Collaborative law is a powerful dispute resolution model that is continuing to grow in popularity. Spouses are represented by counsel that assists in... bringing them through divorce with integrity and satisfaction. A binding stipulation disqualifies both counsels if either party threatens or elects to go to court. This book explains the goals, concepts and techniques of collaborative law in a clear, insightful manner. Includes forms and Client Handbook on CD-ROM.

Collaborative leadership is about delivering results across boundaries. The nature of that boundary is important, whether it's a formal contract or an... informal agreement between two parties to work together for a common aim. And leaders need to be clear about where the boundary lies and how to use the different capabilities on either side of it to build a positive and efficient relationship. As the poet Robert Frost once put it, 'Good fences make good neighbours'.Getting value from difference is at the heart of the collaborative leader's task. But that is not without its challenges. As in many marriages, it is often this difference - in skills, experience, resources or culture - that attracts organisations to work together in the first place. Then, as time goes by, people start to rail against that very difference and try to remove it wherever it causes frustration in the joint operation. An often-heard criticism is 'Why can't they be more like us?'. But of course the truth is that if they were, you'd have lost the very reason that brought the two of you together.So, collaborative leaders have to pull off a tricky balancing act - on the one hand, respecting and valuing the differences of a partner, while on the other, smoothing out some of those differences in the interests of making the relationship work more efficiently. At the same time, leaders have to learn to share control, and to trust a partner to deliver, even though that partner may operate very differently from themselves. Collaborative leadership is a sophisticated art - but mastering this complexity lies at the heart of business success now and in the future. * Covers a growing area of importance for HR professionals and leaders, especially within public sector organizations* The book's authors are highly experienced in working at the leading edge of many complex partnership projects* Gives managers and HR professionals practical advice on how to manage sensitive collaborative relationships

In Collaborative Learning, Kenneth Bruffee advocates a far-reaching change in the relations we assume between college and university professors and... their students, between the learned and the learning. He argues that the nature and source of the authority of college and university professors is the central issue in college and university education in our time, and that if college and university professors continue to teach exclusively in the stand-up-and-tell-'em way, their students will miss the opportunity to learn mature, effective interdependence—and this, Bruffee maintains, is the most important lesson we should expect students to learn.The book makes three related points. First, we should begin thinking about colleges and universities, and they should begin thinking about themselves, not as stores of information but as institutions of reacculturation. Second, we should think of college and university professors not as purveyors of information but as agents of cultural change who foster reacculturation by marshaling interdependence among student pers. And third, colleges and universities should revise longstanding assumptions about the nature and authority of knowledge and about classroom authority. To accomplish this, the author maintains, both college students and their professors must learn collaboratively.Describing the practical value of the activities encouraged by a collaborative approach—students working in consensus groups and research teams, tutoring peers, and helping each other with editing and revision—Bruffee concludes that, in the short run, collaborative learning helps students learn better—more thoroughly, more deeply, more efficiently—than learning alone. In the long run, collaborative learning is the best possible preparation for the real world, as students look beyond the authority of teachers, practice the craft of interdependence, and construct knowledge in the very way that academic disciplines and the professions do. With no loss of respect for the value of expertise, students learn to depend on one another, rather than depending exclusively on the authority of experts and teachers.In the second edition of this widely respected work, the argument is sharply focused on the need to change college and university education top to bottom, and the need to understand knowledge differently in order to accomplish that change. Several chapters, including that on collaborative learning and computers, have been throughly revised, and three new chapters have been added: on differences between collaborative learning and cooperative learning; on literary study and teaching literature; and on postgraduate education.From COLLABORATIVE LEARNING, second edition:ON THE CURRICULUM: Behind every public debate about college curriculum today lie comfortably unchallenged traditional assumptions. When we become fully aware of how deeply and irremediably these traditional assumptions have been challenged by twentieth-century thought, we see that a potentially more serious, and perhaps more rancorous and divisive, educational debate lies in wait for us.ON THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE: Remember the time Aunty Molly sat on the Thanksgiving turkey? Tell such a story at a family party and family members follow the story easily and get the point, because they are all members of the same small knowledge community. They know the people and the situation thoroughly, and they understand the family's private references.But try to tell the same story to neighbors or colleagues. For them to follow the story and get the point, you have to explain a lot of obscure details about family events and personalities that they're not familiar with. That is, when a smaller community sets out to integrate itsuelf into a larger one, the level of discourse has to change. The story changes and even its meaning changes as it becomes a constituting narrative of a larger and more complex community.The main purpose of college or university education is to help older adolescents and adults renegotiate their membership in that encompassing common culture. The foundational knowledge that shapes us as children sooner or later circumscribes our lives. We never entirely outgrow the local, foundational knowledge communities into which we are born. But for most people, the need to cope to one degree or another with the diversity and complexity of human life beyond the local and familiar does outgrow knowledge that is familiar and (locally) foundational.ON POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION: The problem is not that graduate professors do not know what they need to know. The problem is that most of them have learned what they know entirely under the traditional social conditions of academic alienation and aggression. Indeed, the problem is that mmbers of current graduate faculties were selected into the profession in part because they evidenced those traits. As a result, their fine education and superb reputations as scholars and critics may in some cased actually subvert their ability to understand knowledge as a social construct, learinng as an adult social process, and teaching as a role of leadership among adults.

