be tailored to support both the teacher's and the students' learning goals:

1. How do you feel? (to “provide participants with the opportunity to vent their feelings and emotions”[ASTD 1996: 526]).

2. What happened? (to collect data that will encourage participants to “recall their experiences and discover similarities, differences and patterns”[ASTD 1996: 527]).

3. What did you learn? (to “encourage participants to come up with generalizations and to test them”[ASTD 1996: 527]).

4. How does this relate to the real world? (to “relate the simulation game experiences to real-world experiences”[ASTD 1996: 527]).

5. What if? (to “encourage the participants to extrapolate from their experiences” in multiple [“altered”] contexts [ASTD 1996: 527]).

6. What next? (to “encourage action planning based on the insights from the activity”[ASTD 1996: 527]).

Reflection on these questions is not limited to one mode, such as the large, all-class discussion. It can be accomplished in large- or small-group class discussions, group and individual presentations, group and individual journal writing, and so on. However it is done, reflection should incorporate meaningful self-assessment about progress toward the learning goals and the students should be encouraged to engage in self-reflection on their negotiations, both inside and outside the course (Cranton 1994; Bransford and Schwartz 1999).

In addition to learning to reflect on and evaluate one's own negotiation performance, learning to reflect on one's own learning processes (or “metacognition”) can increase the likelihood that such learning will be sufficiently robust to apply outside the classroom. Every negotiation student learns somewhat differently, depending on his or her own experiences, preferences, level of epistemological development (Manwaring 2006), and numerous other factors. A metacognitive orientation helps students understand not just what they do and do not know but also the idiosyncratic ways in which their own learning processes work. Just as a good negotiator is aware enough of the negotiation process that she can proactively influence it, a good negotiation student is aware enough of her learning process to proactively manage it.

Bransford and Schwartz (1999) articulate the need to develop this metacognitive ability because learning (and therefore transfer of learning) proceeds throughout a lifetime (65). A novice learns how to learn what experts already have achieved (e.g., how to “notice” the right things and organize thinking about a problem), and with this framework, he can continually improve (Bransford and Schwartz 1999). Metacognition internalizes a focus on sense making, self assessment, and reflection on what works and what needs improving, with the goal that the teacher's role will become less and less relevant (National Research Council 1999). In short, the student learns to evaluate his own progress toward understanding and to take appropriate corrective action (National Research Council 1999).

Metacognitive awareness demands that learners assume an “objective” stance toward their own minds and make their learning processes rather than their cognitive achievements or specific behaviors the subject of their awareness. This is challenging for many adults, let alone younger students (see Manwaring 2006). At the same time, teachers can support students in developing metacognitive awareness through discussion questions, reflective exercises, and other activities. Examples of questions that might promote metacognition include:

1. What surprised you in the negotiation? Why do you think that was surprising? (to prompt learners to uncover their prenegotiation assumptions, what happened when those assumptions were disconfirmed, and what this means for future learning patterns);

2. What was difficult or challenging about this negotiation? Why did you find that difficult? (to give learners the opportunity to notice cognitive, emotional, or other intrapersonal barriers);

3. What do you find puzzling about this activity/exercise/discussion? Why is it puzzling? What would help you better understand it? (to help students hone in on where their understanding might be fuzzy, and what they might do about it);

4. What metaphors or images come to mind when you think about negotiation or value creation or preparation, etc.? (to heighten students' awareness of their own mental models or schemas and how this supports or hinders their learning process).

Facilitated discussion is not, of course, the only instructional technique for promoting metacognition in a negotiation course. Students might, for instance, keep a weekly journal throughout the semester in which they reflect on, analyze, and evaluate their negotiation performances in and out of class. Then, as a final assignment, the instructor might ask the students to annotate their journals with reflections on how their earlier thinking might have evolved, changed, been confirmed, been challenged, etc., over the course of the semester. In addition, Stephen Brookfield (2006) describes a “Critical Incident Questionnaire”— a single-page, five-question form that students complete on a weekly basis, for thepurpose of “finding out how students are experiencing their learning and your teaching” (41–54).⁵

None of these questions or activities will automatically trigger metacognition, but they can open the door. As we noted earlier, the instructor can then listen to (or read) students' responses and, depending on the course goals and the students' needs, respond more or less directively to encourage metacognition.

Transfer is a dynamic process. Danny Ertel (2004) counsels negotiators to “start with the end in mind” (63; see also Ertel and Gordon 2008— that is, to negotiate with an implementation-oriented mind-set rather than a deal-oriented mind-set. The final agreement is not the end in itself; the point of the deal is the real-world implementation of the agreement. Similarly, negotiation teachers can design (and possibly redesign, in response to emerging dynamics) their curricula with the “end in mind”— not the end of the course, but the end or aim of helping students transfer useful learning to their real-world contexts.

Curriculum design elements likely to support lasting and flexible learning include:

1. articulation of clear, performance-oriented goals;

2. a combination of learning activities tailored toward those goals, including:

   • activities that promote schema development and adjustment, such as those that tend to disrupt preexisting assumptions and/or those designed to promote deep analogical connections;

   • activities that promote behavioral skill development, such as through observational learning and/or deliberate practice; and

   • activities that reinforce explicit theoretical understanding;

3. multiple opportunities for constructive feedback from a variety of sources; and

4. multiple opportunities for self-reflection and metacognition.

A number of negotiation instructors no doubt incorporate many of these curriculum design elements into their courses, although perhaps without knowing exactly why or that research supports what they do. By the same token, many negotiation students intuitively use effective negotiation techniques without necessarily realizing why they are effective or making a purposive choice to use those particular techniques. In many cases, this works fine, but this “gut” approach may not work so well in certain situations or with certain counterparts (and may result in acceptable but suboptimal outcomes). A conscious awareness of the range of potential techniques at our disposal, along with their potential risks and benefits, can facilitate more purposive, goal-oriented approaches more consistently — both in negotiation and in teaching.