Teaching Mediation as Reflective Practice

Various methods of conflict resolution are now widely taught in law schools and other university disciplines and by private training organizations. Along with this increased teaching, researchers have also considered how conflict resolution can best be taught. Most of this scholarship has focused on two main areas: teaching alternative dispute resolution as part of the law school curriculum and teaching negotiation as part of law and business courses (Lang and Taylor 2000; Wheeler 2000; Conley‐Tyler and Cukier 2005; Douglas 2006). The focus has been mainly on the design of appropriate courses and practical activities to enhance learning.

Although there is a growing amount of scholarship on reflective learning, few scholars have applied it to the particular context of teaching mediation, which can be seen as surprising given the inherent relationship between mediation and reflection. (Michael Lang and Alison Taylor’s book The Making of a Mediator: Developing Artistry in Practice[2000] is a notable exception.) Mediators seek to effectively debrief and reflect on their own practice. Reflection and teaching more generally are also related, some scholars argue, because effective teaching depends on the ability to critically reflect on one’s own teaching practice (Brookfield 1995).

This article considers one common teaching tool in mediation training courses — the use of role‐plays. It examines why role‐plays are used and develops a model of how they can be most effectively used to develop students’ skills and understanding of the process of mediation. In particular, it focuses on the teacher’s role in assisting students to learn from their role‐play experience and to become more reflective practitioners.

A good mediator requires more than an understanding of the theoretical process of mediation. Effective mediators are flexible and display competence “in unique, uncertain and conflicted situations of practice” (Schön 1987: 22). Mediation practice can be described as a form of professional artistry involving a wide range of tacit knowledge, skills, a certain amount of intuition, insight, and even improvisation (Schön 1987; Lang and Taylor 2000; Picard and Melchin 2007). There is rarely a clearly “right” move to make at any given stage of the process but rather a number of alternatives “where the notion of being ‘correct’ gives way to broader assessments of value, such as aesthetic appeal, originality, usefulness, self‐expression, creativity and so on” (Biggs 1999: 154). Accordingly, learning mediation is unlike learning a scientific formula or a mathematical equation (Susskind and Corburn 2000). It is more like developing artistry. Lang and Taylor (2000) have argued that artistry is learnable: that its principles can be identified, learned, integrated, and recreated for others to experience.

Donald Schön, in his book Educating the Reflective Practitioner, discussed some of the difficulties in teaching the process of architectural design, which also involves a form of artistry. Both architectural design and mediation have features that make the processes “learnable, coachable, but not teachable” (Schön 1987: 158). Applying Schön’s comments to a different context, we can make a number of points about learning and teaching mediation.

Mediation is a creative process, and no prior discussion of mediation concepts and skills can take the place of learning by doing. Although it is possible to describe some of the most important rules and techniques used in mediation, merely doing so and asking students to simply follow them in a mechanical way will not lead to effective practice. Mediation is a holistic skill: the mediator’s various interventions interact with one another and derive their meanings and character from the whole process in which they are embedded. Although the mediation process comprises component parts, the total is not just a sum of the smaller parts (Schön 1987).

Mediation involves continuing experimentation through the thoughtful application of new moves building on the results of earlier moves. Schön called this the “art of reflection‐in‐action.” Accordingly, mediation should be taught in the context of actually “doing” mediation, but students should also learn how to engage in a process of effective reflection about what they are doing.

Drawing from Schön’s ideas, students in mediation training courses should thus learn

• to recognize and appreciate the qualities of a good mediator,

• to embody those qualities,

• to understand technical mediation operations (e.g., process steps, reframing, open questions, etc.) at the same time as they learn to carry them out,

• to mediate, and

• to learn to mediate (Schön 1987: 102).

Lang and Taylor (2000) developed a four‐stage model that depicts the process of professional advancement for mediators. The first stage is that of the novice. Novices are “uninformed about a subject, unaware of what they will need to learn, and uncertain about where they might obtain the skills and knowledge or how they can be applied” (Lang and Taylor 2000: 11). The second stage is that of the apprentice. Apprentice mediators have a working knowledge of some of the principles and skills of mediation but have limited skills and experience in putting their knowledge and skills into practice (Lang and Taylor 2000: 13). The third stage is that of the practitioner. Practicing mediators’ work is “grounded in theory knowledge, and they have a broad repertoire of practice skills . . . [They] know when and how to employ their abilities in positive, constructive, and effective ways” (Lang and Taylor 2000: 14). The final stage is that of the artist. Artists are practitioners who are “inventive, bringing their own interpretation to the application of their knowledge and skills, applying them in novel and unexpected ways . . . [They] learn from their experiences; they tease out of each event and situation every particle of meaning and understanding” (Lang and Taylor 2000: 15). An important element of this notion of artistry is the practitioner’s reflection about his or her own experiences.

