Friendly Excursions into Disequilibrium

Enforced harmony is counterproductive. Pushing students (or employees) to come to agreement prematurely tends to undermine learning (or produce bad decisions). Sometimes that’s motivated by a desire to avoid conflict. But conflict handled carefully is not only tolerable; it’s valuable. What’s problematic is debate – disagreement where the point is not to learn or seek the truth but to win. The ideal arrangement in a classroom (or workplace) is cooperative conflict, where spirited disagreement is non-adversarial and nested in a caring environment.

RESOURCES:

David W. Johnson & Roger T. Johnson, “Energizing Learning: The Instructional Power of Conflict,” Educational Researcher (2009) — https://tinyurl.com/yc7t265j

Karl Smith et al., “Can Conflict Be Constructive?” Journal of Educational Psychology (1981) — https://tinyurl.com/474ja9bu

Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, rev. ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1992) — https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/

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