Negotiation Scenarios & Civic Engagement

So yesterday, I was reading J. Michael Hogan's "Rhetorical Criticism, Public Scholarship, and the Scholarship of Teaching" and felt guilty about the lack of civic engagement in my class. It's not that we haven't been doing interesting things (okay, there have been some duds), but I forgot about the deeper goal I wanted for students in the class from day one: to engage with bigger issues in society; to see communication principles at work in spheres beyond their daily and interpersonal lives; to begin to put together their role in the public. Today's lesson represents a modest effort to rectify that situation.

Conflict Negotiation in the Real World

I selected five major news topics that involve disputants of one kind or another. With their groups, I set them out to try to reconcile the differences. In each group, two people represented the opposing "sides" of the issue, one an intermediary or decision-making figure, and the rest acted as note-takers recording the communication styles and strategies employed by their group members.

The issues were:

The Chicago Teachers' Strike

Google's Decision to block "The Innocence of Muslims"

Financial woes in higher education

The natural gas fracking debate

Internal strife in Mitt Romney's presidential campaign

[Visit the ELMS site for a simple Word document that has condensed/cut each of these into two-page versions.]

I framed the exercise by placing it after the Smith v. Patel negotiation (which we did as a whole-class activity). This set us up to discuss some principles of conflict negotiation before splitting into groups and working on these various exercises. The goal, in each case, was to work out the most mutually beneficial solution for all (the most utilitarian solution).

The issues deliberated were as follows:


Scenario I: Fracking Controversy in Michigan

• Person A: A representative of a natural gas company that wants to bring in new jobs and natural gas revenues.
• Person B: An environmental expert concerned about the effect of fracking on water supplies.
• Person C: A Michigan mayor, torn over whether to bring Fracking to town.

Scenario II: College-Cost Calamity

• Person A: You are the Dean of the College of Humanities (English, Philosophy). 
• Person B: You are the Dean of Department of Behavioral Sciences (Psychology, Sociology).
• Person C: You are the President of the University and need to cut an amount equal to one of these programs from your school’s annual budget.

Scenario III: Google’s Decision to Block “The Innocence of Muslims”

• Person A: You are a freedom of speech advocate who believes strongly in open exchange of messages—even messages that offend people.
• Person B: You are a business-minded pragmatist who doesn’t want your company associated with starting riots in Libya.
• Person C: You are a Google Executive torn between the two positions. 

Scenario IV: Inside the Campaign: How Mitt Romney Stumbled

• Person A: You are Stuart Stevens and believe you made the right choices for the campaign.
• Person B: You are Peter Wehner. You believe your speech would have brought Romney more success and believe Stevens should be demoted due to his incompetence.
• Person C: You are Mitt Romney and you want to be President really bad. 

Scenario V: Chicago Teacher Strike: Issues at the Center of Contract Negotiations

• Person A: You represent the Teacher’s Union.
• Person B: You represent the School District.
• Person C: You are the lead negotiator for talks between the two sides. The sooner you resolve this, the sooner 260,000 children are back in school. 

Afterward, students were told to "go meta" and, using the notes, reflect on how they interact, argue, haggle, and deliberate as a group. 

Finally, a full-class share-out happens: each group has one student describe the conflict their group encountered, discuss the resolution they arrived at, and discuss how their group members worked together in the conflict situation.

Reflections and Suggested Revisions

1) This needs more time. I didn't pace myself great today; the blue banana activity probably took longer than it should have (I let it meander too long), leaving less time to do the full-class sharing and reflection at the activity's end. I needed to transition more crisply and keep a better eye on time. I'd budget at least 35 minutes for this. I will need to finish the debrief part on Tuesday, which will be tricky since I'm sure students will forget about the exact proceedings of their discussions between now and then.

2) Give guidance to the note-takers. I didn't give a lot of explicit directions about what kinds of things to look for. Next time, I'll pull specific concepts from the textbook to tell them to be on the lookout for. I'll loop these things back in on Tuesday; I just wish I'd anticipated a little better.

3) Anticipate misunderstandings/confusion about the events. I forgot that not everyone lays in bed at night reading the news on their iPhone Flipboard app when they should be sleeping. Be prepared to circulate during the initial reading phase of the assignment to offer explanations/clarifications of the events.

4) The Mitt Romney prompt is a little weird. I feel like there's a good conflict negotiation there re: his campaign's in-fighting, but I don't think I quite nailed it with the scenario I wrote there.

5) Make yourself some French toast afterward. Nothing like some delicious French toast to follow up some civic engagement.

Anyway--let me know if you have any questions, and let me know how it goes if you attempt this in your own class!