Reflection can and should, I believe, be introduced right from the start of a course in mediation as an inherent part of mediation practice and learning. Through reflection, one first considers an experience, while it is happening or subsequently, and second creates from that experience meaning and the ability to look at things in a different way (Brockbank and McGill 2007).

Three kinds of reflection are particularly useful in mediation training. “Reflection‐on‐action” would typically occur in a debriefing session after a role‐play. “Reflection‐in‐action” takes place during the role‐play itself, in which students are constantly reevaluating their moves based on an analysis of what has gone before. Finally, “reflection‐on‐reflection” is a kind of meta‐reflection in which students explore the experience of reflection — and reflective practice — itself.

The process of reflection can be used in a number of ways in a mediation course; however, the most obvious of these is in the context of mediation role‐plays. Negotiation and mediation instructors generally agree that the best way to teach skills‐based activities such as negotiation and mediation is to have students practice in actual conflict situations (Susskind and Corburn 2000). Teaching students while in the process of conducting mediations with real parties, however, is risky: a real dispute may overwhelm the novice mediator. Accordingly, the standard practice is to use activities such as role‐plays that simulate and simplify practice. Role‐play simulations provide students with a more authentic experience of mediation and encourage experiential and contextualized learning (Biggs 1999).

In negotiation and mediation training, role‐plays are fairly structured activities, allowing more or less improvisation depending on the design of the particular exercise. Lawrence Susskind and Jason Corburn (2000: 285–286) explained that negotiation role‐plays

The pioneering educational theorist John Dewey wrote that in order to encourage reflection, learning must include opportunities for doing things so that learners can discuss “what arises in the course of their doing” (Dewey 1916: 156). While role‐plays provide that opportunity, they also epitomize what Schön (1987: 93) called “the paradox of learning a really new competence” in that

Role‐playing often seems risky to students. They frequently experience a loss of their sense of competence, control, and confidence (Schön 1987). Their vulnerability can lead them to be combative, hostile, rigid, and defensive and defend themselves against the teacher’s “attacks” (Schön 1987: 134). If a teacher responds ineffectively, that response may increase a student’s defensiveness and reduce the chances for reciprocal reflection (Schön 1987).

Students also often must “unlearn” existing knowledge, particularly law students or legal practitioners with an adversarial mind‐set. Teachers must be aware of these potential difficulties and create a learning environment that minimizes their negative impact on learning outcomes.

The most effective learning from role‐plays does not occur just in the “doing” but from reflecting on the process (Kolb 2000). Students can reflect on an individual basis, but they first must understand what the reflection process involves and why they are doing it. In “learning‐by‐doing” the instructor should encourage reflection on specific skills and concepts (Susskind and Corburn 2000).

Traditionally, the instructor encourages and facilitates reflection during a debriefing session that occurs after the role‐play has been completed. According to Susskind and Corburn, “debriefings [are] the setting within which learning takes place” (2000: 303). Melissa Conley‐Tyler and Naomi Cukier (2005) agree that debriefing is a fundamental component of learning in negotiation role‐plays and have suggested that teachers should leave at least as long after the role‐play for the debrief and review of the role‐play as the time set aside for the role‐play itself.

Little has been written, however, about what makes an effective debriefing session and, in particular, how the instructor can best facilitate reflection in this process. There is also great scope for teachers to facilitate reflection outside of a structured debriefing session, including before and during the role‐play. Teachers have a fundamentally important role in modeling and facilitating the kind of reflective processes necessary for both effective learning and mediation practice.

Anne Brockbank and Ian McGill (2007: 36) have defined reflective learning as

They have also written that learning and reflection in practice require the following elements, all of which can be found in role play simulations:

1. “a genuine situation of experience,

2. a genuine problem in that situation,

3. information and observation about the situation,

4. suggested solutions for which the learner will be responsible, and

5. opportunity and occasion to test ideas by application, to make the meaning clear and discover for himself or herself their validity” (Brockbank and McGill 2007: 23).

