How our Worldviews Shape our Practice

This article reviews research on the effect of a conflict resolution practitioner's worldview on practice. The results revealed patterns connecting worldview frames with differing uses of power. Forty-three environmental and intercultural practitioners were interviewed, and narrative and metaphor analysis was used to reveal key worldview orientations in their practice stories. The results are correlated in continuums and “profiles” of the worldview orientation. The findings strengthen previous work questioning the effects of the traditional neutrality stance, deepen fieldwide arguments for the embedded nature of worldview and culture, and describe new methods that reveal some of the dynamics between worldview and practice.