We sought to describe how prospective educators' choices of collaborative, cooperative, or individualistic interactions with group members and their willingness to apply unstructured effort into group functioning explained their levels of stress and self-evaluations of cooperative skills. Students (n=149) working in intact cooperative groups…

High performance teams allow conflict to surface and then work toward understanding and resolution. Often when teams are in conflict, they appear to be in chaos. What may be occurring is that the conflict has allowed the team to access new information, and what appears to be chaos is actually reorganization around a new perspective. Capitalizing…

In the opinion of decision-making scholars, conflict is a natural component of group decision-making. A new direction for conflict and group decision-making theory and research will help dispel the confusion as to the promotive or disruptive nature of disagreement in group decision-making. Conflict literature is replete with descriptions of the…

Little experimental research exists concerning third party mediation. Possible dimensions for study are type of control, including outcome control (of the third party over negotiation outcomes) and process control (third party influence on the negotiation process); and type of intervention, i.e., process or issue oriented interventions. To examine…

The "management of crisis," as opposed to crisis management," requires prior planning. Boards of education that habitually practice courtesy and have some knowledge of group dynamics do not create controversy by their own actions and will have fewer controversial meetings to manage. Policymakers should know ahead of time what issues are likely to…

The present study compared the effects of content, process, and passive types of third party intervention on the bargaining behavior of pairs of group representatives. The setting was a simulated school board-teacher's union dispute over a new contract. Each side was represented by one person who was instructed to bargain tenaciously and obtain as…

This paper describes two attempts to utilize a conflict resolution approach in academic settings. The approach includes: (1) the significance of the structure of communication between parties in conflict; (2) the understanding of face-to-face interaction processes; (3) problems of perceptual distortion; and (4) political socializations. The…

Noting that research is inconclusive regarding the role of mediation in groups, this paper represents an initial attempt to integrate specific communication skills into the teaching of mediation. The paper begins with a literature review investigating literature on communication competence during conflict to establish a foundation for the basic…

Virtually everyone involved with forensics has, at one time or another, seen or heard references to debate teams or squads as "groups." Many questions concerning the label "group," however, exist. A brief examination of definitions of the term group by scholars in the field of small group communication confirms that T. M.…

Because of a multiplicity of approaches to small group argument, research in this area often needs to be summarized, condensed, and redirected. Researchers have identified the rational, cognitive and interactive components of argumentation, and have demonstrated that arguments can take several forms and fulfill a variety of functions. The result…

The concept of complexity in decision-making can be found in several lines of conceptualization in the area of national and international decision-making. One derives from the classic works on authoritarianism and dogmatism (Adorno, et al., 1950; Rokeach, 1960). Another approach relies on the variables that pertain to group dynamics and to…

A study was conducted to examine the relationship between the amount of conflict in a group decision-making process and the achievement of a quality decision. A task problem given to 33 college students completing a group symposium assignment in a basic public speaking and discussion course called for subjects to choose three possible topics for a…

Personal dispositional variables conflicting with social pressure and the resulting behavior, which follows a cusp catastrophe, were investigated. Female undergraduates (N=200) completed a set of attitude questionnaires using a Crutchfield console. Results indicate that: (1) when social pressure is low, behavior is a smooth, monotonic function of…

Research on learning styles has shown that students learn better when teachers plan class learning activities to fit students' learning styles. This paper describes three "ways of knowing" and discusses the role they play in "knowing the culture" of a school. The first part relates ways of knowing to the usual three domains of learning--cognitive,…

The Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) at the University of New Orleans (UNO) was established in spring 1990, funded by a 3-year grant from Chevron. Beginning with 1 pilot school in 1991, the UNO Accelerated Schools Center has expanded to 36 schools representing 19 school districts in Louisiana and 3 schools from the Memphis City Schools district.…