Conflict Resolution Techniques For School Counselors
Conflict Resolution Techniques For School Counselors
Course Study Description
CCEUS07 - Conflict Resolution Techniques For School Counselors [10 contact hours] - [$50.00 - NO OTHER COURSE FEES APPLY]The increasing level of interpersonal confrontation and conflict in the schools has led to many counselors becoming involved in resolving these differences between students in their schools. The elements of conflict resolution are reviewed and discussed, and strategies employed in getting students to "get along" are outlined. The steps in the process and the role of the counselor in the alleviating the interpersonal conflicts between students are discussed.
Course Directions
Click on the Course Directions page to read course procedures.
Course Outcomes
As a result of the work in this course the counselor/student will:
discover the principle of quality learning.
review important communication strategies.
learn the basics of communication - listening, attending, and pacing.
understand multicultural implications of communication.
become aware of the basics of questioning - socratic questioning, closed questioning, and leading questions.
understand questioning and higher-order thinking.
develop and understanding of: encouraging skills, paraphrasing skills, reflecting feelings.
know the basic listening sequence.
understand focusing.
learn the seven influencing skills.
review communication and problem-solving skills - five stage problem solving process.
learn alternatives to violence - mediation and peer mediation.
develop a program of peer mediation and conflict resolution for a school [project option]
learn the definition of process curriculum in conflict resolution.
learn the definition of the peaceable classroom in conflict resolution.
learn the definition of the peaceable school in conflict resolution.
Text [Required Reading To Be Prepared For The Exam]
Face To Face: Communication And Conflict Resolution In The Schools. by Philip Morse & Allen Ivey ISBN #0803963084 $16.95 on The Bookstore Page .
ASCA Position Statement: Professional School Counselor And Conflict Resolution Programs http://www.schoolcounselor.org/content.cfm?L1=1000&L2=11
Study Guide Questions
What are the principles of Quality Learning and how would they apply to conflict resolution?
Define pacing and leading and explain why they would be important communication strategies.
Who was Socrates and what is the socratic questioning method?
How can questioning skills contribute to conflict resolution?
Describe how paraphrasing skills aid in listening and communication.
Why is summarizing important?
What is the basic listening sequence?
Discuss in detail the Final Stage Problem Solving Model.
What is the Alternatives To Violence Program?
Describe an effective peer mediation program.
What is meant by a process curriculum in conflict resolution?
What is meant by the peaceable classroom and peaceable schools in conflict resolution?
Vocabulary
 |
microskills |
|
listening |
|
pacing |
|
mirroring |
|
attending |
|
Socratic method |
|
closed questions |
|
leading questions |
|
encouraging |
|
questioning skills |
|
focusing |
|
influencing |
|
problem solving |
|
conflicts |
|
mediation |
|
peer mediation |
|
conflict resolution |
|
confronting |
|
influencing |
|
clarification |
|
probe assumptions |
|
viewpoints |
|
perspective |
|
self-disclosure |
|
eye contact |
|
body language |
|
vocal tone |
|
speech rate |
|
paraphrasing |
|
open question |
|
reflecting |
|
structuring |
|
process curriculum |
|
peaceable classrooms |
|
peaceable schools |
Supplementary Readings [Required Reading To Be Prepared For The Exam]
Too many of our young people are caught up in conflicts every day that they do not know how to manage--teasing, jealousy, and physical aggression. Juvenile delinquency and violence are symptoms of youth's inability to manage conflict in their lives. Teaching youth how to manage conflict in a productive way can help reduce incidents of violent behavior. Conflict resolution education is a beneficial component of a comprehensive violence prevention and intervention program in schools and communities.
Conflict resolution education encompasses problem solving in which the parties in dispute express their points of view, voice their interests, and find mutually acceptable solutions. Conflict resolution education programs help the parties recognize that while conflict happens all the time, people can learn new skills to deal with conflict in nonviolent ways. The programs that appear to be most effective are comprehensive and involve multiple components such as the problem-solving processes and principles of conflict resolution, the basics of effective communication and listening, critical and creative thinking, and an emphasis on personal responsibility and self-discipline.
According to William DeJong, a lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, "The best school-based violence prevention programs seek to do more than reach the individual child. They instead try to change the total school environment, to create a safe community that lives by a credo of non-violence and multicultural appreciation." Most school violence-prevention programs include conflict resolution education.
