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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LEARNING THROUGH REFLECTION ON EXPERIENCE An Adult Learning Framework for How to Handle Conflict
Victoria J. Marsick
Dorothy E. Weaver
Lyle Yorks
Conflict is endemic to modern life. As Thompson (2005) and numerous chapter authors in this Handbook recognize, when individuals seek to balance competing interests and build long-term and fair relationships, conflict resolution skills are enormously valuable—not just for negotiating practical issues, such as one’s salary, but also for the complicated and difficult conversations that pervade our lives (Stone and Patton, 2000). How do adults successfully learn to handle conflict? How do individuals learn to improve their negotiation skills?
In this chapter, we introduce a framework for learning to handle conflict that we call learning through reflection on experience, based on Marsick and Watkins’s model of informal and incidental learning (Cseh, Watkins, and Marsick, 1999; Marsick and Watkins, 1990; Watkins and Marsick, 1993) which in turn is informed by Dewey (1938), Mezirow (1991), and Argyris and Schön (1974, 1978).
We begin by discussing the roots of the framework in adult learning theory and draw out implications for its use in the teaching—and learning—of conflict resolution using examples, some drawn from one author’s research (Weaver, 2011). We illustrate ways in which those involved in conflict can use reflection to handle challenging situations—whether before a conflict is negotiated, during a heated or difficult event, or after a conflict—and enhance learning. Finally, we address the implications of our framework; suggest how facilitators, negotiation education teachers, coaches, and other professional trainers can help students learn to become reflective about conflict in order to improve their negotiation skills; and draw some conclusions about the value and limitations of the framework.
THE ROOTS OF THE FRAMEWORK IN ADULT LEARNING THEORY
Our framework was strongly shaped by adult learning theory, so we begin our chapter reviewing some key ideas from the field.
John Dewey: Learning from Experience
Many models of learning from experience have their roots in the thinking of John Dewey (1938) who examined the way in which past actions guide future actions (Boud, Cohen, and Walker, 1993; Jarvis, 1992; Kolb, 1984; Schön, 1987). Dewey observed that when people do not achieve desired results, they attend to the resulting “error” or mismatch between intended and actual outcomes. He described learning as a somewhat informal use of what is known as the scientific method: people collect and interpret data about their experiences, then develop and test their hunches even though they may not do so in a highly systematic fashion.
Dewey summed up learning from experience as involving (Dewey, 1938):
Observation of surrounding conditions
Knowledge of what has happened in similar situations in the past, a knowledge obtained partly by recollection and partly from the information, advice, and warning of those who have had a wider experience
Judgment that puts together what is observed and what is recalled to see what they signify
People make meaning of situations they encounter by filtering them through information and impressions they have acquired over time. They determine whether they can rely on past interpretations and behaviors or need a new response set. They may need to search for new ideas and information or reevaluate old ideas and information. Under Dewey’s theory, learning takes place as people reinterpret their experience in light of a growing, cumulative set of insights and then revise their actions to meet their goals. In terms of learning how to handle conflict, Dewey’s theory reminds us that people can—and do—alter how they handle conflict over time, adjusting their behaviors to yield better results. However, Dewey’s approach does not help us understand why changing those behaviors is sometimes so difficult for so many people. Jack Mezirow’s theory of learning sheds light on this issue.
Jack Mezirow: Critical Reflection to Discover “Habits of Mind”
In Jack Mezirow’s theory (1991, 1995, 1997), adults shape their understanding of new situations by using “critical reflection,” a deliberate effort to examine the tacit, often unconscious belief systems held by all people. He calls these meaning perspectives (or more recently, habits of mind) and meaning schemas (or more recently, points of view). Mezirow defines meaning perspectives as follows:
A general frame of reference, set of schemas, worldview, or personal paradigm. A meaning perspective involves a set of psychocultural assumptions, for the most part culturally assimilated but including intentionally learned theories, that serve as one of three sets of codes significantly shaping sensation and delimiting perception and cognition: sociolinguistic (e.g., social norms, cultural and language codes, ideologies, theories), psychological (e.g., repressed parental prohibitions which continue to block ways of feeling and acting, personality traits) and epistemic (e.g., learning, cognitive and intelligence styles, sensory learning preferences, focus on wholes or parts). (Mezirow 1995, p. 42; italics added)
Another way of understanding meaning perspectives is as broad, guiding frames of mind that influence the development of an individual’s internalized meaning schemas. Meaning schemas are “the specific set of beliefs, knowledge, judgment, attitude, and feeling which shape a particular interpretation, as when we think of an Irishman, a cathedral, a grandmother, or a conservative or when we express a point of view, an ideal or a way of acting” (Mezirow, 1995, p. 43).
