CADRE Resources

Conflict Resolution Education: Goals, Models, Benefits and Implementation

Introduction

All of us have experienced the negative impact of conflict on learning and the social relationships of students (K-16) within the school setting; on the teaching and leadership of K-16 faculty and administrators; on the interagency services rendered by related service providers; and upon the collaborative efforts of families and the educational community. Given the magnitude of the problem, increased interpersonal conflicts among students, families stressed in their efforts to meet the personal and educational needs of their children with disabilities, and discord among service providers at all levels - we must give serious attention to the design and management of effective conflict resolution systems within education. To that end, the Higher Education Initiative, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Special Education Mediation Service, hosted five regional "Food for Thought" dinners. These dinner discussions provided an opportunity for interested university faculty and administrators, school district staff and administrators, human service providers and juvenile justice staff to meet with mediators and PA SEMS staff to engage in initial discussions regarding this critical issue. The paper attached below was written by Dr. Tricia Jones for distribution at the "Food for Thought Dinners." Grace D'Alo and Grace Griffin assisted in the editing and preparation of the document.

Conflict Resolution Education in the United States

Overview

Conflict resolution education (CRE) has been defined as "a spectrum of processes that utilize communication skills and creative and analytic thinking to prevent, manage, and peacefully resolve conflict".

The Conflict Resolution Education Network estimates at least 12,000 public schools (K-12) in the United States have some form of conflict resolution education. Most of these are peer mediation programs, but many take a more comprehensive approach to making the skills of problem-solving a part of the formal or informal curriculum of the school.

CRE emerged out of the social justice concerns of the 60s and 70s with the work of groups like the Quakers. In the early 1980s, Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) organized a national association that later led to the development of the National Association for Mediation in Education in 1984. NAME subsequently merged with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution (NIDR) and its Conflict Resolution Education Network. Concurrent developments were the inclusion of law related education in social studies curricula; and, violence prevention efforts included in health curricula. More recently, social and emotional learning programs have been used in conjunction with CRE to increase the social and emotional competence of children and to reduce destructive conflict behavior.

While CRE efforts are primarily aimed at teaching students more constructive means of handling conflict, these programs often involve staff, teacher, and parent education and activity in order to help address conflicts that occur between staff, parent, teacher, and administration groups.

A school conflict resolution curriculum or program includes certain components that are intended to help develop critical skills or abilities for constructive conflict management. These include:

1) an understanding of conflict

2) principles of conflict resolution (win-win interest-based problem-solving)

3) process steps in problem-solving (for example, agreeing to negotiate and establishing ground rules for the negotiation, gathering information about the conflict, exploring possible solution options, selecting solution options, and reaching agreement)

4) skills required to use each of these steps effectively (for example, active listening, reframing, understanding, and factoring into the process the impact that cultural differences have on the dispute).

Bodine and Crawford (1998) identify six categories or skills/abilities that are essential components of all conflict resolution education initiatives:

1) orientation abilities: values, beliefs, and attitudes which promote nonviolence, empathy, fairness, justice, trust, tolerance, self-respect, respect for others, and appreciation for controversy.

2) perception abilities: ability to understand how oneself and others can have different, yet valid, perceptions of reality

3) emotional abilities: the ability to manage and effectively communicate a range of emotions, including anger, fear and frustration

4) communication abilities: active listening skills, speaking to be understood and listening to understand

5) creative-thinking abilities: the ability to construct cognitive models and to perceive and solve problems in new ways.

6) critical thinking abilities: skills to contrast and compare data, predict and analyze situations, and construct and test hypotheses.

There are a wide variety of goals for CRE programs, almost as many goals as there are permutations of the programs themselves. But, for the purposes of our discussion, we will talk about five major goals and give examples of more specific goals within each area.

1. Create a Safe Learning Environment

Decrease incidents of violence

Decrease anti-social behavior that often leads to violence (harassment, bullying)

Decrease conflicts between groups of students; particularly intergroup conflicts based on racial and ethnic differences

Decrease suspensions, absenteeism and drop out rates related to unsafe learning environments

2. Create a Constructive Learning Environment

Improve school climate

Improve teacher/administration/student relationships

Increase the valuing of diversity and the practice of tolerance

Promote a respectful and caring environment

3. Improve Classroom Management

Reduce the time teachers spend on disciplinary problems in the classroom

Increase use of student-centered discipline

4. Enhance Students’ Social and Emotional Development

Develop competence in pro-active conflict management skills

Increase perspective taking

Develop problem-solving abilities

Increase empathy

Improve emotional awareness and emotional management

Reduce aggressive orientations and hostile attributions

Increase the students’ use of constructive conflict behaviors in schools and in home and community contexts

5. Create a Constructive Conflict Community

Increase parental and community involvement in school affairs

Link school CRE with larger community CRE efforts

Develop more peaceful communities

All of these goals are related in the sense that each has, at its core, recognition of the importance of peaceful approaches to social interaction. However, the goals also differ to the extent that they reflect social justice ideologies. Some people believe that CRE is best used for the purposes of creating safe, orderly and constructive learning environments. Hence, their program goals reflect this orientation. However, some people have criticized the field of CRE for over-emphasizing an individually-oriented, skill building approach which fails to take into consideration larger social justice issues and underlying causative factors of conflict and violence. They argue that important goals of CRE should include the creation of communities that empower students and promote the development of tolerance that promotes social change and the reduction of oppressive systems.

