Beyond Intractability and Moving Beyond Intractability have a wealth of materials that can be used by educators from the middle school to graduate school level. These can be used individually by instructors, or they can be combined to make a virtual textbook. Since BI is no longer grant funded, we ask text-book makers/users to ask their students to pay a small royalty fee for the use of these materials (about 1/3 the cost of a comparable text). Contact us for details.
Available materials include:
- Constructive Conflict Video (40 minutes) —This motivational video explains the ideas behind the Constructive Conflict Initiative. The key idea is that destructive conflict is the biggest threat to human well-being on the planet. It is bigger than climate change, for example, because we can't solve climate change until we solve the conflict around it! This video is an excellent one to show at the beginning of any peace and conflict class to get students engaged.
- Articles on Core Concepts, Theories, and Processes — Several hundred articles are available in the Conflict Fundamentals Seminar Series on popular topics such as Framing, Communication, Facts, Escalation, Power, Negotiation, Mediation and other ADR Processes, Collaboration, Culture, Peace Processes, and more.
- Videos (and transcripts) on Scale, Complexity, and the Nature of Intractability—and constructive transformation strategies in the Conflict Frontiers Seminar.
- Exercises and Simulations — This collection of free resources includes six exercises that explore the meaning and nature of intractable conflicts and what's to be done about them, together with four conflict simulations.
- Stop Fighting — A seven-step self-quiz and tutorial for people involved in relationship conflicts.
- Audio interviews — with expert scholars and practitioners, each 30-60 minutes in duration talking about their work.
- Working With Strong Emotions in the Classroom: A Guide for Teachers and Students — Information and resources that teachers and students can use to prepare themselves for the highly-emotional exchanges — both expected and unexpected — that may occur in a classroom setting.
- Group Projects: A Conflict Resolution Guide for Students — Resources, helpful advice, and guidelines for successfully completing a group project, while constructively handling conflicts that may arise among the group members.
- Conflict Resolution Glossary of Terms — A list of commonly-used conflict resolution terms with definitions.
- Conflict Transformation: Standards-Based Lesson Plans for Middle School Students — Conflict Transformation is a twelve-unit, thirty-six-hour course designed to teach middle school students basic conflict transformation skills for personal, community, national, and international situations. The short stories, current events, class discussions, guided-reading activities, and guided-writing assignments make this course ideal both for social studies and language arts classes.
- Multi-level Conflict Mapping Using PowerPoint, Prezi, and Websites — Discussion of the advantages of graphical conflict maps, and an introduction to the Beyond Intractability / CRInfo library of such resources.
- Complete Online Courses — Here we have two complete "self study" courses based on Beyond Intractability. Instructors should feel free to adopt some or all of these syllabi for their own use, (acknowledging BI as the source of the readings and asking students to pay a small royalty fee, as discussed above. (Again, contact us for details).
