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 Teaching and learning conflict resolution with a variety of educators over a six-year period has shed light on the areas where teachers generally need theory and practice. It boils down to a few basic principles that need to be internalized to effectively teach conflict resolution to young children. Teachers need to: 1) feel comfortable with handling conflicts themselves, 2) know how to help children resolve conflicts and 3) be confident about consistently modeling conflict resolution practices. The first principle deals with attitudes about conflict. In Chapter 5, we explored concepts related to personal beliefs about conflict and individual comfort levels regarding conflict management. Getting in touch with one’s values and belief systems seems to be a necessary pre-requisite for understanding the paradoxes of conflict resolution practice. Similarly there is a need to understand empathy before one can learn how to take another’s perspective. Skills to Boost Competence in Conflict Resolution According to James Garbarino, a psychologist and former President of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development, emotional availability is a needed component of teacher education and training. Dr. Garbarino has researched and written extensively on the effects of violence and serious conflict in the lives of children in the U.S. and in war-torn societies. He advises, “we must find ways to support teachers and help them explore their intense feelings about conflict and violence before those teachers can, in turn, be a source of support and help to the children.” i After participating in the training course, Head Start teachers indicated that they had learned techniques that boosted their competence in resolving or facilitating resolution of adults’ as well as children’s conflicts. Often these techniques are simple and an integral component of everyday interpersonal interaction; isolating concepts such as emotions for analysis and discussion can be enlightening. After reflecting on the role emotions play when they are personally involved in a conflict at the adult level, the teachers in the study increased their use of feeling questions as a strategy to help children involved in classroom conflicts. Another technique that is practiced is the skill of listening without judgment to the stories of people who are involved in a conflict. Listening as a conflict resolution technique is so simple and yet so powerful. In mediation practice, storytelling is central to the process. Allowing someone to tell their story, from their perspective and without interruption or pre-judging, is an acknowledgement of their value and validity. It is a gift. Teachers learn that each person owns only their own perspective; and there is truth in the perception of what happened held by each party in a conflict. Rare is the conflict where someone is all right and the other is all wrong. More likely, there is truth in both stories. Other techniques that are practiced involve lowering the emotional pressure in a conflict, which can often be accomplished by a simple apology or gesture that shows the upset party that you are on their side. Our society often emphasizes judgmental approaches, which seek to find out who is “right” and who is “wrong” in a given conflict. In a heated conflict, both parties feel they are right. With an understanding of the concept of perspective-taking, teachers can see that favoring one side is not a win-win approach. When teachers practice steps and strategies to de-escalate conflicts, they usually discover that the techniques apply to adults and children. When a teacher needs to spend a good portion of time and energy on behavior management, everyone loses. It’s a no win situation. To manage conflicts and behavior problems, a variety of methods have been tried, with a range of success. Some teachers remove the item or child in conflict, such as time out or putting the toy away. Other teachers will determine who was at fault and tell him or her to apologize. Sometimes the situation is handled by explaining how that behavior does not meet with classroom rules and expected behavior. It was evident from the Head Start studies that before receiving training, teachers relied on a behavior management toolkit which usually boiled down to handling the conflict without asking the children to participate in the process. Teachers intervened by using strategies such as redirecting the children, transitioning to a new activity, telling the children what to do, and referring to the rules. They made unilateral decisions based on their adult sense of fairness, and often motivated by the need to maintain order. While keeping order is an important priority, teacher-imposed rules and consequences may or may not make sense or seem fair to the children. What lessons are children learning when teacher decides the consequences of their behavior? When teachers intervene in conflicts and handle them by making unilateral decisions based on their power, children are not given the opportunity to participate in the identification of the problem or conflict. They are not exposed to ways that the problem can be resolved and they do not get to practice problem solving skill building. When teachers intervene by using redirecting or transitioning to a different activity, children miss an opportunity to understand the consequences of their behavior and how it affects others. Time-out and isolating the child to “think about what she did wrong” does not engage her need to experience the “right” way to do it. A teacher who lectures young children about their behavior has not selected an effective strategy, either. Most young children tune out adult lectures and may never hear a word. We know as learners that the lecture method simply does not convey the lesson effectively. Active learning proponents give a retention rate of 5% for lecture, compared to 50% for discussion, and 75% for learning-by-doing.ii A more promising strategy for changing behavior is one that encourages children to see the consequences of their behavior. Experiential learning is a powerful learning technique for the young child, more so than using only their ears to listen to teachers’ words about what to do and not to do. When the children decide what is and what is not a good idea, they participate in decision-making and they practice problem-solving; they are building skills that will help them throughout their lives. Every early care and education classroom needs rules and well planned environmental factors, such as plenty of interesting materials, appropriate room arrangement, and a balanced schedule. Teachers have learned that reminding children about rules they helped establish can help to cut down on behavior management problems; the same is true with setting the environment in a way that all can see during a story and limiting the number of children playing in an area. Teachers rely on rules and the environment to prevent or reduce conflicts, which is good practice. However, when teachers learn only these prevention techniques, they have not gained skills to teach children how to solve the conflicts that inevitably occur in spite of the rules and in the best of environments. Prescriptive and Elicitive Teaching In his work on conflict transformation across cultures, John Paul Lederach discusses two types of teaching/training approaches: prescriptive and elicitive.iii The prescriptive approach is a knowledge transfer type of teaching model. The teacher is focused on mastering a model through cognitive understanding of it. The purpose and usefulness of the prescriptive approach lies in its capacity to outline concepts and conceptual framework to present new information. In terms of teachers or others who are seeking to understand how conflict works and how