Engaging students in active learning is a predominant theme in today's classrooms. To promote active learning, teachers across the disciplines and in... all kinds of colleges are incorporating collaborative learning into their teaching. Collaborative Learning Techniques is a scholarly and well-written handbook that guides teachers through all aspects of group work, providing solid information on what to do, how to do it, and why it is important to student learning. Synthesizing the relevant research and good practice literature, the authors present detailed procedures for thirty collaborative learning techniques (CoLTs) and offer practical suggestions on a wide range of topics, including how to form groups, assign roles, build team spirit, solve problems, and evaluate and grade student participation.

For more than a century, oil has been the engine of growth for a society that delivers an unprecedented standard of living to many. We now take for... granted that economic growth is good, necessary, and even inevitable, but also feel a sense of unease about the simultaneous growth of complexity in the processes and institutions that generate and manage that growth. As societies grow more complex through the bounty of cheap energy, they also confront problems that seem to increase in number and severity. In this era of fossil fuels, cheap energy and increasing complexity have been in a mutually-reinforcing spiral. The more energy we have and the more problems our societies confront, the more we grow complex and require still more energy. How did our demand for energy, our technological prowess, the resulting need for complex problem solving, and the end of easy oil conspire to make the Deepwater Horizon oil spill increasingly likely, if not inevitable? This book explains the real causal factors leading up to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, a disaster from which it will take decades to recover.

This timely and important work looks at the collaborative health care model for the delivery of mental health care in a primary care setting. This has... become the ideal model for the treatment of comorbid medical and psychiatric or psychological disorders. There is also an increased awareness that pharmacological intervention, the most frequently delivered intervention for psychological disorders, is often of limited effectiveness without concurrent specific psychological intervention. The book includes more than two dozen case studies, co-written by clinical psychologists and primary care physicians. It is essential reading for any psychology practitioner in a clinical setting, as well as for health care administrators.

Cosmopolitanism and friendship have become key themes for understanding ethnicity and nationalism. In this deeply original study of the Mongols, leading... scholar Uradyn E. Bulag draws on these themes to develop a new concept he terms "collaborative nationalism." He uses this concept to explore the paradoxical dilemma of minorities in China as they fight not against being excluded but against being embraced too tightly in the bonds of "friendship." Going beyond traditional binary relationships, he offers a unique triangular perspective that illuminates the complexity of regional interaction. Thus, Collaborative Nationalism traces the regional and global significance of the Mongols in the fierce competition among China, Japan, Mongolia, and Russia to appropriate the Mongol heritage to buttress their own national identities. The book considers a rich array of case studies that range from Chinggis Khan to reincarnate lamas, from cadres to minority revolutionary history, and from building the Mongolian working class to interethnic adoption. So-called friendship and collaboration permeate all of these arenas, but Bulag digs below the surface to focus on the animosity and conflicts they both generate and mask. Weighing the options the Mongols face, he argues that the ethnopolitical is not so much about identity as it is about the capacity of an ethnic group to decide and organize its own vision of itself, both within its community and in relation to other groups. Nationalism, he contends, is collaborative at the same time that it is predicated on the pursuit of sovereignty.

Do you work with educational teams that you believe could be more effective? Do you believe you communicate better with your students than with... your colleagues? Do you suspect that communication may be the problem - but are unsure where to find the answer or how to change it? If you answered YES to any of the above questions - this book is for you! This book is based upon the premise that we are often more collaborative with students than with our adult colleagues. Often with students we listen more closely, ask more meaningful questions, attempt to understand their point of view, put energy into explaining ourselves and watch for indications of misunderstanding. On the other hand, we habitually are more casual in our communication with adults. We may interrupt more, put energy into getting a personal point across rather than attempting to understand theirs, listen halfheartedly and not really give much thought to how we express ourselves. These habits often interfere with effective communication. When we learn to use the effective communication skills with adult colleagues that we use with our students, we build the foundation for collaboration. This book provides a quick and easy reference for all who want to make teamwork in school collaborative and meaningful. Simply open this book to any page and you will find simple ideas and many practical strategies that will help to improve individual and team communication skills. The book includes 60 strategies and 180 practices to assist with developing our skills in communication and collaboration! The strategies and practices in the book are applicable in all educational settings.

Local governments do not stand alone -- they find themselves in new relationships not only with state and federal government, but often with a widening... spectrum of other public and private organizations as well. The result of this re-forming of local governments calls for new collaborations and managerial responses that occur in addition to governmental and bureaucratic processes-as-usual, bringing locally generated strategies or what the authors call "jurisdiction-based management" into play.Based on an extensive study of 237 cities within five states, Collaborative Public Management provides an in-depth look at how city officials work with other governments and organizations to develop their city economies and what makes these collaborations work. Exploring the more complex nature of collaboration across jurisdictions, governments, and sectors, Agranoff and McGuire illustrate how public managers address complex problems through strategic partnerships, networks, contractual relationships, alliances, committees, coalitions, consortia, and councils as they function together to meet public demands through other government agencies, nonprofit associations, for-profit entities, and many other types of nongovernmental organizations.Beyond the "how" and "why," Collaborative Public Management identifies the importance of different managerial approaches by breaking them down into parts and sequences, and describing the many kinds of collaborative activities and processes that allow local governments to function in new ways to address the most nettlesome public challenges.

Collaborative Research is a compilation of essays and case studies reg arding research initiatives undertaken by public health researchers an d social... scientists based at two Chicago universities in partnership w ith community-based organizations, neighborhood activists, service pro viders and residents. This volume highlights major components of coll aborative research and evaluation processes, identifying key decision points and areas for discussion between partners. The book seeks to c ontinue the dialogue regarding collaborative research issues by presen ting essays and case studies that address experiences and lessons lear ned across diverse situations. It integrates the perspectives of commu nity and university partners representing a diversity of academic disc iplines, backgrounds and experiences.