Arbitration & Mediation

Mediation certification, part 2: the conversation continues at Cafe Mediate

By Diane Levin

Each month at Cafe Mediate, the monthly podcast series, a group of ADR professionals gathers to discuss the business, practice, and future of the field.

Last month we began a two-part discussion of certification and credentialing for mediators in private practice. Professional mediator  and author Tammy Lenski, international business mediator Amanda Bucklow, commercial mediator Victoria Pynchon, conflict specialist and NYC law enforcement detective Jeff Thompson and I continue the conversation on mediator certification, exploring these and other questions:

• Should certification be benchmarked to the lowest common denominator of qualifications, to a high standard that is difficult to achieve, or somewhere in between?
• What value would certification offer the public, and how would it benefit individual mediators as well as the growth of mediation as a profession?
• How do we know certification would improve the quality of mediation services for consumers?
• In what ways might certification have a negative impact on mediators and growth as a profession?

You can download or listen to Mediator Certification: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? (Part 2).

To enjoy this and earlier episodes of Cafe Mediate (motto: “where conversation, not caffeine, is the stimulant”), you can:

• Stream the 45-minute audio from the Cafe Mediate site
• Download it from iTunes
• Subscribe to get notice automatically when new episodes become available

We welcome your suggestions. If you have a question you’d like us to consider or a topic you’d like to hear us address, please submit your ideas in the comment section to this post.

Full post as published by Online Guide to Mediation on April 22, 2010 (boomark / email).