This course provides a rigorous foundation for understanding conflict as a human meaning-making process that unfolds across multiple levels: the inner frontier of identity, emotion, and cognition; the outer frontier of culture, power, and structural conditions, and the meeting point where the interpersonal frontier and outer forces collide through communication. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from conflict resolution, psychology, communication, and systems theory, the course emphasizes analytic understanding and communication as tool.  

Students examine how conflicts emerge, escalate, and persist within individuals, between people, and within organizations and societies. Particular attention is given to the roles of identity, emotion, moral reasoning, and culture in shaping conflict dynamics, as well as to the ways communication both reflects and amplifies these forces. The course prepares students for subsequent training in negotiation and mediation by developing deep conflict literacy, reflective self-awareness, and the capacity to analyze conflict across micro, meso, and macro levels. 

Learning Outcomes  

• Conceptualize conflict as a multi-level process involving intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural dynamics. 
• Analyze how identity, values, emotion, and cognition shape conflict behavior and meaning-making. 
• Examine how communication functions as the primary medium through which conflict is expressed, misunderstood, and escalated. 
• Identify the influence of culture, power, and institutional structures on conflict interactions. 
• Develop reflective awareness of their own conflict orientations, triggers, and interpretive habits. 
• Apply diagnostic frameworks to assess conflict dynamics prior to negotiation or mediation intervention. 
• Understand communication as a tool that can be used for both conflict escalation and conflict transformation. 

Skills You Will Gain

• Deep conflict literacy
• Reflective self-awareness
• Capacity to analyze conflict across micro, meso, and macro levels

Who Should Enroll in this Course

• Potential or practicing mediators
• Professionals: Lawyers, managers, therapists, social workers, planners, teachers, real-estate agents
• People who must work collaboratively with other parties while negotiation solutions to complex problems

Course Format and Pacing
This is an online remote learning course delivered through UC Davis CPE’s learning management system, Canvas, with supplemental live sessions hosted on Zoom. The course consists of approximately 20 hours of content, combining pre-recorded lectures with mandatory live Zoom sessions led by the instructor(s).