One of the difficulties in selecting, implementing, and evaluating a CRE program is the apparent overlap between these efforts and a variety of other initiatives. Understanding the overlap may help you decide on the kind of program you want and on the goals you are most interested in achieving. This, of course, will help clarify the focus of your evaluation process. CRE has commonalties with violence prevention, social and emotional learning, anti-bias education, and law-related education.

1. Violence prevention

Violence prevention (VP) and CRE share the goal of helping people realize that violence is learned and that non-violent alternatives and solutions are possible. However, there are differences:

1) VP is more limited in scope in that conflict resolution education is concerned with issues and situations beyond violence. CRE is broader in the sense that it focuses on nonviolent as well as violent episodes. But, VP is interested in violence that occurs outside of conflict situations.

2) VP tends to be more systemic than CRE, to look more at the history and environment of the violence; analyzing risk factors for violence and ways of reducing those factors. CRE focuses more on the event itself, trying to find alternatives for resolving the conflict and repairing the relationship.

3) VP emphasizes policy change while CR emphasizes individual skill building and community education.

2. Anti-Bias Education

Many people have argued convincingly that CRE does and should overlap with anti-bias education because prejudice may be an underlying cause for conflict and we need to realize the impact of prejudice on the school and community.

Anti-bias education probably encompasses the broadest mission of the disciplines. It not only seeks to educate people on issues of oppression, but also strives to undo social injustice in all its forms. The programs are designed to foster positive intergroup relations and promote social justice. Most anti-bias education efforts fall into one of the following four categories:

1) cross-cultural awareness: learning about one’s own and other’s cultures

2) prejudice reduction and appreciation for diversity: becoming aware of prejudices and providing cognitive skills to avoid responding in a prejudiced manner

3) hate crime prevention: providing information and education about hate crimes and their consequences for the offenders, targets, and society as a whole

4) examining the systemic roots of oppression and strategizing to dismantle them: exploring issues of power and privilege, including the way in which our institutions can change these structures.

3. Social and Emotional Learning

There are two ways that the concepts and tools of social-emotional learning (SEL) overlap with conflict resolution education. Even when conflict resolution training is reduced to its most simplistic form, it requires students to authentically express feelings. And, social and emotional learning concepts can help students identify and understand triggers to conflict, and the importance of impulse control; and the need for perspective taking, empathy and compassion

SEL programs vary in their emphasis on the attention given to affective dimensions, but they all include:

1) some sort of initial emotional awareness/feelings assessment step followed by: identification of the problem

1) assessment of goals

3) consideration of solution

4) consideration of consequences

5) planning for action

6) means of assessing impact.

Many SEL educators are guided by the goal of fostering emotional intelligence through the accomplishment of the basic skills of self-awareness, self-regulation of emotion, self-monitoring and performance, empathy and perspective taking, and social skills in handling relationships.

4. Law-Related Education

Law-related education is an interactive educational approach which guides people in exploring the foundations and applications of law. Like CRE, SEL, and Anti-Bias Training, Law-Related Education helps us understand and define the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior. It focuses on helping students develop sensitivity to dynamics which create conflict, to learn intervention skills which prevent the escalation of conflict, and to understand how law enforcement and other methods are applied in resolving conflict or the consequences of that conflict.

There are four basic models of CRE in schools (Bodine & Crawford, 1998):

1) process curriculum approach (an entree to CRE characterized by devoting a specific time to teaching the foundational abilities, principles, and one or more of the problem-solving processes of CR as a separate course, distinct curriculum, or daily or weekly lesson plan)

2) mediation program approach (trains select individuals in the principle and foundation abilities of CR and in the mediation process in order to provide neutral third-party facilitation services to help those in conflict reach a resolution)

3) the peaceable classroom approach (a whole classroom methodology that includes teaching students the foundation abilities, principles, and one or more of the three problem-solving processes of conflict resolution. CRE is incorporated into the core subjects of the curriculum and into classroom management strategies)

4) the peaceable school approach is a comprehensive whole-school methodology that builds on the peaceable classroom approach by using CR as a system of operation for managing the school as well as the classroom. CR principles and processes are learned and used by all members of the school (including parents).

Obviously, the program models differ in their ability to achieve some of the goals that were discussed earlier. Models that involve more students, teachers, and community members and that integrate CRE into existing curriculum are more likely to achieve goals directed at school change, climate change, and social justice concerns.

