CONFLICT EDUCATION

We view conflict as a potentially positive force in a pluralistic environment like GW, and we want to help students leverage moments of conflict for positive outcomes. Conflict management skills are essential for success in many settings at and beyond GW, and we have strategies for helping students improve their capacity to navigate conflict for best outcomes.

Workshops

Conflict Education & Student Accountability (CESA) provides conflict education workshops to GW students, student organizations, and other student groups. A few typical workshops are listed below, and any student can request a typical or customized workshop using this form.

Request a Workshop

• Communication in Conflict (60 minutes recommended): Participants in this workshop will learn and practice specific skills for effective communication in conflict situations.
• Group Consensus Decision Making (60 minutes recommended): In this workshop, participants will practice consensus building through a hypothetical survival scenario. In debrief, participants will discuss strategies for effective consensus building, as well as other models for group decision making.
• Identifying and Repairing Harm (45 minutes recommended): Focused on helping participants develop a restorative approach to conflict, this workshop offers participants a structured reflection on instances when they have given and received harm and strategies for effective repair. This workshop includes an overview of the elements of effective apologies.
• Navigating Intercultural Conflict (75 minutes recommended): This workshop guides participants to understand a few common dynamics of intercultural conflict and how to better understand the impact of your own cultural perspective on a given conflict.
• Problem-Solving in Conflict (60 minutes recommended): Participants will learn and practice at least three specific strategies to apply when engaging in problem-solving a conflict.
• Your Approach to Conflict (60 minutes recommended): In this workshop, participants learn their preferred strategies for managing conflict and understand how to leverage their preferred styles for best outcomes. Participants will also understand the strengths and challenges of their preferred styles and how to identify which style is most effective in a given conflict.
• Your Team's Approach to Conflict (90 minutes recommended): Extending "Your Approach to Conflict," this workshop provides additional time for a team to understand how their individual conflict approaches interact and how, as a team, those combined approaches can be used for the best team outcomes.

Conflict Coach

Conflict Coach is a biweekly feature focused on helping GW students navigate conflict for effective and restorative outcomes. Conflict Coach features questions posed directly from students, as well as scenarios assembled from conflicts that are typical for students. In 2023-2024, Conflict Coach is focused on GW’s first-year student experiences.

Need More Sleep

September 26, 2023

Conflict Coach learned that new roommates are not sleeping well, and one roommate is exhausted! Conflict Coach offers some Comment start ‘engineering’ tips and communication options for a good night’s rest.

No Respect

September 7, 2023

You and your roommate agreed to live with mutual respect, but you feel like your roommate isn’t living up to that. Conflict Coach weighs in on how to manage and, hopefully improve, the relationship.

Restorative Resolution Options

Restorative Resolutions Options Overview

In CESA we use restorative approaches in a number of proactive and responsive ways.

• We train decision-makers in our process on how to use restorative tools such as inclusive decision making and restorative questions.
• Our sanctions focus on restoring harm to individuals involved and the community as a whole.
• We have implemented Circles of Support and Accountability to reintegrate students after a separation from the university.
• We offer all respondents the opportunity to create an outcome agreement in which they accept responsibility for the alleged violations and work with us to develop appropriate outcomes.

By using restorative approaches to address conflict and harm, CESA is able to provide both accountability and support to the parties involved in an incident while balancing the needs of all parties, including the community.

These strategies promote real accountability, genuine efforts to repair harm, and active efforts to resolve conflict. 

Harm can take many forms. Harms can include emotional/spiritual, material/physical, communal/relational, and inflamed structural/historical types of harm. A focus on identifying, acknowledging, and repairing harm in our restorative practices and conflict management strategies highlights the impact of behaviors on others and requires a dialogue on those impacts.  These practices in turn support student development and build trust with the community.

Alternative Resolution Process (ARP)

The Alternative Resolution Process (ARP) is designed to allow students who have caused harm the ability to engage in a restorative process with the individual or individuals who experienced that harm. Participating parties will have the opportunity to create an agreement to address and repair the harm.

Alternative Resolution Process (PDF)

Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA)

Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) is a rehabilitation program intended for the smooth re-integration of students, referred to as “Core Members”, into their academic community. The Core Members receive support and accountability from members of their community in order to facilitate their establishment of new relationships and understanding of community standards. Community members consider the needs of both the community and the students in helping students develop necessary life skills through a series of three meetings that strengthen the student’s communal ties. This program was created to achieve this re-integration in a supportive way while also preventing further harm and improving students’ self-esteem. The COSA model depends on voluntary participation that engages the community in addressing harms and healing.

