The S-CAR Practice Project
Practice has occupied a special place in the field of conflict analysis and resolution since its very inception. Practice has also been an integral component of the S-CAR legacy. Multiple conflict resolution initiatives have been carried out by faculty members who have been engaged in practice in a plethora of ways. The S CAR Practice Project emerged from a realization that, despite the continuous engagement of our faculty in conflict resolution work, a comprehensive ‘map’ of S-CAR practice had been missing. Equally absent has been a systematic way of communicating practice both within and outside our community. As a result, practice has remained unnoticed and partially recognized and appreciated. For these reasons, Dean Andrea Bartoli and a number of faculty suggested the initiation of the S-CAR Practice Project to share within and outside our community a series of issues related to conflict resolution practice.
The basic idea was to interview faculty members to elicit their views about their practice experience and their opinions on a suggested format or template that they would use for the communication of their practice initiatives. The underlying premise of the project was initially to gain a comprehensive view of how practice has been carried out at S-CAR and to explore ways to systematically and effectively communicate this work. Furthermore, underpinning these objectives was the facilitation of self reflection about practice at the institutional level while identifying areas requiring improvements. It was therefore hoped that the S-CAR Practice Project initiative would establish the foundation for a dialectic process, and increase S-CAR selfawareness and intentionality in embracing and supporting practice initiatives carried out by faculty and students. This is meant to be a broader organic and dynamic process, and the practice project initiative, which was launched at Dean Bartoli’s request during the Fall of 2010, was one step toward reaching such objectives.
The research for this project was carried out between October 2010 and May 2011 in collaboration with S-CAR graduate research assistants. We interviewed 17 S-CAR faculty members to elicit their views on a series of issues related to conflict resolution practice as they have experienced it. Interview topics included: definition of conflict resolution practice, methods, scope, levels of intervention, partnerships, resources, challenges, ethical concerns, evaluation and attempts to define 'successful' practice.
Methadologically, we adopted a qualitative exploratory approach and, thematically analyzed the data collected through structured interviews based on a series of open-ended questions. Findings resulting from S-CAR faculty members’ diverse conflict resolution practice experience, based on the data themes and patterns, included the following:
• Any attempt to define S-CAR conflict resolution practice was complex, given the extensive diversity in how our scholarpractitioners consider practice and the multiplicity of ways in which they have engaged with different stakeholders. Furthermore, challenging the traditional definition of conflict resolution practice was a central theme in many interviews because no clear-cut separation of scholarship and practice can be considered as being relevant in the field of conflict resolution, where scholarship of engagement is a key concept.
• Scholarship of engagement has transformative potentials, for instance, through teaching, publishing, and media appearances. This type of practice centers on sharing insights of conflict resolution expertise so people can incorporate them in their own thinking and ethos.
• Within the frames of engaged scholarship, research is seen as a form of practice and a dialectic process. Thus, social actors can get from the researcher-intervener insights on conflict resolution, allowing them to consider new ways to deal constructively with the issues they face. At the same time, the engaged scholar would benefit from being involved with social actors while acquiring insights that would render his/her practice more relevant to existing social concerns.
• Reflective practice is considered an essential component of conflict resolution practice, as reflection has the potential to increase self-awareness and help scholar-practitioners identify potential inadequacies of existing practices, explore new possibilities, and develop innovative perspectives. Thus, reflective practice has an evaluative dimension through which individuals can assess the effectiveness of existing paradigms in light of new insights.
• Many S-CAR faculty members have used elicitive processes in their practice because they believe that those who have experienced a conflict have a better understanding of the conflict dimension and that such insider’s knowledge can inform their intervention process.
• The question of how to systematically communicate practice through a flexible template that would be part of the S-CAR online platform generated a wide range of views among the interviewed faculty members, some of whom have been involved in traditional forms of practice and argued that such a template might facilitate the systematization of practice communication. Others were hesitant because they perceived that such a template would pose ethical issues due to the confidential and delicate nature of their practice. Still, others believed that the form of practice they have been engaged in could not be framed through the traditional practice lenses of such a systematic template.
Overall, the study reveals that any template adopted as a communication mechanism would need to provide sufficient flexibility to permit S-CAR scholar-practitioners to communicate about their practice initiatives based on their own judgment.