Teaching Negotiation Through Paradox Summary

Teaching Negotiation through Paradox
Bernice Thompson

EDUC 746

Dr. Joseph Haas

September 8, 2013

Teaching Negotiation Through Paradox

In this article the author, Laurence de Carlo defines a paradoxical professional viewpoint that he believes can be useful in assisting students learning appropriate negotiation concepts and methods. de Carlo (2012) examines six paradoxes: caring for students while deliberately exposing them to frustration; nurturing a lively, interactive course while respecting those students who prefer to remain silent; helping the students to become more self-directed while simultaneously manipulating them; accepting their vulnerability while nurturing their creativity; and maintaining both professional distance and closeness. De Carlo (2012) notes two types negotiation learning. He believes negotiation can be learned as a group of methods to be evaluated and assessed in class, then replicated in real-life settings (de Carlo, 2012).
Through negotiation teaching students’ experience behavioral changes that involves an inherent paradigm shift: from persuading others to listening to them, from standing up for one’s positions to being aware of one’s interests; from recurring behaviors to creating new choices, from behaving overly assertive and/or timid to exhibiting confidence, and from being closed- minded to one way of thinking to embracing others ideas (de Carlo, 2012).
These deep changes occur when something is “pulled out from the students” during the simulations (de Carlo, 2012). The simulation has four stages. In the first three stages, students explore the information provided on a CD-ROM, discuss and debrief, and record their experiences. In the final stage, students organize a press conference. De Carlo believes these simulations help students identify their emotions and the emotions of others, and use them as a foundation to understanding
negotiation. De Carlo (2012) suggests teaching negotiation through paradox is a pedagogical approach that puts the teacher’s no-nonsense approach at the heart of the students’ learning. Teaching through paradox is an approach designed to help students develop and identify their own personal opinions and cultivate new ideas through reflective examination of their own emotions and thinking (de Carlo, 20120). Not many schools use this no-non-sense approach in solving conflict among students. Typically, in a school setting you will see peer conflict programs such as: character education which is integrated into the school curriculum, practical problem-solving training, and peer mediation. According to de Carlo (2012) teaching through paradox encourages student learning through active play and humor while promoting active listening and creative conflict transformation. De Carlo relate this way of teaching to Yiannis Gabriel’s interest in reconciling “an ethic of care with an ethic of criticism as the foundation of teacher-student relationship. Although there is no extensive body of research that describe the extent to which students actually use the various negotiation approaches, so it is difficult to provide an accurate analysis of practical use of this technique. However, the current study on teaching negotiation through paradox was effective in reducing aggression and conflicts among students, in raising creativity to cope with conflict, and in strengthening social relationships. It can be concluded that teaching negotiation through paradox is an alternative intervention to conflict resolution.

References

de Carlo, L. (2012), Teaching negotiation through paradox. Negotiation Journal, 28(3), 351-364. doi: 10.1111/j.1571-9979.2012.00344.