Informal Mediation

Information mediations, led by a third-party individual with no ties to the incident or event, serve to assist in the process of resolving disputes. The mediation process may occur in one or multiple sessions in order to separately and jointly address two sides of a conflict. Through these mediation sessions, the third-party individual will assist both sides in understanding the other’s perspective, in addition to addressing the individual’s concerns and issues, and using joint mediation sessions to formulate an effective resolution in addressing the conflict, incident, or event at hand. 

Restorative Circles

Restorative Circles provide a facilitated opportunity to engage with responsible, impacted, affected and supporting parties involved in an incident or event. This option helps the parties impacted by or responsible for harmful behavior by providing a space to discuss what happened, how to repair the harm caused, and how to move forward.

Tips for Effective Expectations Setting

Setting shared expectations contributes to team functionality. Shared expectations help people know how to interact and how to address conflict ahead of time. These six tips can help your group set effective expectations.

1) Collaboratively establishing expectations increases buy-in and inclusion.

Group leaders may be tempted to tell a group what the expectations are, but when groups establish expectations collaboratively, the expectations tend to be more successful. Individual members of the group are more likely to buy-in and follow expectations if they were able to contribute to determining those expectations. Additionally, where some members have particular needs and interests, considering and incorporating those needs and interests from the beginning creates a more inclusive and manageable team for everyone. Ideas for collaboratively establishing expectations:

• Invite group members to consider, “What do you need to be successful in this environment?”
• Give opportunities for people to contribute directly (conversation or chat thread) and anonymously (JamBoard or survey tool).
• Invite everyone to develop their own “expectations” document. Then, use the individual documents to build the final group document.

2) Affirmative expectations increase clarity.

We often shorthand our expectations by highlighting behavior that we wish would stop, perhaps because stopping that behavior seems most pressing in the moment. When developing long-term expectations, however, describing the behavior you expect is usually more effective than describing the behavior you hope will stop.

For example, you might hope for a group expectation of “no yelling.” While this might be a reasonable expectation, an expectation that is phrased something like, “Only in emergencies involving physical harm should voices be raised above typical conversation level,” is likely to help avoid several other potential concerns.

3) Specificity and objectivity increase shared understanding.

Giving brief and general expectations like “Be respectful” is tempting because doing so seems easy and comprehensive. These vague expectations often lead to confusion and miscommunication. In a community like GW, where so many connections happen across culture, ability, and personality, being specific and objective is helpful to developing shared expectations. So, instead of having an expectation that people will be respectful, outline the specific behaviors that you’re seeking and describe them in neutral and objective terms. So, for example, “be respectful” might divide into several pieces, which could include expectations like, “Listen until others are done before taking your turn to speak,” “Maintain privacy of group discussions by not identifying who said what,” and “When a conflict occurs, address it directly and privately, especially avoiding public accusations, including on social media.”

4) Agree on a plan for addressing divergence from expectations.

Inevitably, someone in your group will struggle or fail to meet an expectation. When this divergence from expectation occurs, it can be upsetting. Still, if you address plans for such divergences ahead of time, they’re easier to manage. So, as you set up expectations, outline what you expect from members if they diverge from expectations. How can they repair that harm in meaningful ways? Similarly, outline what you expect members to do if they notice someone else is diverging from expectations. Should they raise that individually and privately with the other person? Should they report it to some positional leadership? Often, that will vary somewhat depending upon the expectation that was not met. Don’t try to come up with a procedure for every scenario, but some general guidelines will go a long way in managing issues as they arise.

5) Adapt for inclusion, rather than consistently excusing or ignoring violations of expectations.

When a group member fails to meet expectations, resist the temptation to excuse or ignore it. However, it’s possible that you may need to modify the expectations. Perhaps an original expectation was that members would attend 100% of meetings because it was essential to keep everyone involved and informed during the group’s initial development. But, as membership expanded, that became hard to manage in terms of scheduling and space. Rather than have missed meetings go unaddressed, consider modifying expectations to maintain the key goal of keeping everyone involved and informed. As one example, you could modify a 100% attendance expectation with the expectation that members who miss the meeting need to read minutes and provide responses to questions in the written minutes.

6) Renewing the commitment saves confusion, especially in times of turnover.

