Research Paper Example: Challenging Conversation

The purpose of this study is to observe how teachers spot, engage in and facilitate online interactions where participants have conflicting beliefs and opinions. Then, use some of the tools and practices they use and analyze to see which ones work. This study was conducted over a 2-year time frame involving teachers and students. It included multiple school sites in eight countries. The teachers were recruited at each of the sites by their existing relationships with research collaborators. They taught students how to create media artifacts and they shared them on a social networking page where they interacted with one another online. They would conversation in challenging conversations. The data was collected by tracing all of the communication with teachers, including email threads, meetings, and the teachers' participation in social networking websites. They found that if teachers identified a challenging conversation and used the new tools to facilitate and deepen those challenging conversations with and between students they were more effective. The students also learned more from the conversation. One limitation is this is only done with eight schools in different countries. There aren’t enough participants, as well as they need to try this with students in the same country and students from many other different countries. An implication of this study is for teachers to use the new tools and practices to determine if a conversation is challenging and to facilitate it. 

This article is relevant to my research because it talks about what a challenging conversation is. The study was done with students and teachers from different countries, however, it still has similar findings. The article defines challenging conversations as expressing conflicting ideas. This relates to one of the main points in research question 1 about what makes a conversation challenging. In the research, my group and I conducted we found that disagreements of opinions can cause conversations to be difficult and the article agreed with that finding.

The purpose of the study was to examine the most commonly reported emotions encountered among healthcare practitioners when having difficult conversations. The study was done with 152 participants including physicians, nurses, medical interpreters, social workers, and other professionals. Participants were given self-report questionnaires, where they recorded up to three common emotions they had experienced or seen when having difficult conversations. The reported emotions were independently grouped into categories by two authors. Both authors went through the lists together and compared the categories and discussed until they agreed on where the emotions belonged. The results showed that there are five emotions that most commonly arise during difficult conversations with patients. These were anxiety, sadness, empathy, frustration, and insecurity. Key findings showed that 66% of participants reported experiencing anxiety-related emotions and 53% of participants indicated sadness-related emotions. One of the limitations of this study was that the data was collected from volunteers who filled out self-report questionnaires there may have been bias and dishonesty. The implications of this study could include implementing training on how to handle these emotions during difficult healthcare conversations.

This article relates to the research my group and I did because it talks mainly about how people react to difficult conversations. The article itself specifically talks about healthcare professionals and patients, however, I am assuming similar reactions would arise in college students. In our research, we found that college students react and deal with challenging conversations with destructive tendencies, including being angry, frustrated, and anxious. The article comes to the same conclusion that healthcare workers and patients deal with these challenging topics with these strong emotional reactions of anxiety, frustration, and anger. 

In this experiment, the purpose was to examine the relationship between team safety climate and team relational conflict at the individual level of analysis. In other studies, people who have a desire for closure need to reach conclusive answers to questions However, there are groups who do not have strong desires for closure. This causes great pressure and tends to reduce information processing during conflict. The hypothesis is people who desire closure and don’t receive it would be more likely to “freeze” their perceptions of a safe environment compared to people who don’t need closure. Methods of the study was conducted by using a questionnaire survey. The researchers contacted different offices from large corporations in Taiwan. They surveyed 840 members from 105 teams. The survey included a Safety Climate Scale, Relational Conflict Scale, and Need for Cognitive Closure Scale. They used the control variables consisting of gender, age, education, and tenure to analysis the results. The key findings of the study was a correlation found between Team Safety Climate and Team Relational Conflict. As well as Team Safety Climate and Need for Closure had a correlation. Limitations include that the study focused on individual perception rather than a whole group and its team members. The sample size was small so it can’t be generalized to a much bigger population. Implications for the research would be focusing on team processes. Researchers could develop and test more reliable scales. As well as focusing future studies examining other team outcomes such as the quality and quantity of team performance. 

This relates to my groups research question 3 about the outcomes of challenging conversations. This experiment studies what happens when closure is and isn’t reached in team conflicts. If closure was not reached it caused a great deal of pressure on people that desired that outcome. Many of the people we interviewed also desired closure at the end of their challenging conversation. The article also talked about how there are studies done about the effect of not getting closure after a challenging interpersonal talk and it can cause detrimental effect on relationships within the team. Changes in relationships is also something that was found significant in our groups interviews. After a challenging conversation people seek closure to allow themselves to debrief from the dialogue and in the process relationships may change.