New Technology Meets an Old Teaching Challenge: Using Digital Video Recordings, Annotation Software, and Deliberate Practice Techniques to Improve Student Negotiation Skills

There is a world of difference between teaching negotiation theory, which pertains to conceptual understanding, and teaching negotiation skills, which pertain to actual behavior in real‐world situations. The principle of reflective practice is widely used for theoretical instruction. Deliberate practice, however, is a more powerful model for skills training. Cognitive scientists have discovered that subjects will learn skills best when they perform well‐defined tasks at appropriate levels of difficulty, and when they are given immediate feedback, an opportunity to correct their errors, and an opportunity to practice until the tasks become routine. To satisfy the deliberate practice conditions for large graduate‐level negotiation courses (some as large as seventy students), students were assigned to use webcams with their laptop computers to video record their negotiation exercises. Before each exercise, students were assigned to prepare for and to concentrate on performing two or three well‐defined tasks. Students reviewed these recordings and commented on their performances in a journal before uploading the videos and journals to an assigned network folder. The instructor and teaching assistants then reviewed the journals and specified portions of the videos and provided individual written feedback to the students. The instructors found that student negotiating skills have improved significantly using this new system. In comparison with earlier semesters, students also felt they were involved in a more intense and personal learning experience. A majority of students reported they intend to apply the principles of deliberate practice in their professional lives after graduation. The authors have found this method continues to challenge their ability to identify and describe the skills used by expert negotiators. As an addition to this new methodology, two of the authors have spearheaded the development of video annotation software, known as “MediaNotes,” to help students and instructors review, comment upon, and learn from video recordings of negotiations. Based on their experiences using the software to support deliberate practice, the authors expect this tool to initiate a significant advance in our ability to recognize and describe expert negotiation behavior and in students’ ability to improve their negotiating skills.     

思想与行为:思想政治教育学的逻辑起点

思想是主体对自身的社会存在及其与周围客观环境的关系的主观反映,行为是人有意识、有目的的活动,思想与行为的相互关系是对立统一的辩证关系。依据科学的逻辑起点的基本要求,思想政治教育学的逻辑起点只能是思想与行为这对基本范畴。把思想与行为确定为思想政治教育学的逻辑起点,具有重要的理论意义和实践意义。     

论教育学学科的学术建构

尽管教育学的主题随着时代精神的变化而变化，但教育学的核心问题、基本问题则始终未变，教育学的发展需要围绕这些问题进行始终不断地反思，我们需要与前人进行不断的对话。今天教育学的学术建构尤其应回到教育学的经典思想之中。我们需要树立“大教育学”的观念，不应仅仅停留于所谓纯粹的教育学典籍，而是将目光投向所有凝聚着教育思想与智慧的典籍中去。随着教育学学术性的确立，教育学学科发展需要我们重新明确教育学的学科视阈，并着力在实践关怀的同时进行学术性的重新建构。     

One Reasonable and Inquiring Man: 12 Angry Men as a Negotiation-Teaching Tool

The film 12 Angry Men is often shown in law school and business school to teach lessons about negotiation, group process, communication, decision making, team building, leadership, and critical thinking. It effectively and powerfully depicts the ways in which a successful negotiator can make critical moves and capitalize on turning points in a negotiation. It also illustrates vividly such key negotiation concepts as the difference between positions and interests and the role of such skills as coalition building, framing, and active listening. For these reasons, 12 Angry Men can be a powerful negotiation teaching tool.     

Teaching Students to Shape the Game: Negotiation Architecture and the Design of Manageably Dynamic Simulations

Although important work is being done in the emerging field of negotiation architecture and "shaping the game," little of it has found its way into the classroom. Simulation exercises are among the most powerful pedagogical tools available to negotiation educators, but most existing exercises have static architectures in the form of fixed parties, issues, and interests. This article summarizes existing research on negotiation design and proposes a framework for designing "manageably dynamic" exercises that can be used to teach key game-shaping concepts. The framework is illustrated through an in-depth discussion of an exercise based on the negotiations to end the civil war in El Salvador.     