Effective conflict resolution education programs can:
| Enable children to respond nonviolently to conflict by using the conflict resolution problem-solving processes of negotiation, mediation, and consensus decision-making. |
| Enable educators' ability to manage students' behavior
without coercion by emphasizing personal responsibility and self-discipline.
|
| Mobilize community involvement in violence prevention through education programs and services, such as expanding the role of youth as effective citizens beyond the school into the community. |
Experts identify four school-based conflict resolution strategies that can be replicated in other settings. These are commonly referred to as: (1) Peer Mediation, (2) Process Curriculum, (3) Peaceable Classrooms, and (4) Peaceable Schools. The Peaceable Schools model incorporates the elements of the other three approaches. In all four approaches, conflict resolution education is viewed as giving youth nonviolent tools to deal with daily conflicts that can lead to self-destructive and violent behaviors. It is up to each local school district to decide how conflict resolution education will be integrated into its overall educational environment. The expectation is that when youth learn to recognize and constructively address what takes place before conflict or differences lead to violence, the incidence and intensity of that situation will diminish.
The program examples provided below empower young people with
the processes and skills of conflict resolution. However, youth need to know
that conflict resolution does not take precedence over adult responsibility to
provide the final word in a variety of circumstances or situations. Conflict
resolution has a place in the home, school, and community, but it can only
supplement, not supplant, adult authority.
Peer Mediation Approach
Recognizing the importance of directly involving youth in conflict resolution, many schools and communities are using the Peer Mediation approach. Under this approach, specially trained student mediators work with their peers to resolve conflicts. Mediation programs reduce the use of traditional disciplinary actions such as suspension, detention, and expulsion; encourage effective problem solving; decrease the need for teacher involvement in student conflicts; and improve school climate. An example of a Peer Mediation program is We Can Work It Out, developed by the National Institute for Citizenship Education in the Law and the National Crime Prevention Council. The program promotes mediation, negotiation, or other non-litigating methods as strategies to settle unresolved confrontations and fighting.
One Albuquerque elementary school principal reported, "We
were having 100 to 150 fights every month on the playground before we started
the New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution's Mediation in the Schools Program.
By the end of the school year, we were having maybe 10 (fights)."
Other elementary schools using the same Peer Mediation approach to conflict
resolution education reported that playground fighting had been reduced to such
an extent that peer mediators found themselves out of a job.
Process Curriculum Approach
Teachers who devote a specific time--a separate course, a distinct curriculum, or a daily lesson--to the principles, foundation abilities, and problem-solving processes of conflict resolution are implementing the Process Curriculum approach. The Program for Young Negotiators, based on the Harvard Negotiation Project, is representative of this approach. Participating students, teachers, and administrators are taught how to use principled negotiation to achieve goals and resolve disputes. This type of negotiation helps disputants envision scenarios and generate options for achieving results that satisfy both sides.
In a North Carolina middle school with more than 700 students,
conflict resolution education was initiated. The school used the Peace
Foundation's Fighting Fair curriculum and a combination of components from
various conflict resolution projects. After a school year, in-school suspensions
decreased from 52 to 30 incidents (a 42-percent decrease), and out-of-school
suspensions decreased from 40 incidents to 1 (a 97-percent decrease).
Peaceable Classroom Approach
The Peaceable Classroom approach integrates conflict resolution into the curriculum and daily management of the classroom. It uses the instructional methods of cooperative learning and "academic controversy." The Educators for Social Responsibility curriculum, Making Choices About Conflict, Security, and Peacemaking, is a peaceable classroom approach to conflict resolution. The program shows teachers how to integrate conflict resolution into the curriculum, classroom management, and discipline practices. It emphasizes opportunities to practice cooperation, appreciation of diversity, and caring and effective communication. Generally, peaceable classrooms are initiated on a teacher-by-teacher basis into the classroom setting and are the building blocks of the peaceable school.
Studies on the effectiveness of the Teaching Students To Be
Peacemakers program, a Peaceable Classroom approach to conflict resolution, show
that discipline problems requiring teacher management decreased by approximately
80 percent and referrals to the principal were reduced to zero.
Peaceable School Approach
The Peaceable School approach incorporates the above three approaches. This approach seeks to create schools where conflict resolution has been adopted by every member of the school community, from the crossing guard to the classroom teacher. A peaceable school promotes a climate that challenges youth and adults to believe and act on the understanding that a diverse, nonviolent society is a realistic goal. In Creating the Peaceable School Program of the Illinois Institute for Dispute Resolution, students are empowered with conflict resolution skills and strategies to regulate and control their own behavior. Conflict resolution is infused into the way business is conducted at the school between students, between students and teachers and other personnel, between teachers and administrators, and between parents and teachers and administrators.