F. What are the Proven Benefits of CRE?

Recently, the US Dept. of Education funded a national research symposium to assess the existing research in conflict resolution education. In collaboration with the Conflict Resolution Education Network, this process involved teams of educators and researchers working together to summarize and synthesize existing research and to suggest directions for future research. The information gathered falls into four categories and is briefly summarized below:

1. Student Impact

Multiple studies show many positive outcomes of CRE, including the following:

CRE increases…

• academic achievement
• positive attitudes toward school
• assertiveness
• cooperation
• communication skills
• healthy interpersonal/inter-group relations
• constructive CR at home and school
• self-control
• self-esteem

CRE decreases…

• aggressiveness
• discipline referrals
• drop-out rates
• social withdrawal
• suspension rates
• victimized behavior
• violence

Misconceptions about CRE:

• that it "fixes" children but does not impact adults
• that it reduces all conflict behavior
• a short-term/"small dosage" implementation will change conflict behavior
• that continuity of CRE at each developmental phase is unnecessary
• that skills enhancement alone will produce sustained behavioral change

2. Impact on Diverse Populations

• CRE can be equally effective for students from different genders, races, ethnicities
• CRE is effective with special needs populations

3. Impact on Climate

• CRE impacts discipline climate and general school climate in a positive way
• CRE effects on school climate are greater for elementary schools than middle and high schools
• CRE has positive impact on classroom climate, especially when climate is measured as the use of constructive conflict behaviors and/or the tendency to use constructive conflict behaviors

4. Processes for Institutionalization

• CRE institutionalization is more likely when there are adequate resources (e.g., there is a specific person to oversee the effort and adequate teacher training).
• Support from top levels of administration is key to institutionalization.
• Publicity about CRE enhances institutionalization.
• Infusion of CRE into ongoing curricula increases institutionalization.
• Support from professional associations (e.g., the Bar Association) enhances institutionalization.
• Institutionalization is facilitated in states where CRE can be liked to general standards or principles of education.
• Higher education involvement in CRE pre-service and continuing education increases institutionalization.

Not everything can (or should) happen at once. Most successful programs follow certain stages of implementation. Those stages are detailed in the following table:

In order to select an appropriate program model, you should first determine your goals and then evaluate which program models meet most of your high priority goals within your budget range. Several programs are described below. These descriptions are followed by a discussion of costs under "attending to resource realities."

There are many conflict education programs in existence. The following categorization is similar to that introduced earlier, although our labels and subcategories differ slightly to be more explanatory of the complex types of programs.

Peer Mediation Cadre Programs: Often referred to as "stand alone" programs, these are the most common form of peer mediation in the United States. These programs train a small number of peer mediators (usually between 20-30). Once students are trained, the success of the program depends upon the extent to which teachers, staff, administration and students are willing to refer conflicts to the program.

Whole School Programs: These programs combine peer mediation with additional training and intervention efforts to provide the "whole school" with information to improve conflict related behavior. However, the label "whole school programs" is a bit misleading. While some programs reach that level, many that fall within this category are less comprehensive.

• Additional Student Training: In the least comprehensive version a school might identify other groups of students (like athletes, student council, students under suspension) and provide basic conflict skills training to those groups as needed.
  
  
• Additional Staff Training: Working from the philosophy that children often model what they see, these programs attempt to improve the ways adult staff in the schools deal with their own conflicts by providing conflict skills training to staff (including teachers, non-teaching staff, and administration). Some of these programs even include members of Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA).
  
  
• Curriculum Infusion: These programs combine peer mediation with some form of curricular infusion, where conflict skills and concepts for constructive interaction are woven into existing curriculum (e.g., in English or the social sciences). Students in these classes are given a more sustained and applied understanding of how mediation and conflict skills impact a broad base of behavior and endeavor.
  
  
• True Whole School Programs: Obviously, these programs involve all of the above components. The peer mediation element is one part of a long-term, comprehensive effort to provide skill development and educational access to all members of the school community. In some cases, such as with cooperative education initiatives, these interventions occur throughout a school district and take years to establish.

Community-Linked Programs: These programs are the most ambitious of all. They are usually configured to be the logical extension from a whole school program. However, they can be community linkages to peer mediation cadre programs as well.

• Cadre-Linked Programs: In some schools, the peer mediators are linked to external community groups without any involvement by other members of the school. For example, the peer mediators may serve as mediation trainers or mediators in a local neighborhood mediation center. This increases the mediators’ experience and exposes segments of the community to mediation by youth. However, it is not designed to institute sweeping changes in the community or school conflict culture.
  
  
• Peace and Safety Networks: These programs, named after a project piloted in Philadelphia by Good Shepherd, involve a number of community members and organizations, linking them with the school’s programs and activities. Religious, business, and governmental organizations usually work together with the school to create innovative ways to "spread the word" about mediation and constructive conflict resolution, to institute applications for mediation, and to encourage community members to take part.