Preparing Disputants for Effective Participation in ADR
Presenters:
Sallyann Roth and Robert R. Stains
“ADR practitioners face many dilemmas when parties to a conflict have markedly different social, economic, and educational backgrounds with unequal access to resources. Issues of language, articulation, meeting structure, mediator role and status, mutual assumptions, physical environment, and fairness in the session must be considered. We will explore the effects that these issues and differences have on mediation and other ADR practices. We will delve into our own experiences of planning for and dealing with such differences. We will show how the Public Conversations Project uses pre-meeting encounters to address these differences constructively.”
Sallyann Roth, M.S.W, is a senior associate, trainer, and facilitator for the Public Conversations Project (PCP), a non-profit that creates forums for people who oppose each other on issues of social and political significance. She is widely published and has taught in numerous places in the US, Scandinavia, England, Australia, and New Zealand. She is a consultant for the interpersonal skills component of Harvard Law School’s Negotiation Workshop, consults to and trains in organizations, and has a clinical practice in Medford, Massachusetts.
Robert R. Stains, Jr., M.Ed., is Director of Training at PCP and on the Faculty of the Family Institute of Cambridge. He has trained mediators in the Transformative Model for the US Postal Service and has collaborated in designing and facilitating the New Ground Network on abortion and dialogues on sexual orientation in a religious context. He maintains a private mediation and training practice in Beverly, MA and consults to local and national organizations.
At the Peervision session following the DRF, Sally Higginbotham will present a complicated sexual harassment case. John David Ferrer will give a brief report on what appeared to be an intractable case (presented at Peervision last September), and how DRF participants’ suggestions helped it to settle.