In an evaluation of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program
in four multiethnic school districts in New York City, teachers of the Peaceable
School approach to conflict resolution reported a 71-percent decrease in
physical violence in the classroom and observed 66 percent less name calling and
fewer verbal insults. Other changes in student
behavior reported by the teachers included greater acceptance of differences,
increased awareness and articulation of feelings, and a spontaneous use of
conflict resolution skills throughout the school day in a variety of academic
and nonacademic settings.
The usefulness of conflict resolution programs is not limited to traditional school settings. These programs are also a meaningful component of safe and violence-free juvenile justice facilities and alternative education programs. In these settings, conflict resolution programs are introduced not to replace but to supplement existing disciplinary policies and procedures. When opportunities are created to learn and practice conflict resolution principles and strategies in these settings, youth may receive positive life skills and acquire behaviors to carry with them throughout their lives. No longer do they need to feel that a crosswise look or a cutting remark requires a physical challenge that can lead to violent outcomes. They learn to control their anger and to react in a non-confrontational manner to diffuse the situation. When youth practice conflict resolution principles and skills on a regular basis, they begin to experience greater satisfaction in their lives.
The Youth Corrections Mediation Program of the New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution teaches youth and staff in juvenile justice facilities communication skills and combines the conflict resolution curricula with mediation. This program has a reintegration component in which families negotiate agreements for daily living before the juvenile offenders return home. The program emphasizes the need to model and practice communication and the problem-solving processes of conflict resolution. By providing alternatives to resolving conflicts, the program gives youth a model for positive expression and the peaceful resolution of problems. An evaluation study of the program reported a 37-percent decrease in disciplinary infractions among youth mediators compared with 12-percent for youth not trained as mediators. This study also found that the recidivism rate among youth trained as mediators was 18-percent lower during the first 6 months after returning to the community than for a control group not trained in mediation. The knowledge and skills of conflict resolution give these former offenders the tools to defuse or resist conflict situations and get along better with family, friends, teachers, supervisors, and fellow students or fellow employees.
Taking what they have gleaned back into the community and
family settings is often the biggest challenge young people face with conflict
resolution training, especially when others are not similarly trained. A number
of conflict resolution education programs have either originated in the
community and moved into the school or moved from the school into the community.
Regardless of their origin, the programs enhance the quality of life in the
home, school, and community. Parent and community conflict resolution education
programs build on and complement the school program. These programs provide
common vocabulary and problem-solving processes that serve as critical linkages
for youth who have been trained in conflict resolution in schools.
Community mediation centers are located in more than 400
communities across the country. These centers, which are typically nonprofit
community-based agencies, use trained community volunteers to provide a wide
range of mediation services to youth and adults. Through these centers,
mediation has been applied in common conflict situations found in the community,
schools, and families, such as gangs, business complaints of juvenile loitering,
school suspensions, truancy, and parent/child relationships, as well as in
juvenile justice settings. Community mediation centers also offer training in
conflict resolution processes and skills that may be used effectively in
personal and professional life for all age groups. Nationwide community
mediation centers have collaborated with law enforcement, schools, and other
youth-serving agencies in developing and implementing community-based
comprehensive violence prevention and intervention programs. A listing of local
community mediation centers is available from the National Association for
Community Mediation. (See contact information under "Resources.")
The effective conflict resolution education programs highlighted above have helped to improve the climate in school, community and juvenile justice settings by reducing the number of disruptive and violent acts in these settings; by decreasing the number of chronic school absences due to a fear of violence; by reducing the number of disciplinary referrals and suspensions; by increasing academic instruction during the school day; and by increasing the self-esteem and self-respect, as well as the personal responsibility and self-discipline of the young people involved in these programs.
Young people cannot be expected to promote and encourage the peaceful resolution of conflicts if they do not see conflict resolution principles and strategies being modeled by adults in all areas of their lives, such as in business, sports, entertainment, and personal relationships. Adults play a part in making the environment more peaceful by practicing nonviolent conflict resolution when minor or major disputes arise in their daily lives.
Delinquency and violence are symptoms of a juvenile's inability to handle conflict constructively. By teaching young people how to manage conflict, conflict resolution education can reduce juvenile violence in juvenile facilities, schools, and communities, while providing lifelong decisionmaking skills. These programs also combat chronic truancy and reduce the number of suspensions and disciplinary referrals. Reducing staff time spent on discipline and enhancing the self-esteem of participants are additional benefits.
Conflict resolution education teaches the skills needed to engage in creative problem solving. Parties to disputes learn to identify their interests, express their views, and seek mutually acceptable solutions. These programs are most effective when they involve the entire facility or school community, are integrated into institutional management practices and the educational curriculum, and are linked to family and community mediation initiatives.
