Provides a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to understanding conflict analysis and management as a field of study and practice. Focuses on engaging with conflict, change, and systems specifically related to organizational contexts.
Author: Darija
CAMN503: Professional Skills – Dealing with Conflict
Links theory with professional practice. Develops professional skills for dealing with conflict in and among groups and teams in a safe learning environment. Analyzes the different characteristics of interpersonal, intra-group and intergroup conflicts and how this informs professional practice.
Pre-Requisites:
CAMN504: Reflective Practice – Leading Change in Organizational Settings
Focuses on reflective practice, professional conduct, and leadership skills for the conflict management practitioner. Applies a systems approach to conflict and change management. Develops competencies for tapping into the creative potential of conflict towards the goal of productive organizational change.
Pre-Requisites:
Co-Requisites:
CAMN552: Structures: Legal Frameworks and Conflict Engagement
Provides an introduction to legal systems and quasi-legal processes used in conflict resolution, including courts, arbitration and restorative justice. Advances skills of legal analysis, case analysis and problem-solving. Critically examines the role of law in shaping relationships between individuals and groups as well as between the state and society.
CAMN553: Processes: Designing Conflict Management Practice
Examines conflict-management process design in organizational contexts, including impact assessment. Advances interpersonal communication and intercultural competencies. Explores the use of technology as a process tool.
The course will provide you opportunities to delve into your own approaches to conflict engagement and how you engage with diversity in thought, worldview, cultures, and needs with an aim to address differences and bridge similarities. We will explore how (and whether) to engage with a particular conflict, consider the analysis of the conflict, potential processes to address it, and how to engage with complexity.
One of the key goals of any engagement with a conflict system is to make a connection. This applies to the conflict engagement specialists connecting with the system (as third party assistance or third party intervenor, even as embedded practitioner) as much as to facilitation connection between and among the parties and stakeholders. This requires consulting the people within system to learn where the “pain points” and “leverage points” are. The place where a process takes place is essential. The place may also inform choices for smaller processes that are used within larger process designs.
A key aspect for any process choice is the impact on individuals as well as the overall conflict system. What ‘better’ looks like might be different than what was originally asked for or even anticipated. Often, the impact of the presence of a third party is underestimated in process design thinking and planning. This includes intended and unintended consequences of engagement with a conflict system and the impact the have on structures, attitudes, and transactions and the people making up the system.
CHMN615: Setting the Foundation for Positive Organizational Change
Focuses on organizational change management practices and the fundamentals required for the transformation of organizational culture. Students will gain an enhanced understanding of organizational change processes, from navigating the people side of change to facilitating whole systems change. Consideration will be given to the capabilities required to effectively lead change efforts. Students will apply learning through an experientially-oriented change leadership project.
CMDV500: Core Principles of Sustainable Community Development
Familiarizes students with the history of the concept of sustainable development and its core principles. Discusses innovations happening on the ground in Canadian communities. Grounded in systems thinking, emphasis will be placed on new models of collaboration, integrated decision-making and planning, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Examines key issues to provide a deep understanding of the complexities of solving and implementing such ‘messy, wicked’ problems. Emphasis will be placed on ‘making a difference through research’, learning and using modern research dissemination tools including social media channels.
CPWB500: Foundations: Reframing Child Wellbeing in Complex Global Realities
Builds on guiding theoretical and practice frameworks (including child rights, child and family welfare, child health, child protection, etc.) used currently, both nationally and by the international community in order to shape interventions to address the challenges that exist for children and youth, with a specific focus on protecting children working with families and communities. Deconstructs colonialist practices, Eurocentric perspectives, using anti-oppression frameworks and Indigenous ways of knowing. Encourages understanding of the community and cultural systems of support for children and families that exist in many ways parallel to the more formal systems of support. Guides students to explore and navigate important tensions (such as the tension between immediate and long-term care; universal and local values; autonomy and safety) through critical reflection and discourse and questions who frames the problem and what impact this has on children, youth, and families.
CPWB502: Practice: Understanding, Assessing, and Promoting Children’s Wellbeing in Context Through Case Studies
Having developed a solid theoretical foundation of child wellbeing (inclusive of child and family welfare and child protection), explores the programmatic implications of guiding theories. Guides students to assess existing systems at the national and community level, with a lens to examine the impact on children’s wellbeing. This situates the child within broader ecological systems. Uses this deconstruction as a way to explore what reforming child protection systems might look like across different levels and contexts. Participates in critical discourse across multiple case studies.
CPWB504: Tools/Approaches for Change – Engaged Changemaking with Children, Youth, Families, Communities and Nations
Provides students the opportunity to understand and explore how to contribute to positive change in support of child wellbeing in a contextually appropriate and sustainable way for children, youth, families, communities, and nations. Facilitates engaged action-oriented change with children, youth, families, communities, and nations by drawing on leadership skills, systems mapping, and identifying levers of change. Considers different methodologies for research, monitoring, evaluation, learning, as well as programming skills (evidence, data, and decision-making); participatory, creative and play based approaches to engaging children and youth in navigating their way to wellbeing; and change and reform promoting approaches (problem-driven iterative adaptation and similar approaches, fostering institutional changes).