Mediation training

  Despite some scepticism about the value of "roleplay" most mediation training involves asking people to run a pretend mediation session. I've tried various euphemisms to ease trainees' anxiety - …

I said in last month's entry that that was going to be one of my occasional funky entries. Should I be concerned that for this month's entry, I have decided to write on something equally funky? Bear…

Three recent mediations in three jurisdictions raised some interesting issues.  Each mediation was different. One involved a claim for professional negligence against a firm of solicitors for …

"You cannot direct a living system; you can only disturb it"1 When mediators join a conflict, they enter a living system. Realise it or not, that system is instantly changed by their arrival. …

“Patients don’t expect doctors to be perfect. They do expect them to strive for perfection by opening up their work to scrutiny” Atul Gawande, Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 6/12/15. A bit of a…

We have just reached the end of the annual marking season (grading for North Americans). The verbal joust of examinations is almost over. Students get their blows in first; teachers’ strike back…

It’s funny how one thing leads to another. Regular Kluwer blogger Ian Macduff posted a great blog earlier this week on the importance of asking questions. That reminded me that I had intended to get…

I was all set to write about climate change and, more particularly, to reflect on some excellent writing on that subject which addresses so-called climate change sceptics or deniers. It seems to me…

(This is the first of three parts of a keynote address to the YMCA Conference “From Reactions to Relations” in Burton on Trent on 20 November 2014) Here's an interesting phenomenon. When asked to…