CADRE Resources

Team Based Conflict Resolution in Special Education, continued

Twenty-three volunteers were recruited for a September 1995 training. Special emphasis and attention was devoted to recruiting non-EuroAmerican trainees to ensure that teams could reflect the cultural diversity of a broad range of disputants. The Project was successful in recruiting volunteers representative of the entire community. The mix of volunteers recruited was as follows (totals exceed the number of volunteers because volunteers fell into more than one category):

16 women and 7 men

ages 21 to late 60s

11 Caucasians, 2 African Americans, 3 Latinos/Hispanics, 2 Asian Americans, and 5 Native Americans

3 people who identified themselves as having disabilities

2 educators and 1 retired educator

3 parents of children with disabilities

7 people who self-identified as advocates

Personal contacts were made by Project staff with individuals who were able to recommend potential trainees. In addition, local community dispute resolution centers, colleges, cultural or ethnic organizations (NAACP, AARP, Latino Coalition, African-American Community Coalition, Native American programs, Asian outreach centers), churches, PTAs and other organizations within the community were contacted. Notices in newsletters, press releases, and information shared with schools and parent groups may also have produced trainees. Incentives for participating in the training and volunteering time to the Project included:

• free conciliation training;

• the opportunity to help families and children with special needs; and

• helping to save tax dollars that might be spent on due process by resolving situations at the local level.

The Project provided or reimbursed volunteers for child care, transportation, meals, and other expenses incurred in order to participate in the training. The Project has continued to provide the conciliators with support for expenses associated with their volunteer commitment, based on the different needs of individual volunteers.

Volunteer Conciliator Training⁽⁴⁾

Each volunteer participated in a 30-hour training in dispute resolution techniques, the CBSF team model and its specific application to special education disputes. The training was scheduled for four days, each 7½ hours long, in September 1995. Training days were two consecutive Wednesdays and Thursdays, anticipating that volunteers would need to be available when most school-based conciliations would take place, during the educators' workday, rather than evenings or weekends. The week between training sessions allowed trainees an opportunity to spend time reading and processing the written materials and practicing skills.

The basic conciliation skills training included presentations, demonstrations, both large and small group discussions and experiential learning through roleplays designed as opportunities to practice skills. These various teaching methods are structured to accommodate a variety of learning styles and to facilitate the integration of concepts and skills.

It is necessary to have a long enough block of time on each training day so that material can be presented, the process can be demonstrated, and trainees can participate in roleplay exercises to facilitate experiential learning. Roleplays take between two and three hours which includes time for practice and time before and after the practice to prepare for and review the experience. In order for trainees to have an opportunity to learn from the perspective of the parties as well as practice the role of conciliator, the training includes four roleplays. Trainees are encouraged and assisted by roleplay coaches assigned to each roleplay group. Coaches participate in the pre-conciliation briefing, guide the conciliation process through the use of interventions, and structure the debriefing so that specific feedback contributes to the learning of all participants.

Following the basic training, volunteers can improve their skills by working with more skilled conciliators on the same team and by participating in ongoing training opportunities. Ongoing training has included role plays along with development and improvement of specific skills identified by trainers and trainees. Even with quality training it may be necessary to assist certain trainees to self-select out of the program, recognizing the "lack of fit" between their styles or values and the principles and values which are essential to the conciliation process.

Evaluation of Conciliations

The small number of conciliations done so far can support only the most tentative conclusions. Evaluation information has been collected throughout the life of the Project. Upon completion of six conciliations this information will be analyzed and a final evaluation summary written that will preliminarily describe costs and benefits associated with the model. The evaluations will provide information to be used both summatively to improve training and conciliation practices and formatively to appraise the impact of the conciliation intervention. Evaluations will also assess durability of the agreements reached through conciliation.

Pre-intervention information: Pre-intervention data includes participants' assessments of pre-intervention family/school relationships; other interventions that have been tried and explanations for why they didn't work; estimates of time spent on the issues pre-intervention, and other "costs" of having the issue remain unresolved, i.e., students not getting appropriate services, stress-related illness, and polarization or extension of the issue. Because we are obtaining pre-intervention information through the case development process, we will also be able to track cases that resolve during case development and identify common factors that contribute to early resolution.

