Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers
Cooperation And Conflict
With cooperation comes conflict. How conflict is managed largely
determines how successful cooperative efforts tend to be. To
help ensure that students will manage conflicts constructively
(a) a cooperative classroom and school must be established, (b)
students must be directly taught how to manage intellectual conflicts
inherent in learning groups, and (c) students must be directly
taught peacemaking procedures--how to negotiate constructive
resolutions to interpersonal conflicts and how to help classm
ates do likewise through the peer-mediation process. The result
of teaching students to be peacemakers is that classroom learning
is enhanced, the quality of life within the school is increased,
and students learn the procedures and skills they need to r egulate
their own behavior and deal with adversity.
The Value Of Conflict
Conflict exists whenever incompatible activities occur (Deutsch,
1973). Interpersonal conflict exists when the actions of one
person trying to achieve goals prevent, block, or interfere with
another person's attempt to achieve goals (Johnson & Johnson,
1 995a). Whenever conflict occurs, it can be managed constructively
(enhancing mutual problem solving; maximizing joint outcomes;
strengthening liking, respect, and trust; and increasing participants'
ability to resolve future conflicts constructively) or managed
destructively (winning at anther's expense; creating anger, resentment,
hurt feelings, and distrust; and decreasing participants ability
to resolve future conflicts constructively). When conflicts are
managed constructively, they have considerabl e value. Constructively
managed conflicts, for example, increase creative problem solving
and enhance the quality of reasoning and decision-making; impact
healthy cognitive, social, and psychological development; help
individuals cope with stress and dea l with unforeseen adversities;
energize individuals to take action and promote change; maintain
higher quality relationships with friends, co-workers, and family
members; promote caring and committed relationships; and create
a sense of joint identity and cohesiveness within relationships.
In order for the value of conflicts to be realized, all students
and faculty must be co-oriented to and use the same constructive
procedures for resolving their conflicts.
Creating A Conflict Positive School
Schools need to become conflict positive places where destructive
conflicts are prevented and where constructive conflicts are
structured, encouraged, and utilized to improve the quality of
instruction and classroom life. To do so, students must be taugh
t the procedures and skills they need to manage interpersonal
conflicts constructively. The steps for creating a conflict positive
school include (a) creating a cooperative context, (b) using
academic controversies in classroom instruction, and (c) imple
menting a conflict resolution / peer mediation program.
The first step in managing conflicts constructively
is to establish a cooperative context. The more cooperative
the relationships among students, the more constructively conflicts
will be managed. The key to creating a cooperative envir onment
is to use cooperative learning procedures the majority of the
day (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1993). In addition to positively
impacting achievement/productivity, peer relationships, and psychological
health, cooperative learning promotes a long -term time perspective
and enhances the learning of social skills. The constructive
resolution of conflict within the classroom and school requires
students and staff to recognize that their long-term relationships
are more important than any short-term conflict. In order for
their long-term mutual interests to be recognized and valued,
individuals must perceive their mutual interdependence and be
invested in each other's well-being. Since cooperative efforts
require individuals to interact and coordin ate their actions,
social skills become an integral part of making it work. Many
of those social skills play an important role in the constructive
resolution of conflict.
The second step in managing conflicts constructively
is to use academic controversies in the classroom. Controversies
involving intellectual issues (such as whether to develop nuclear
energy as a power source) promote conceptual conflict s. In order
to maximize student achievement, student critical thinking, and
student use of complex reasoning strategies, teachers need to
engage cooperative groups in intellectual conflicts by having
members prepare intellectual positions, present them, criticize
opposing positions, view the issue from a variety of perspectives,
and synthesize the various positions into one position (Johnson
& Johnson, 1995b). Frequent use of academic controversy as
an instructional strategy allows students to practice their conflict
skills daily.
The third step in managing conflicts constructively
is to implement a conflict resolution / peer mediation program.
There are two approaches to establishing a peer mediation program.