to better handle it, prescriptive teaching represents concrete ideas and approaches. A different approach to teaching is described by Lederach as the elicitive approach, which frames learning as an opportunity for discovery, creation and refinement of concepts learned earlier . Primary emphasis is placed on first discovering what people already know about conflict resolution and from there building upon the knowledge base that exists. A trainer or facilitator of teacher’s professional development could determine which combination of these two approaches best suits the needs of the group. In teaching young children, both approaches are used. When we use teacher-directed activities, we are using prescriptive teaching. When we use child-centered activities, it is more likely to follow the elicitive approach. Conflict situations are often resolved using the prescriptive approach, which is primarily a “telling” style. The adult or teacher decides how the conflict will be ended, often without consulting the child(ren). This is an appropriate style to use when only the teacher has the knowledge and skills to deal with the situation, or when time does not allow a more collaborative approach, a constructivist approach. On the other hand, the elicitive style encourages children to express their viewpoint or perspective, to share their ideas, to participate in creating a joint reality. This is a teaching and learning style that brings out the creativity and sense of discovery in children, as well as engaging their interest level. Being an “elicitive” teacher or trainer means that you ask questions and together everyone constructs meaning from the community input. Emotional literacy, also known as emotional intelligence or social intelligence, involves the ability to examine emotions (yours and others’), to discern meaning, and to use the information discerned to guide one's thinking and actions. In the groundbreaking book, Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence, Mayer and Salovey describe emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; this is the basic competency. The next level of emotional intelligence calls for the ability to access and generate feelings. In the third tier, one can understand emotion and emotional knowledge (meanings). At the highest level of emotional functioning in the Salovey and Mayer model, one has the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. Proficiency in emotional intelligence, they conclude, means both better emotion and better thought.iv Emotional Intelligence involves abilities that may be categorized into five domains: Self-awareness: Observing yourself and recognizing a feeling as it happens. Managing emotions: Handling feelings so that they are appropriate; realizing what is behind a feeling; finding ways to handle fears and anxieties, anger, and sadness. Motivating oneself: Channeling emotions in the service of a goal; emotional self-control; delaying gratification and stifling impulses. Empathy: Sensitivity to others' feelings and concerns and taking their perspective; appreciating the differences in how people feel about things. Handling relationships: Managing emotions in others; social competence and social skills. In their book, Children in Danger, authors Garbarino and Dubrow devote a chapter to helping teachers help children in serious conflict, trauma and violent situations. They assert that educators must come to grips with their own intense feelings about conflict and violence before they can help children move through their emotions. Further the authors suggest that without serious work on their own emotional attitudes and interpersonal feelings, teachers will lack the knowledge and confidence to be available to children and parents who need their help. Teachers must also acquire and practice facilitative skills to help a child recognize his feelings, clarify issues, and when he is ready, start to think of solutions. The Head Start studies that provide a foundation for this book give special attention to emotional literacy. Decades of research has clearly established that young children are capable of learning about emotions. Feelings and emotional literacy are critical components in conflict resolution skill-building as well as an important precept in peace education. Children must be taught skills that enhance their emotional literacy as early in life as possible. Some of these skills include 1) recognition of feelings in oneself and in others; and 2) the ability to describe feelings in self and others. Teachers in the Head Start studies reported more extensive use of feelings in problem solving with both children and adults after the training course. Excerpts from teachers’ pre and post interviews indicate that teachers tried to explore emotions both with children’s and adult’s conflicts more than they did before training. Some of those comments are found in the Participant Responses section of this chapter. Conflict naturally occurs in human interaction. Conflict, if managed properly can be a very constructive avenue for needed change. Unfortunately, conflict often challenges the emotions and communication capacity of most people, adults and children. When conflict and intense emotions are escalated, it is often more difficult to think clearly or to communicate well. In these situations, adults and children need to have a set of communication skills that will enable them to manage the situation, while helping others to achieve their communication outcomes as well. Conflict resolution skills are essentially communication techniques, verbal and non-verbal, ranging from reflective listening, to problem solving to mediation. Myrna Shure has developed a research-based problem solving model that is easy to learn and effective. The research foundation for the Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving model (short name is I Can Problem Solve) goes back to the early 70’s with inner city Head Start children.viWe use the I Can Problem Solve, or ICPS, curriculum in teacher training courses due to its simplicity, low cost, easy implementation and most importantly, the success we’ve had with early care teachers who noticed improvements in classroom behavior problems after just two month on the program. The ICPS model begins with teaching the children the vocabulary they need to understand interpersonal problem-solving concepts. The model teaches the children to think of their own solutions to conflict situations, but teacher and children must all be speaking the same language first. The second series of lessons, following the vocabulary, deal with emotions and perspective taking. Finally after two months of preliminary lessons, children are ready to move to generating solutions, and evaluating the consequences of those solutions. We have found ICPS to be a good problem solving method for Head Start children who are at least four years old. i Garbarino, Dubrow, et.al (1992) ii Silberman (1998) iii Lederach (1995) iv Mayer & Saolovey (1997) v Garbarino ibid vi Shure, 1974, 1992 DeVries, R., & Zan, B. (1994). Moral classrooms, moral children. NY: Teachers' College Press. Garbarino, J., Dubrow, N., Kostelny, K., & Pardo, C. (1992). Children in danger. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. NY: Bantam Books. Hersey, P., Blanchard, K., & Johnson, D. (2001). Management of organizational behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lantieri, L., & Patti, J. (1996). Waging peace in our schools. Boston: Beacon Press. Lederach, J. P. (1995). Preparing for peace. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Mayer, J., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence. NY: Harper Collins. Shure, M. (1992). I can problem solve. Champaign, IL: Research Press. Silberman, M. (1998). Active training. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.  |