Post-intervention interviews: We will ask parents, professionals, and team members and ask them to discuss:

• Satisfaction with conciliation process;

• Satisfaction with conciliation outcomes;

• Impact on quality of life of family, student, professionals;

• Impact on other contextual factors identified in pre-intervention interviews;

• Impact on parent/professional relationships;

• Indications that participants will generalize this experience to resolution of other issues; and,

• Assessments of costs (time and money, stress, etc.) of this alternative conciliation process vs. continuing what they were doing or other approaches.

Each case study will include:

• A description of the problem and general pre-intervention context.

• A description of the team and the process.

• Outcomes, including the factors listed above and others raised by participants.

We will use the Direction Service Conciliation Satisfaction Survey (see Appendix B) to assess participants' satisfaction with the conciliation process and its outcomes. This questionnaire uses a Likert rating scale to evaluate participants' satisfaction in the areas of procedure (process of conducting the conciliation), substance (agreements reached or outcomes of the conciliation), and psychological outcomes (personal impact of the conciliation). The questionnaire also includes open-ended questions pertaining to most and least helpful features of the conciliation, time devoted to the process, satisfaction with procedure and outcome, and details of the process. A form is also included for participants to suggest revisions in the conciliation process.

We will also track resources used, time invested by each of the parties (contrasted with time invested pre-conciliation) and differential effects with different team compositions. In addition to participants' (family, professional, conciliator) assessments of their satisfaction with the outcome of the issues that brought them to conciliation and with the conciliation process, we are also interested in the context surrounding the issues and the process. We will therefore access participants' views of:

• Motivating factors: what factors bring a case to conciliation?

• How conciliation affected the parties' relationships with each other.

• Changes in their well-being or quality of life/work.

• Changes in their ability to resolve conflicts with each other (and others) in the future.

• Whether they generalize their experience with conciliation to other issues.

• How durable the agreements are.

We will use a case study approach to access and report this information. To collect the data for case studies we will compile pre-intervention information through the case development process, conduct on-going informal interviews and focus groups with team members, and conduct on-going informal interviews and focus groups with participants following conciliation intervention.

Evaluation of Training

A thorough, independent evaluation of the training, "Direction Service Conciliation Training Evaluation Summary" (Meyer 1995), has been completed and is available from Direction Service. The evaluation confirms high levels of participant satisfaction with content and quality. Trainees felt competent and confident about participating in a conciliation at the conclusion of the training.

Team conciliation shows promise as a useful mechanism for restoring positive working relationships between families and schools. The model's focus on broad and diverse community participation may encourage problem resolution between schools and families who typically do not participate in the available array of conflict resolution options.

While early indications about the usefulness of the model are hopeful, data is very preliminary, and additional research and development are needed. Specific questions that invite further exploration include:

• How best can timely referrals be encouraged?

• What are the best strategies for recruiting and retaining conciliators?

• How best can we accommodate families whose primary language is not English?

• What organization(s) should organize and pay for conciliation?

• What are other areas of interest in general education for which conciliation might be helpful? For example, discipline, school safety, special education backlash, regular education placement resistance, etc.

In light of the increasingly contentious relationships between families and schools, additional research and development on team conciliation and other conflict resolution models are well justified. Specific attention should be devoted to development of a continuum of options that meet the needs of the full community and ensure that problems are resolved as quickly and completely as possible.

1. Goldberg, Steven S. and Kuriloff, Peter J. "Evaluating the Fairness of Special Education Hearings," Exceptional Children, May 1991, p. 553.

2. For more information on interest-based negotiation, the reader is referred to Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury; Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1981.

3. The Promise of Mediation, Roberta Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger; Jossey Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1994.

4. The Team Conciliator's Manual and the Conciliator Trainer's Manual are available from Direction Service and provide additional detail on training content and evaluation.

Appendices