Beyond Intractability Teaching and Learning Materials

Beyond Intractability has 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. 

Available materials include:

• Constructive Conflict Video (40 minutes) —This motivational video explains the ideas behind the Consortium's 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. 
   
• The Conflict Frontiers Online (MOOS) Seminar — A series of online videos that take a complexity-oriented approach to examining frontier-of-the-field issues related to difficult and intractable conflicts. We aren't teaching this seminar anymore, but it is available for others to use.
   
• The Conflict Fundamentals Seminar This series of posts presents the core knowledge from the conflict resolution and peacebuilding fields---knowledge that is, to a large extent, considered a "starting point" for our more advanced Conflict Frontiers Seminar Series. Several hundred articles are available in the Fundamentals Seminar on popular topics such as Framing, Communication, Facts, Escalation, Power, Negotiation, Mediation and other ADR Processes, Collaboration, Culture, Peace Processes, and more. 
   
• Conflict Frontiers Seminar This seminar presents ideas that have been developed over the last ten years or so. While the Fundamentals Seminar is made up primarily of essays, the Frontiers Seminar is composed mostly of videos (and transcripts) on topics including Scale, Complexity, and the Nature of Intractability—and constructive transformation strategies for addressing intractable conflicts, including the Burgess's notion of "Massively Parallel Peacebuilding."
• Things YOU Can Do To Help Blog --- This blog highlights things everyone--not just powerful, important, or rich people--but everyone of us --can do to help limit the dynamics that lead to destructive and intractable conflicts.
   
• The Center for Dispute Resolution Mediation Training Manual by Kenneth Cloke. 
  This is the full training manual Cloke has used to train mediators for years.  It is stock full of detailed information about what mediation is, how it is done, and why.
   
• 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.
   
• ​Graphical 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.
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• 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.
   
• 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).