Meaning perspectives and schemas are the containers that shape our experiences. These containers are taken for granted and are therefore hard to see, let alone to question. Some meaning perspectives concern how we expect people to behave, in terms of categories such as race or gender, which has an impact on—and even complicate—situations in ways that can lead to conflict. This is why it may be difficult for a white person to understand how some of her views or behaviors may be perceived as racist or insensitive, for example, or for a man to understand how women could experience his actions as sexist. Through critically reflective self-exploration and questioning, a person can see the basic assumptions of his or her group and culture in a new light. In Mezirow’s theory, the process of critical reflection helps individuals understand the impact of those assumptions, which then leads them to change those assumptions and perhaps to challenge them across the broader society.
For individuals seeking to learn how to handle conflict, Mezirow’s work points to the need for critical reflection, but it does not give us much practical advice about how to probe deeply into assumptions. His theory also does not give much understanding or guidance about the deeply seated emotions.
We now turn to the work of other theorists who, like Mezirow, emphasize reflection but in doing so, bring in other dimensions of learning, for example, advice about how to probe assumptions or understand deeply seated emotions.
Action Science, Experiential Learning, and the Role of Reflection about Emotions and Affect
Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (1974, 1978) developed action science to explore the gap between what people say they want to do and what they are actually able to achieve. They argued against the behaviorists’ belief that people act somewhat blindly in response to their external environment: “Human learning . . . need not be understood in terms of the ‘reinforcement’ or ‘extinction’ of patterns of behavior but as the construction, testing, and restructuring of a certain kind of knowledge” (1978, p. 10). People often believe that they act according to one set of beliefs (espoused theory), but because of tacitly held assumptions, values, and norms, they actually act in ways that often contradict their espoused theories (theory-in-use). It is seldom possible to probe deeply into our beliefs without confronting many facets of our psychological makeup that we may find difficult to name, face, and change.
Engaging in critical reflection can evoke powerful feelings that see
m at odds with instrumental, rational ways of learning from experience. Some adult educators critique this rational focus and seek to develop a broader lens with which to see the impact that critical reflection has for individual learning. Boud et al. (1993), for example, describe learning as a holistic process that involves thinking, feeling, and the will to action. They note that in English-speaking cultures, “there is a cultural bias towards the cognitive and conative aspects of learning. The development of the affect is inhibited and instrumental thinking is highly valued” (p. 12).
Boud et al. (1993) factor the affective side of learning from experience into their views. By the “affective side,” they mean all the attendant sensations and feelings that people can encounter when they have experiences. From their point of view, the affective dimension of learning includes naming and recognizing emotions and also probing the deeper, nonrational aspects of the situation in order to come to a fuller level of understanding. These authors legitimize feelings as grist for the mill of reflection. They do not shrink from feelings and even highlight that an emphasis on rationality can leave people ashamed or embarrassed about emotions.
Other experiential learning theorists, such as Heron (1992), go a step further. For these theorists, feeling precedes rational explanation and therefore can point the way to fresh insights when people revisit and reinterpret their feeling. For Heron, the affective is the psychological basis for experiential knowledge.
Sometimes experiential educators help learners get in touch with insights that they normally filter out of their awareness (Yorks and Kasl, 2006; Davis-Manigaulte, Yorks, and Kasl, 2006). In essence, feelings and the experiential knowledge that they hold are brought into awareness through the use of various forms of expression that engage the learner’s imaginative and intuitive processes, which in turn connects these processes to new conceptual possibilities. Paying attention to feelings is important for establishing an “empathic zone” (Yorks and Kasl, 2002). Creating such a zone can provide insights into the different lived experiences of others that often block pathways to understanding through rational discussion as parties talk past one another.