In the role‐play, students experience practice and learning, problems typically arise, and students must make choices about how to behave. Their chosen interventions frequently will not have the desired outcome, and in some cases students will be unable to figure out how to move forward. They receive information about the situation from course materials and readings, from the parties’ responses to their actions, and from teacher observations. Participants, observers, and the students themselves may suggest possible interventions. Students will then select one or more of these interventions and test them out either in the same or in a later role‐play.

Within this framework, however, opportunities for reflective learning may still be missed. Here is an example of a situation that might arise in a mediation role‐play:

On the surface, all the elements of reflection were present. The student was engaged in an experience, ran into a problem, received information from others, and had an opportunity to try out another solution. It is less than clear what, however, exactly, the student may have learned from this experience. For instance, the student may have learned that he should only reframe the first part of a sentence, or that he should never use the word “thief,” or that it is not good to upset a party in a mediation, or that he is not very competent as a mediator. None of these options is an ideal learning outcome from this interaction.

To effectively facilitate reflective learning, a teacher must understand and value reflective dialogue and have the skills and personal qualities that enable her to engage in the process. She should first ensure that her values and intentions are consistent with a process of reflective learning:

I suspect that in some mediation training courses, the use of simulations and reflection occurs without that kind of congruence. Role‐plays are used as an effective tool for promoting learning, but they are not used in a way that promotes reflective learning. Rather, they provide a simulated “real‐world” context in which the teacher can identify “incorrect” practice and inform students of the appropriate way to do things.

Brockbank and McGill (2007) have described effective teachers as having “realness” or “genuineness,” prizing acceptance and trust of the learner, and having empathic understanding. They define realness and genuineness as a willingness to make some personal disclosure and to live the feelings and thoughts of the moment. In a mediation training course, the teacher could achieve this by talking with students about his own experiences in learning and practicing mediation, describing not just his successes but his failures, fears, and concerns, and also by acknowledging the uncertainties inherent in mediation practice.

For example, I might include in my introductory remarks to students at the start of a mediation course something like this:¹

The teacher can also explicitly communicate to students his or her feelings and thoughts at particular moments throughout the course. For example, when a student asks for advice during a role‐play, the teacher could demonstrate reflection‐in‐action by openly exploring her feelings and thoughts about the situation. For example, the teacher might describe her own knowing‐in‐action by saying something like this:

Knowing‐in‐action is a skill that is developed by a continual reflection of one’s own performances (Schön 1987). A teacher must be able to engage in reflective practice before he can help others to develop this skill. A fundamental part of this process is being aware of one’s own “internal voice” (Stone, Patton, and Heen 1999) in two contexts, first as a mediator and second as a teacher.

This awareness is especially important when a teacher must give negative feedback or have a “difficult conversation” (Stone, Patton, and Heen 1999). It is unwise to simply “dump” negative information on the student because doing so can undermine both the teacher–student relationship and the learning environment. It is also a mistake, however, to “bury” the information and miss the learning opportunity that this conversation could offer. What is important is that the information is presented in a productive way.

Teachers’ interactions with students will have a significant impact on what and how the students learn. “For reflective dialogue to take place, a particular kind of relationship is required between teacher and learners, and among learners. The relationship is one where learners and teacher engage and work together so that they jointly construct meaning and knowledge with the material. . . . The teacher becomes a facilitator of learning” (Brockbank and McGill 2007: 5).

The philosophy behind facilitative teaching is similar to that of the facilitative mediation model: the aim is to draw learning out from the students rather than pumping it in. To facilitate this, there must be good dialogue between the teacher and the learner and a collaborative approach to learning. John Biggs (1999) suggested that “good dialogue elicits those activities that shape, elaborate, and deepen understanding” (p. 13), while Schön (1987) described the role of a teacher as someone who initiates students into the “traditions of the calling” and helps them by “the right kind of telling”“to see on their own behalf and in their own way what they most need to see” (p. 17).

Brockbank and McGill’s (2007) second attribute of effective teachers is that they prize acceptance and trust of the learner so that the student becomes more comfortable with uncertainty. Teachers must create a safe learning environment in which students feel free to take risks and work outside their comfort zone. This involves finding the right balance between developing students’ confidence in their abilities and challenging them to develop those abilities.

