Common Language, Different Meaning: What Meidators Mean When They Talk About Their Work |
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| Authors: | Cheryl Picard |
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| Affiliation: | Cheryl Picard;is Director of the Graduate Certificate in Conflict Resolution program in the Department of Law at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Candas K1S 5B6. Her email address is cpicard@ccs.carleton.ca. Dr. Picard is author of the book, Meditiating Interpersonal and Small Group Conflict and has been working as a mediator and trainer since 1978. |
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| Abstract: | Mediators, for the most part, descrive their work as "facilitation" but what they actually mean varies considerably. Based on an exploratory study with nealy 90 mediators in Canada (all of whom are also mediation trainers), the author describes the great diversity among mediators'understanding of commonly-used terms like facilitation, transformative, settlement, and humansitic. She also reports on how such factors as context, gender, and number of years mediating affect mediator perceptions of what they do. In addition, the author shows how perceptions affect the overall philosophy and goal of hte meidation practitioner: One implication of this research is that we can no longer presume to know what people men by "mediation," nor can we assume mediators are like-minded in how they understand their work. Thus, practitionsner, scholars and policymakers are encouraged to be purposefully clear when describing and writting about the practice of mediation. |
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