Doug Yarn compares teaching conflict resolution systems in schools compared to universities. He found that there was more harm done than good when they tried to incorporate conflict resolution programs in schools.
Doug Yarn teaches in the areas of conflict resolution and professional responsibility and serves as Executive Director of the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, a leading inter-university, multi-disciplinary theory-building center. He has taught at the law schools of Emory University and University of Georgia and in the civil engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before joining the GSU faculty, Professor Yarn practiced as a litigator, in-house counsel for an investment banking firm, and in-house attorney, mediator, and panelist trainer for the AAA. He has trained mediators and arbitrators nationwide, drafted arbitration legislation, and designed conflict management systems for private and public entities.
Professor Yarn has served as a facilitator and mediator in hundreds of civil legal disputes and numerous public policy disputes involving issues such as access to health care, land use, and the environment. His publications include, practice treatises on alternative dispute resolution, the authoritative dictionary for conflict resolution, and numerous book chapters and articles. His research interests include international environmental conflict resolution, ADR ethics, conflict management in institutions of higher education, history of English arbitration, dueling codes, apology and forgiveness, biological foundations of conflict resolution, and conciliatory behavior in non-human primates. In his spare time, he plays Uilleann pipes in a traditional Irish ceili band.
There is a difference between mediation and conflict resolution. The former may be part of the latter, but not ALL of it. Children have ideas about how things work (from their environment) as have adults. They need choices for the various situations in which they find themselves (with parents, friends, teachers, classmates, neighbor children, etc.)
