Conflict resolution

On my travels to Ottawa I had a very interesting conversation with a guy who is in conflict resolution. This came out when he discovered my Northern Ireland roots. He had been to Belfast in the early 80s and done his grad school research on trying to find a solution to “The Troubles”. He admits that his idealism wasn't quite sufficient to achieve that. However, we did discuss how the approaches and techniques he uses in organizational conflict resolution might be applied to the research/teaching “conflict” that arises in the academic world. Again, I come back to the question of promotion practices. I have now heard in the UK, NZ and Canada people saying that “yes the promotions/tenure criteria acknowledge teaching, but it is still not as important as research”. We talked about a model where people play to their strengths within the context of a department or academic unit which is where the balance between research and teaching should be addressed. In other words those that are the really good and keen teachers should be allowed to focus on that aspect of their role, with a reduced expectation of research outputs, and vice versa. That is fine so long as the individuals remain in the department, but what about someone wanting to move when the currency of hiring is research output and grant winning abilities? Perhaps departments need to identify in their hiring decisions that overall departmental balance and be explicit in their hiring promotional activities that they want someone to focus on teaching or research. It makes a lot of sense to me, and of course, individual balances can be changed through negotiation over the years, but it would allow faculty to have a real focus on one or other of their prime roles, and do it well without penalty. That identified priority would then be part of the promotions/tenure application and the criteria would be adjusted accordingly. This is part of a worldwide change that is needed so the community that thinks this way will need to work together. Maybe it is the slow infiltration that membership of the (late lamented) ILTHE had into the job ads for lecturers in the UK. Once the ILT was founded and began to gather a membership, job ads began to say "membership of the ILT desirable". What I am looking for is the job ad that says "this department practices a balancing philosophy and allows members to work to their strengths".

My picture is of the Centre for Leadership in Learning at McMaster University with Erika, Elvia and Paola (and me of course)