In many mediation courses, the teacher demonstrates a mediation or part of a mediation. While modeling practice is a useful tool, it can be taken a step further in order to also model reflective practice. Instead of demonstrating the “one correct way” to do things, the teacher can demonstrate how to discover an appropriate way to do such a thing. This method is ideal for when a teacher “wants to communicate a way of working, or a conception of performance, that goes beyond anything a student presently knows how to describe” (Schön 1987: 214) and helps students to understand and to follow the mediation process before exploring thevariations on that process that more experienced mediators are able to develop and manage.

Applying a model that Schön (1987) called the “Follow Me! Model” to mediation, the teacher improvises a mediation and, within it, executes reflection‐in‐action, intentionally modeling his process of reflective practice. The teacher may do this “live” or by showing a video of himself performing a mediation. If there is a coteacher present, that teacher can also model reflective questioning.

In a live performance, the mediator might slow down the process by “voicing” his or her reflection‐in‐action before performing the next action. The excerpt below is an example:

In a videotaped version, the mediator could pause the clip immediately after Party 1’s comments and describe in retrospect what she was thinking at the time. This is probably not as effective as doing it live, as it can be seen to be reflection‐on‐action with hindsight rather than reflection‐in‐action, and students may not understand that this process takes place as they are mediating, not just afterward in a kind of debriefing session.

If there is a cotrainer present, he or she can also model reflective questioning to draw out further insights. The dialogue from earlier, for example, could continue as follows:

After this kind of modeling, students have the opportunity to perform for each other and the teacher (Schön 1987). Although students could simply mimic the teacher, the activity encourages students to experiment, “for in order to ‘follow,’ the student must construct in her own performance what she takes to be the essential features of the teacher’s demonstration” (Schön 1987: 214).

It is more difficult to apply the Follow Me! Model to prescriptive approaches to teaching. According to Lang, teachers who rely on the prescriptive approach see themselves “as experts in a particular model or style of mediation and as having specialized knowledge or expertise to share with students” (Lang and Taylor 2000: 54). In effect, this is teacher‐centered learning in which the teacher identifies the mediator’s needs, demonstrates the correct model and technique or the proper application of the technique, and analyzes and criticizes a particular intervention (Lang and Taylor 2000). The teacher has little interest in understanding the student’s conception of the task at hand or in helping the student develop it. But when a student simply mimics the perceived expert without understanding why he or she performs in a particular way, the result is mere “surface learning” and the student will be unlikely to use the demonstrated skill effectively in other appropriate situations.

The teacher must respond to students’ performances with encouragement and empathic understanding to avoid provoking students’ defenses (Schön 1987). “Follow me! calls on the teacher to criticize the student’s performance, rather than join him in a collaborative problem‐solving task; and it necessarily evokes whatever special vulnerabilities and ambivalences the student may feel in the act of deliberate imitation” (Schön 1987: 215). Effectively supporting reflection‐in‐action is a real skill and requires keen observation, a student‐centered approach, and attention to feelings.

As a student performs the task at hand, the teacher needs to identify what the student understands and where he or she is having difficulty. This requires “connected knowing” in which the teacher suspends judgment in an attempt to understand the learner’s ways of making sense of his experience (Brockbank and McGill 2007). From an expert’s perspective, it can be easy to make assumptions about why students act in a particular way or where they lack knowledge or skills, but that student may have reasons for his actions that seem good and logical from a novice perspective. When a teacher intervenes based on his or her own perspective, an opportunity for reflective learning may be missed. The following scenario is an example:

When the student’s perspective is taken into consideration, a different picture of the mediation emerges, opening up new opportunities for a learning conversation.

An effective process for identifying the hidden assumptions that we make as practitioners and teachers of mediation is reflective dialogue (Brockbank and McGill 2007). The teacher can facilitate the student’s reflection‐in‐action by asking the student questions designed to encourage students to engage in a process of exploration and inquiry about their experience (Lang and Taylor 2000). Appropriate questions can help students to determine whether what they are doing is appropriate, engage them in identifying new knowledge that can be used in future experiences, and, importantly, help them to learn the process and value of reflection (Lang and Taylor 2000; Brockbank and McGill 2007). An important part of reflection is attending to feelings associated with the experience (Boud, Keogh, and Walker 1985), so questions should also direct students’ attention to how they feel.

