Conflict Engagement for Individualized Education Program Team Members

As professionals working in schools, we are often expected to function as teams to meet the unique needs of the children, youth, and families we serve. This provides us the opportunity to work with people of diverse experience, perspective, and expertise. In this context, we will encounter conflict. How we engage this challenge will ultimately determine what is possible. Conflict has the potential to be productive or destructive. Our individual and collective experience with conflict is based on the choices we make in our engagement of this shared experience. Ineffective conflict engagement practices will often compromise trust, erode social capital, and challenge psychological safety. This may result in individual and collective disengagement from the pursuit of a shared objective and be manifested in the avoidance of, and unwillingness to, engage critical complex challenges. We can individually and collectively adopt practices and develop skills for aligning our actions and speaking with  what we say we believe that there is value in diversity of experience and perspective. New learning, innovation, and creativity are born in the context of conflict. Effective and intentional conflict engagement practices have the potential to build trust, build social capital, increase the possibilities for innovation and creativity, and improve the capacity to address complex challenges. We can learn to leverage conflict to better serve the needs of the children, youth, and families we serve. In this viewpoint article, we will explore the role of conflict in shared learning, innovation, and creativity in service of children with special needs.