In this article, the authors present the “insight approach” to conflict as an analytical and methodological framework that addresses the dynamic interactions between conflicting parties. According to the insight approach, conflict is relational, dynamic, and adaptive, generated from the responsive interpretive frameworks that parties use to construct meaning. Conflict arises as a result of parties' experience of what insight theorists call “threat‐to‐cares,” which generates defend–attack patterns of interaction between them. The authors suggest that rethinking the nature of conflict so that it is seen as an interaction embedded in meaning making enables conflict interveners to help parties gain insight into, and articulate, the values that are being generated, advanced, threatened, and realigned within the complex interactions that define us as social beings. In doing so, parties develop abilities to generate new patterns and solutions that can limit and even eliminate the experiences of threat that generate conflict between them.

Insight mediation is the name we have given to the model of mediation that is taught and practiced at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. The name has evolved from our efforts to situate the model in relation to the transformative and narrative styles of mediation. Drawing upon the work of Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan and his theory of insight, mediators practicing this model seek direct and inverse insights into what the conflict means to each party by discovering what each party cares about and how that threatens the other party. Insights shift attitudes and create space for collective action. The authors argue that coming to recognize the theoretical underpinnings of our practice helps us become better practitioners.

Th e authors report on their exploratory study examining the learning process embedded in mediation. Th eir research procedures involved directed refl exive journaling followed by group discussions to generate insights into how mediation practitioners experience learning in mediation. Th e signifi cance and role of emotion emerged as central to the dynamic of this learning process. Th e research indicates that the experience of positive and negative emotions attached to learning needs to be allowed and attended to within the mediation dynamic. Th is suggests that mediation practitioners need the competence to follow and understand their own learning-attached emotions as well as those of the parties.A lthough emotion has often been observed as an integral aspect of confl ict, it is only in recent years that the role of emotion in the negotiation and mediation of confl ict has received much attention (Shapiro 2002;Schreier 2002). Th is attention has emphasized, among other topics, the role and presence of emotion attached to the substance of the confl ict itself (Lund 2000;Jones and Bodtker 2001;Jameson et al. 2009). We build on this attention by introducing questions and possibilities concerning the presence and role of emotions associated with the learning process embedded in the mediation of confl ict.Our research began as an exploratory inquiry into the experience of the learning process within the practice of insight mediation. What emerged was the overwhelming presence of emotions attached to the learning process itself. While focused on the learning process within insight mediation, we suggest that our observations have relevance to discussions

This exploratory research examines how mediators' understandings of their work vary with contextual factors-gender, educational background, dispute sector, and length of time mediating. Results indicate that most mediators do not base their views of practice on only one theory of mediation. Consequently, the author argues for an integrated vision of mediation.