Especially as group membership changes, reviewing and revising the expectations is important. You may find that words and phrases that were very meaningful when a group initially set expectations aren’t very guiding now. You may find that the group’s demographic make-up has changed and so different or differently phrased expectations are helpful. Whatever the shift, using an existing set of expectations as an initial point of discussion to revisit expectations is a good regular practice.

Effective and Meaningful Apologies

Apologies are not necessarily sufficient to repair harm, and they can still be an essential and meaningful step in repairing harm. An ineffective or insincere apology, however, often causes additional harm. If you are seeking to repair harm by apologizing, this guidance adapted from the University of San Diego Center for Restorative Justice may be very useful.

Tips for effective and meaningful apologies

An effective apology includes the following elements:

1. What happened: A description detailing the harm caused. This demonstrates that you understand the harmful impact of your behavior.
2. Your role: An acknowledgement that you were responsible for the offense. Avoiding expressions that deny, displace, or minimize responsibility is essential.
3. How you feel: An expression of remorse or regret for causing harm.
4. What you will stop doing: A specific commitment to what you will stop doing in order to prevent causing further harm.
5. What you will start doing: A specific commitment to what you will begin doing differently in order to repair the harm you caused.

When offering an apology, remember that while the person who caused harm can meaningfully offer an apology, the recipient should be empowered to decide whether or not to receive the apology. If you offer an apology, be prepared that no matter how meaningful the apology is, the intended audience may not be ready to receive it. Nonetheless, making an apology can also be meaningful for the person crafting it, as it offers an opportunity to reflect and change behavior.

How to promote academic integrity

CESA has created suggested guidance to assist in promoting and upholding academic integrity.

Managing disruptive behavior

GW's statement on Student Rights and Responsibilities charges the faculty with the "primary responsibility for managing the learning environment." To uphold this important commitment, we recommend:

Before a course begins or an incident occurs...

Establish high and positive behavioral expectations.

Instructions should adjust for specific settings. As an example,

We all contribute to an effective learning environment, including an equitable and engaged exchange of ideas.  I expect you will contribute to those goals in ways like providing your perspective on the course topics, sharing discussion time, listening when others are speaking, avoiding use of electronic devices not related to class, and minimizing disruptions to the learning environment (e.g. coming and going).  If disruptions occur, I will communicate to the disruptive person balancing respect for privacy with addressing the behavior to preserve the learning environment.  If disruptions continue or are severe, I may direct the disruptive person to leave the current meeting, after which I will follow-up individually.

In order to promote a learning environment in which all of us can share questions and ideas in good faith, all participants (including instructors) are prohibited from making recordings (including screen capture) and sharing them publicly.  This is not to prohibit anyone (students or instructors) from documenting behavior of concern (e.g., discrimination, harassment, etc) to share with appropriate University officials.

This provides a clear articulation of the end goal (“an effective learning environment”), specific but not limited ideas regarding how everyone can contribute (“sharing the time for discussion”), and specific responses to address those who do not meet these expectations (“I will communicate to the disruptive student”). 

If a disruption occurs...

Reiterate/adjust and communicate those high and positive expectations.

Don’t wait to intervene. When you do, you may need to do so in front of other students to preserve the immediate learning environment.  The most effective intervention recalls the expectations or communicates them clearly.  For example you might say, George, I understand this is an exciting topic. We should all support an effective learning environment.  I’m reminding you to listen while others are speaking.

In the rare event such behavior becomes a pattern, it’s helpful (although not essential) to have documented the early interventions.  An effective way to do this is an email to the student following the incident.  For example,

Dear George—I’m glad you were enthusiastic in today’s class.  I appreciated that after I reminded you to share the discussion time, you yielded to others while still participating.  I look forward to your continued contributions to our learning environment.

If a student fails to comply with your clear expectations...

Outline next steps and document the disruption.

This is important for managing the current disruption and a potential pattern.  This may create disruption; you should weigh the long-term preservation of the learning environment.  Useful language could be follows:

George, I asked you not to interrupt others.  If that continues, I will direct you to leave.  [If George refuses to leave]  Since you continued to be disruptive, I need you to leave.  I will follow-up later.  [If George still refuses to leave] George, I am calling GWPD and requesting they remove you from this classroom.

The Statement on Student Rights and Responsibilities states that, “Students who engage . . . disruption of a class may be directed by the instructor to leave the class for the remainder of the class period.”  Longer removal requires due process with appropriate university resources.

If you remove a student, document that through the most appropriate resource.