论教育学教材文本的性质与书写

对教育学教材的文本性质与书写方式的思考,是进行教材建设的理论前提。在以知识为中心的课程观的影响下,传统教育学教材追求知识的精确与理论的完备,忽视教材的人文性与生命性;强调教材教育知识的权威性,而忽视教育知识的对话性与生成性。其书写遵循的是知识的逻辑而不是生命意义的逻辑,强调的是文本的正确性,而忽视文本的反思性与创造性。教育学作为一门以人文事实为基础的学科,其知识的不确定性与实践的开放性决定了,追求确定的教育知识是徒劳的,将教材作为不可质疑的权威也是错误的。由此,我们需要反思教材的文本性质,重构教材文本的书写方式。     

SoTL as a Subfield for Political Science Graduate Programs

This article offers a theoretical proposal of how political science graduate programs can emphasize teaching in the discipline by creating the subfield of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Currently, these programs neither prepare their students for academic positions where teaching is valued nor participate in a disciplinary trend that emphasize SoTL. Furthermore, the recent political pressure for political science programs to demonstrate their public worth might be alleviated by the scholarship in teaching and learning, which is more understandable to the public than traditional non-SoTL work. The article concludes with some of the challenges political science programs may confront in institutionalizing a subfield of SoTL and how they can overcome them.     

Empowering Students to Create and Claim Value through the Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

In a world of problem‐solving lawyering, principled negotiation, and integrative bargaining, to describe a negotiation as “distributional” may strike some as heretical. Still, we disserve our students if we ignore distributional bargaining altogether. Unfortunately, many law students who are drawn to negotiation classes bring with them a fundamental discomfort with claiming value. Contrary to the stereotypes that attribute aggression and “sharp practices” to lawyers, many law students struggle to become more assertive. The Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is one tool that I have found can help raise students' awareness of, and comfort with, the reflexive responses to conflict that can impede their attempts to claim as well as create value in negotiation. The insights students gain from taking the TKI can be quickly put to use in the next negotiation role play. Although it may help students realize their dominant response to conflict, the TKI highlights that no single approach to negotiation is always best. Thus, the TKI can both encourage the reticent to claim more value in negotiation and suppress the seemingly insatiable appetites for value claiming that drive other students. When administering the TKI, I encourage students to learn at least four major lessons:

• 1 A negotiator has a choice in resolving the dilemma between value claiming and value creating. We are not just stuck with our reflexes.
• 2 Still, it is good to know what our reflexive response to conflict is likely to be so that we are more mindful of the choices as we make them.
• 3 Departing from reflexes requires energy: preparation, planning, mindfulness, and conscious effort.
• 4 Adaptability is desirable. A well‐integrated negotiator might move from one TKI “type” to another as a negotiation progresses.

In this article, I seek to give a very brief overview of the ways I have used the TKI to convey these lessons, increasing students' comfort with, and management of, value claiming. To this end, the article will describe the TKI, explain how I administer and debrief the students' encounter with it, and point out some potential pitfalls of this process.     

Hard Bargaining in the Classroom: Realistic Simulated Negotiations and Student Values

Empirical research into the negotiation practices of lawyers shows that “hard bargaining,” including at least some unethical conduct, is an inescapable fact of a lawyer's life. To prepare students for legal practice, negotiation instructors must expose them to hard bargaining in the classroom. In doing so, however, instructors should be sensitive to the moral and ethical values of their students, so that the classroom experience does not unduly pressure students to compromise their values. The simulation is the primary tool of negotiation instruction. By selecting and manipulating simulations, a negotiation instructor can expose students to a wide range of negotiating behaviors, from distributive negotiations marked by the use of power tactics to value‐creating negotiations in which participants must consider many interests and collaborative strategies predominate. With that flexibility, however, comes the potential for classroom exercises to pressure students, in ways both subtle and overt, to adopt behaviors that feel uncomfortable. In this article, I examine the use of simulations to teach different types of negotiating behavior, including hard bargaining. Referring to a number of widely available simulations, I suggest ways to focus student attention on three dimensions of negotiation behavior — the issues over which the parties are bargaining, the objectives the parties seek, and the tactics the parties use to achieve their objectives — in order to push students to reflect on their own negotiation behaviors and to prepare for the tactics of others. I assess the potential for simulations to pressure students to compromise their values, and I conclude with my own thoughts on the goals of a negotiation course.     

Developing Superior Negotiation Case Studies

While a great deal of excellent advice exists for producing case studies on managerially relevant topics in general, negotiation cases have distinctive aspects that merit explicit treatment. This article offers tailored advice for producing cases on negotiation and related topics (such as mediation and diplomacy) that are primarily intended for classroom discussion. It describes how to decide whether a negotiation‐related case lead is worth developing and how to choose the perspective and case type most suited to one's objectives. Finally, in by far the longest part of the discussion, it offers ten “nuts and bolts” suggestions for structuring and producing an excellent negotiation case study.