A Return to ICAR's Roots: What Ever Happened to Problem Solving Workshops?

Last summer, a subcommittee of the Point of View Academic Program Committee met following an April conference which addressed the state-of-the-art of problem solving workshops The group consisted of Rice Professor Nadim Rouhana, Professor Ron Fisher from American University, Emeritus Professor Chris Mitchell, and ICAR Masters student Monica Flores. The focus of the subcommittee’s discussion was how to press on with a “Program on Problem Solving” at Point of View—a program that would involve faculty and students from both universities and would help to revive both the understanding and practice of problem solving and dialogical interventions pioneered by scholar-practitioners such as Herb Kelman, Hal Saunders, and John Burton.

Underlying the enterprise was the recollection that the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (now ICAR) was originally established at Mason precisely In order to undertake problem solving initiatives in protracted, intractable, and deep rooted conflicts—and that the last such initiative took place at ICAR in 1997!

By the end of June 2008, the group had a proposal for a “three strand” program at PoV. The program, which they plan to implement in 2009, involves a theory strand beginning with a series of symposia examining the current theories (basic human needs, small group dynamics, ripeness theory, complementarity) that underpin contemporary problem solving approaches; a training strand, aimed at developing a new generation of problem solving practitioners; and a practice strand, which will undertake analytical problem solving interventions into on-going, deep rooted conflicts, very much like the series of workshops organized in the early 1990s by Jim Laue, Chris Mitchell, and colleagues from the Center for Conflict Analysis at the University of Coleraine in Northern Ireland.

One early and  unanticipated boost for the practice strand of the program was Susan Allen Nan’s Georgian- Ossetian Workshop held at Point of View last December (see ICAR News, March 2009).

The training strand began on March 21st, with a two-day pilot workshop held at Point of View with Masters and ABD students from ICAR and AU. The training— intended as a trial run for future workshops was conducted by Professors Ron Fisher and Mohammed Abu Nimer from AU, and Susan Allen Nan and Chris Mitchell from ICAR. For the participants, the workshop provided a fun learning experience and an opportunity for students from the two programs to work together and to get to know one another as potential partners in facilitation. For the trainers, the experience was more than useful in preparing for future introductory skills development workshops, as well as an advanced skills workshop, slated to begin in Fall 2009.

Ultimately, the program plans to merge the training and practice strands, so that a next generation of practitioners will receive hands-on experience as part of a facilitation team in the real world of third party intervention into deep rooted conflicts, for which simulations provide limited preparation.