ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors deal with the questions of content and process in turn, and within the context of the off-campus urban semester with which they have some experience. Students in a program of conflict education should engage in guided testing of at least three major propositions. These include: conflict is complex but analyzable and manageable; conflict can be functional; and conflict can be creative. The immersion process begins with a student's moving to a mixed or low-income urban neighborhood, as different from his/her normal environment in the case of the middle-class white as night is from day. The author also deal with the role conflict itself plays in the teaching/ learning process and present several alternative and complementary models of education that can serve as theoretical bases for conflict education. They argue that a false dichotomy is sometimes propounded between "academic learning," generally conforming to an associational model of learning, and "experiential learning," closely related to conflict education.