Questions are most helpful for reflective practice when they are based on an elicitive approach to teaching. Elicitive teaching is based on the premise that “the teacher is a catalyst for the mediator’s learning and that the mediator’s knowledge is a resource for learning” (Lederach 1995: 53). “Mediators can and will learn from their own experiences, and interpreting, judging, or even praising their efforts stifles efforts to uncover and make sense of the experience” (Lang and Taylor 2000: 58). In the purest form of elicitive teaching, the teacher never criticizes the student or analyzes the student’s behavior or responses and provides little instruction and guidance throughout the process (Lang and Taylor 2000). Particularly in courses for novice mediators, however, modeling and guidance will probably be required initially until students are able to identify and describe the basics of what they are doing and trying to achieve (Schön 1987).

Elicitive teaching is an interactive process, described by Schön as “joint experimentation,” in which the teacher “helps students formulate qualities she wants to achieve and then by demonstration or description, explore different ways of producing them” (Schön 1987: 296). Lang and Taylor (2000) place this in the mediation context, explaining that elicitive questioning aims to

Students should be asked to explain their hypothesis about the conflict, how they experimented/tested out their hypothesis, what they learned from the parties’ exchanges that followed, what the students hoped would happen as a consequence of their actions and why this would be important in terms of the mediation (Lang and Taylor 2000). The following scenario is an example:

Careful elicitive questioning by the teacher makes visible the process of experimentation and is itself a model for the student to perform reflection‐in‐action (Schön 1987; Lang and Taylor 2000).

Importantly, to develop his own teaching practice, the teacher must also ask reflective questions about his own teaching process. When a student does not respond to feedback as expected, for example, the teacher should examine his own actions, reasoning, and responses during instruction. Making this kind of reflection transparent for students can further encourage students to engage in reflective practice.

The process of “metareflection” is directed at learning about how we learn (Brockbank and McGill 2007). In mediation practice, metareflection involves exploring how we develop as mediators by engaging in reflection. Many mediation courses include a requirement that students engage in reflection about mediating and/or include reflective debriefing sessions or reflective journals, but the last step is often forgotten.

Metareflection can take place in and on action. Metareflection‐in‐action could be described as being aware of what you are thinking about while you are reflecting‐in‐action. In other words, while we are engaging in reflection we can simultaneously engage in reflecting about our reflection.

Using one of the examples of reflection‐in‐action earlier, the meta‐reflection might go something like this, with the mediator’s meta‐reflective thoughts indicated by the square brackets:

Metareflection‐on‐action might address the same questions after the role‐play — in other words, the mediator might subsequently think about what he had been thinking about as he was reflecting‐in‐action. A teacher could facilitate that kind of reflection‐on‐reflection by asking those kinds of questions of the person doing the reflection. For example, she could ask, “You said that you were feeling worried. Tell me more about what was making you worried and what impact that had on what you did next?” Students often do this without the need for prompting, as in this example:

Students sometimes do not realize the value of reflective practice until some time after they have attempted to engage in it, as in this example:²

Finally, a simple way to encourage metareflection is to ask students to answer one additional question in their reflective journals: how has completing this journal affected your understanding about the value of reflective practice?

Reflection should be an inherent part of both mediation practice and teaching. The process of teaching mediation as reflective practice starts with teaching as reflective practice. In other words, we teachers should engage in critical self‐reflection about our intentions in teaching. We can then introduce, model, and continue to engage in reflective practice throughout our courses. In particular, we have the opportunity to use role‐plays to promote reflective learning for the students and ourselves. We can help our students to understand what reflection involves and why we are asking them to engage in the process. We can also continue to grow as mediators and teachers by our own continuing reflective development.

During the course of writing this article, I had the great fortune to engage in some reflection‐in‐action by participating in reflective dialogue with two colleagues.³ In doing so, I learned more about reflection and also about how it can be a collaborative process. Reflecting back on the article now more or less completed, I feel vaguely unsatisfied, in that there seems to be so much more to say on the topic. But reflecting on that reflection, I realize that this could be a symptom of my underlying perfectionist tendencies and the fact that I am rarely completely satisfied with anything I do. In any event, the main lesson that I have learned and that I hope others will accept after reading this article is that reflection is a powerful tool for enhancing our work as mediators and teachers of mediation.⁴