Submissions for presentation at NMC2021 – closing soon

There is less than one week to submit your proposal for presentation at the 2021 National Mediation Conference to be held in Alice Springs from 1 – 4 September.  The extended proposal submission deadline is 14 March 2021.

The conference is designed to accommodate the needs of those who may not be able to travel to Alice Springs by providing opportunities for both face-to-face and online presentations.

NMC2021 provides an opportunity for all those with an interest in mediation and DR to share knowledge, skills and ideas with a focus on learning about the role of conflict management in achieving true reconciliation.  The conference theme, “One Story”, describes the situation when a conflict has been resolved and no longer exists, when everyone walks away with a single, mutually respectful story.  The theme also reflects a broader perception of the commonalities among all people, and has application across all areas of DR.

In alphabetical order, the conference streams are:

1. Approaches to conflict in First Nations and Indigenous contexts, including community-based conflict management;
2. Business and construction; workplace and employment;
3. Community-focused mediation, and other community-focused processes;
4. Conciliation, including statutory and industry programs;
5. Court-connected DR services, including services associated with courts and tribunals;
6. Dispute system design, online DR, and technological innovations;
7. Elder mediation, and other specialist areas of practice;
8. Family mediation and dispute resolution, including FDR;
9. Peace-making, peace-building, transitional justice, reconciliation, and civil society;
10. Research, training, and education: building a rigorous evidence base for DR;
11. Restorative and innovative approaches to conflict.

The Conference Design Committee is fully conscious of the contributions made by intercultural and multicultural considerations to the enrichment of all DR sectors and will give preference to proposals that include them.  The Committee will also give priority to the following criteria:

• The stated conference theme;
• The introduction of new and innovative concepts not previously canvassed or fully explored in mediation and DR;
• The inclusion of innovative and engaging presentation techniques;
• Where applicable, the rigour of any research to be included in the presentation, or on which it relies;
• The inclusion of credible demonstration of the importance of subject matter to mediation and/or to DR, and to the preferred conference stream;
• The inclusion of intercultural, cross-cultural and/or multicultural considerations;
• the potential appeal of the proposal to a broad spectrum of delegates; the proposal should include appropriate comments if it would appeal more to one cross-section of the sector (eg, newly trained practitioners, or experienced practitioners);
• The demonstrated capacity of the proposal to allocate appropriate time for coverage of the topic and, if using multiple presenters, strategies for including all presenters; and
• A clear title of the proposal conveying to delegates what they can expect from the session.

To submit your proposal, please contact the Conference Organiser (by phone or email) who will email a link to you:

Rosie Fall, Conference Organiser

Ph: 08 8942 3388

email: events @associatedadvertising.com.au

Alan Limbury

Given the confidential nature of mediation, it is a rare set of circumstances that allow us to catch a glimpse into the mediator’s craft. The current review of the professional standards governing Australia’s accredited mediators provides one such opportunity, The review seeks, to the extent permissible, to uncover what practitioners are actually doing, including the extent to which their knowledge and skills change with experience and in response to the various contexts in which they practise.

What is being reviewed?

After several years of discussion and community consultation, in 2008 a voluntary National Mediator Accreditation System (NMAS) was adopted in Australia. It comprises a set of Practice Standards which specify the minimum practice and competency requirements of a NMAS accredited mediator and a set of Approval Standards which specify the training, assessment, personal qualities and experience required for renewal of accreditation. The system also sets out the qualifications required of Recognised Mediator Accreditation Bodies (RMABs) in order to accredit mediators in accordance with the NMAS. The NMAS was last reviewed in 2015.

The current review

Last year the Mediator Standards Board (MSB), which oversees the system, engaged Danielle Hutchinson and Emma-May Litchfield of Resolution Resources (RR) to lead the NMAS Review 2020-21 in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the NMAS and consider what changes and additions need to be made.

Drawing on well-established techniques from the field of education and psychometrics, RR has adopted a collaborative and data-driven approach. The Australian DR community can therefore feel confident that any recommendations arising out of the review are evidence-based, informed by expert practitioners and reflect the variety of processes and contexts in which practitioners typically operate.

The NMAS Review 2020-21 Process

The process provides a number of opportunities for interested stakeholders to contribute. In particular, it includes widespread consultation involving reference groups, workshops and surveys amongst MSB members, RMABs, training organisations, mediators, community groups, professional associations and other experts in the field.  Information collected from these events will be subject to rigorous data analysis to identify a range of patterns including the way that practice may evolve with experience or as it is applied in different contexts. This type of psychometric analysis, though well-established in other disciples, it not typically used in the dispute resolution sector. This presents an exciting opportunity for the MSB, which is expected to consider the recommendations in mid-2021.

Reference groups

In the first stage, five Reference Groups sought to identify areas for possible amendment to the current standards in relation to First Nations Mediators; Diversity and Inclusion; MSB Member Organisations (including RMABs and training organisations); Non-NMAS Processes (including conciliation, family dispute resolution, hybrid processes and restorative practice); and Institutions with an interest in NMAS (including courts/tribunals, higher education and institutional dispute systems).

Based on my interest in the role of the mediator in hybrid processes such as med-arb and arb-med-arb, I was invited to contribute my thoughts to the Non-NMAS Processes Reference Group. I worked with fellow contributors to identify areas within the NMAS which might address the practice of “switching hats” whereby the same person may act as both mediator and arbitrator in the same dispute, without jeopardising their impartiality as mediator or the enforceability of any arbitral award. An example of the kind of problems that can arise in this area is here.

Workshops

The second, recently completed, stage involved a series of day-long virtual Workshops. Participants, of which I was privileged to be one, represented a cross-section of the mediation community. The object was to flesh out the work done in the Reference Groups. The key focus areas were Professional Knowledge, Practitioner Skills, Professional Engagement and Professional Ethics and Responsibilities.

Key to our dialogue and work for the day was shifting our focus beyond the minimum threshold for accreditation, a perspective which tends to produce a compliance mindset.  Instead, participants were asked to contemplate and articulate the distinguishing features of mediator practice as typically manifested in those who are newly NMAS accredited, those who are proficient and those who would be considered expert.

These levels of practitioner sophistication were further considered in the differing contexts of conciliation, family dispute resolution, court or tribunal annexed mediation, restorative practice, hybrids and diversity.

The rationale for considering varying degrees of practice together with processes which have historically fallen outside the NMAS is to enable the development of a standards-referenced framework which identifies the extent to which knowledge, skills, values and obligations may be common across processes and contexts. This also means that processes and contexts requiring specific knowledge, skills or expertise can also be properly recognised.

This way of thinking about mediator practice is difficult. This is especially so for the expert, who must bring to consciousness elements of their craft that have long since become intuitive. With this in mind, RR developed a suite of pre-workshop materials to help us orient our thinking towards this new way of reflecting on and conceptualizing the evolution of one’s practice. The materials included sample scales of mediator knowledge, skills and attitudes and very useful guidelines for describing quality.

Surveys

The next step in the process is to synthesise the information generated via the reference groups and the workshops to inform the development of the NMAS Review Survey. This survey will be the main instrument for consultation and will be open to all interested stakeholders within the Australian DR community in mid-2021.   The data collected via the survey will then be analysed, using a range of psychometric techniques. The findings from this analysis will form the basis of the recommendations to the MSB.

In this way, every person who completes the survey will play a vital part in the NMAS Review 2020-21 and lend their voice to the future of dispute resolution in Australia.