The cadre approach aims to train a small number of sel ected
students to serve as peer mediators for schoolmates. The total
student body approach, alternatively, aims to train every student
in the school to manage conflicts constructively. Peacemakers
training is a total student body peer mediation program that
is based on the assumption that when (a) all students in a school
are trained to negotiate integrative agreements to their conflicts
and how to mediate schoolmates' conflicts, (b) all students have
the skills to use the procedures effectively, (c) th e norms,
values, and culture of the school promote and support the use
of the procedures, (d) peer mediators are available to support
and enhance students' efforts to negotiate, and (e) the responsibility
for peer mediation is rotated throughout the entir e student
body so that every student gains experience as and expects to
be a mediator. Without training, many students may never learn
how to manage conflicts constructively. Training all students
involves (Johnson & Johnson, 1995a):
- Teaching Students To Negotiate To Solve Problems:
Negotiation occurs when persons who have shared and opposed interests
and want to come to an agreement try to work out a settlement.
A person may negotiate to win or to mutually sol ve the problem.
The steps in a problem-solving negotiation are for both disputants
to (a) state wants, (b) describe feelings, (c) give reasons for
wants and feelings, (d) reverse perspectives (tell the other
person's wants, feelings, and reasons), (e) t ogether invent
three possible solutions to maximize joint outcomes, and (f)
reach agreement and shake hands on one of the solutions.
- Teaching Students To Mediate Classmates Conflicts:
Students must be taught how to mediate conflicts when schoolmates
are unable to negotiate a constructive resolution by themselves.
Mediation occurs when a neutral third person--a me diator--facilitates
constructive conflict resolution between two or more people.
The mediator (a) ends hostilities between disputants, (b) ensures
their commitment to the mediation process, (c) facilitates problem-solving
negotiations between them, and ( c) formalizes the agreement
that they reach by completing a Mediation Report Form.
- Implementing The Peer Mediation Program:
Each day pairs of students are chosen to serve as class or school
mediators. The responsibility is rotated so that all students
serve as mediator an equal amount of time.
- Refining And Extending Students' Negotiation And
Mediation Skills: Each week and every year further lessons
on using negotiation and mediation procedures need to be taught
to refine and upgrade students' skills. Students need to pra
ctice the procedures hundreds of times for overlearning, making
the procedures automatic habit patterns that students use when
serious and intense conflicts occur.
- Arbitrating Students' Conflicts: When students
are unable to negotiate an agreement and mediation has failed,
a faculty member or administrator may have to arbitrate the conflict.
Arbitration is the submission of a dispute to a disi nterested
third party who makes a final binding judgment as to how the
conflict will be resolved. The arbitrator carefully listens to
both sides and makes a decision. The process of having a teacher
or principal decide who is right and who is wrong seld om satisfies
anyone, leaving at least one student with resentment and anger
toward the arbitrator. More importantly, it reinforces students'
beliefs that they are not capable of working out future disputes
themselves. For these reasons, arbitration is t he last resort
for resolving conflicts within the classroom and school.
Conflict Resolution As A Discipline
Program
The implementation of the peacemakers conflict resolution
/ peer mediation program is, in essence, a discipline program
that empowers students to regulate and control their own and
their schoolmates behavior. Discipline programs can be placed
on a contin uum. At one end are adult-administrated external
reward and punishment systems aimed at controlling and managing
student behavior. At the other end are peer mediation programs
aimed at teaching all students the competencies and skills required
to regula te their own and their schoolmates behavior. Students
must be given opportunities to take responsibility for and make
choices about their behavior if they are to regulate their behavior.
Structuring opportunities for doing so is important because self-re
gulation is a central and significant hallmark of cognitive and
social development.
References
- Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive
and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
- Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1995a). Teaching
students to be peacemakers (3rd ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction
Book Company.
- Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1995b). Creative
controversy: Intellectual challenge in the classroom (3rd
ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.
- Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Holubec, E. J. (1993).
Cooperation in the classroom (6th ed.). Edina,
MN: Interaction Book Company.
|
Navigation
Home
Cooperative Learning Q&A
Essays (on home page)
About the center (on home page)
Newsletters (on home page)
Books and supplies
Contacting us (by email and
otherwise)
The U of M College of
Education and Human Development
The University of Minnesota
Etc.
Except as noted, the contents of this site are copyright ©
David and Roger Johnson. About
reproduction. |