Certification Of Mediators

From Arnold W. Zeman’s blog

Bravo to Diane Levin for re-opening a conversation about the important issue of mediator certification.  I’ve always thought that there’s a direct relationship between professional standards and professional accountability — you can’t have one without the other.  So for me it’s been pretty clear that certification would be a good thing.  The problem isn’t whether or not to provide for professional accreditation, but rather how to do that.

What’s at stake in considering the how is whether to have a set of exclusionary certification standards that privilege one model of mediation over others or to have standards that are sufficiently broad so as to be inclusive of all mediation praxis, whether it be evaluative, facilitative, transformative, narrative, or insight.

This is exactly where the call for certification of mediators in the current newsletter of the family section of the Association for Conflict Resolution falls off the rails.  Under the heading, “Certification of Mediators Needed Now More Than Ever”,  it’s argued that this must be accomplished for two important reasons: read more…

                       

Arnold W. Zeman

After over 33 years in the public service of Canada, the last 20 of which as an executive, I retired from government in 2006 to pursue my passion to help people resolve their differences non-adversarially. I have been trained by the best in the field in both the public and… MORE >