2009-01-12

Agenda for AGM 2009 set, with John Winslade to keynote

To all OAFM Members

We are very excited to announce that OAFM has arranged for John Winslade, PhD.,  a Professor at California State University, to speak at this year's AGM and Conference.  John is a leading figure in Narrative Therapy and Narrative Mediation. He, along with Gerald Monk,  introduced the Narrative Mediation Model to the field of Conflict Resolution.  We expect it will be an exciting and informative presentation and workshop and encourage everyone to mark their calendars now so as not to miss it.

The AGM/Conference will be held at Novotel Hotel in Mississauga on June 12, 2009.  More information about speakers and registration will follow in the next month, and posted on our website.  In the meantime, please feel free to read a little about John Winslade's presentation and bio.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Please feel free to pass on this information to any person or organization that may be interested in attending.  Thank you.

OAFM Operations
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Title: Working with multiple stories of relationship in mediation: a narrative perspective.

 

The narrative perspective is a simple and yet profound departure from commonly held  assumptions about the conflicts that embroil people. It proposes that people live their lives according to stories rather than according to inner drives or interests. It privileges stories and the meanings within stories over facts and causes. In the stories we tell ourselves and each other, we all seek to establish coherence for ourselves and produce lives, careers, relationships and communities. Therefore when we work with people to overcome the divisiveness of a conflict, we find it more productive to work with the stories in which the conflict is embedded than to pursue objective reality. Fortunately there are always multiple stories to tell about any relationship. Narrative mediation helps people seek out and work from the stories people prefer rather than the stories they feel caught up in as a result of the effects of conflict.

 

Stories are of course socially and culturally constructed. Moreover, stories that come to dominate over other stories are complicit in the creation of power in social relations. Working from a narrative perspective places the cultural world, and power relations within it, at the centre of the process of mediation rather than as an afterthought on the outside.

As well as being theoretically robust and socially just, the narrative approach to mediation has a distinctive method. It sets out to help people separate themselves from conflict-saturated stories and gives them the opportunity to re-author relations in more peaceful, cooperative and respectful ways. From this alternative relational position, the resolution of conflict can often happen much more smoothly than in a problem-solving approach. The aim of this presentation will be to introduce participants to the ideas and practices of a narrative perspective in mediation. This will be achieved through lecture, demonstration, and practice exercises.

Topics to be covered:

Presenter bio
John Winslade (PhD) is an Professor at California State University San Bernardino. Until 2003, he was Director of Counsellor Education at the University of Waikato and he still returns regularly to New Zealand to work part-time at Waikato University, including a Masters course on mediation in the School of Education.  He has been a member of the editorial board of the Conflict Resolution Quarterly journal. With Gerald Monk, John was the author of the groundbreaking text, "Narrative mediation: A new approach in conflict resolution" (2000, Jossey Bass). John Winslade and Gerald Monk also have a new book on mediation "Practicing narrative mediation: Loosening the grip of conflict" (2008) with Jossey Bass. John has also written a series of articles on narrative mediation and has taught workshops on this subject in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Denmark, Netherlands, Cyprus & Israel.

John Winslade
Coordinator of Educational Counseling Program
Dept of Educational Psychology & Counseling
California State University San Bernardino

Websites:
Counselor education program at CSUSB   http://www.csusb.edu/coe/programs/counsel_guidance/index.htm
Narrative Mediation   http://www.crinfo.org/narrative_mediation/
Remembering conversations   http://www.rememberingpractices.com/