March 15, 2026
Friendly Excursions into Disequilibrium
Enforced harmony is counterproductive. Pushing students (or employees) to come to agreement prematurely tends to undermine learning (or produce bad decisions). Sometimes that’s motivated by a desire to avoid conflict. But conflict handled carefully is not only tolerable; it’s valuable. What’s problematic is debate – disagreement where the point is not to learn or seek the truth but to win. The ideal arrangement in a classroom (or workplace) is cooperative conflict, where spirited disagreement is non-adversarial and nested in a caring environment.
RESOURCES:
David W. Johnson & Roger T. Johnson, “Energizing Learning: The Instructional Power of Conflict,” Educational Researcher (2009) — https://tinyurl.com/yc7t265j
Karl Smith et al., “Can Conflict Be Constructive?” Journal of Educational Psychology (1981) — https://tinyurl.com/474ja9bu
Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, rev. ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1992) — https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/
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