There are four general approaches to conflict resolution education: process curriculum, peer mediation, peaceable classroom, and peaceable school. Programs often combine elements from these approaches.
Process Curriculum
Educators who teach the principles and processes of conflict resolution as a distinct lesson or course are using the process curriculum approach. The Program for Young Negotiators, based on the Harvard Negotiation Project, typifies this approach. Young people, staff, and administrators are taught to practice principled negotiation as a means of goal achievement and dispute resolution. Preliminary results indicate that participating youth are successful in discussing disputes and avoiding fights with their peers. Parents and teachers reported less need to intervene in conflicts and improvement in students' ability to communicate.
In a North Carolina middle school with more than 700 students, Peace Foundation's Fighting Fair, a process curriculum, was initiated in combination with components from other conflict resolution programs. Within a single school year, inschool suspensions decreased 42 percent and out-of-school suspensions decreased 97 percent.
Peer Mediation
Recognizing the importance of directly involving youth, many schools and communities employ peer mediation as part of a comprehensive strategy of violence prevention. Trained youth mediators work with their peers to find resolutions to conflicts.
In Las Vegas, Nevada, the Clark County School Board and Clark County Social Services provide a comprehensive school-based mediation program for some 2,500 students at 1 middle and 3 elementary schools. An evaluation of the 1995 program found the following:
| Peer mediators successfully resolved 86 percent of the conflicts they mediated. |
| There were fewer conflicts and physical fights on school grounds. |
| Mediators' mediation skills and self-esteem increased. |
| Effective mediators focused disputants on the specific problems requiring mediation. |
Peaceable Classroom and Peaceable School
Peaceable classroom is 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. Conflict resolution education is incorporated into the core subjects of the curriculum and into classroom management strategies.
Peaceable school programs build on the peaceable classroom by integrating conflict resolution into the management of the institution with every member -- from crossing guard to classroom teacher -- learning and using conflict resolution. Peaceable school climates challenge youth and adults to believe and act on the understanding that a diverse, nonviolent society is a realistic goal.
Evaluations of Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers, a peaceable classroom program, and Creating the Peaceable School and Resolving Conflict Creatively, peaceable school programs, showed significant benefits to participants, declines in conflicts, and increases in positive behavior by students.
Most conflict resolution and peer mediation programs, an estimated 7,500 to 10,000, have been implemented in our Nation's elementary, middle, and high schools. However, conflict resolution programs are also a meaningful component of safe and violence-free juvenile justice facilities, alternative education programs, and community mobilization efforts to combat violence.
The New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution's Youth Corrections Mediation Program teaches youth and staff communication skills and combines the conflict resolution curriculum with a mediation component. In the program's reintegration stage, families negotiate agreements for daily living before their children return home. A program evaluation reports a 37-percent decrease in disciplinary infractions among youth mediators compared with 12 percent for youth not trained as mediators. The study also found that the recidivism rate among youth trained as mediators was 18 percent lower during the first 6 months after returning to the community than for a control group not trained in mediation.
Community mediation centers are found in more than 600 communities. Typically based in nonprofit community-based agencies, the centers use trained community volunteers to provide mediation services to youth and adults in such conflicts as those involving gangs, graffiti, loitering, school suspensions, truancy, and parent/child relationships. Community mediation centers have collaborated with law enforcement, schools, and other youth-serving agencies in developing and implementing community-based comprehensive violence prevention and intervention programs.
Children need to be taught as early as possible how to handle disagreements with each other without letting their anger get out of control, and without using violence. As they get older, they should be helped to apply the conflict-solving methods that worked for them in childhood to the more complicated problems that appear in adolescence. Here are some reasons why learning to settle disputes fairly and nonviolently is important:
| Guns and other weapons are easily available, and young
people don't have a good sense of the consequences of their actions. So,
they may think that an easy way to win an argument is to threaten opponents,
which can lead to accidental injury or death, or even to the intentional use
of a weapon.
|
| Youth who learn to solve problems fairly and nonviolently
are respected by others, make friends more easily, and become role models
for others.
|
| Youth who use violence may die young or spend their lives
in prison.
|
| Youth who don't know any ways to deal with disagreements
will always be the victims of bullies.
|
| Unless youth learn to reject and avoid violence, they may
encourage the violence of others just by being willing to watch it without
trying to help the participants find another way to settle their dispute.
|
| In communities where youth witness a great deal of violence, they may grow up thinking that using violence is the best or only way to end a disagreement, unless they are shown other equally effective methods. |
Children's attitudes about violence are influenced by all of the adults in their lives (including the people they see on television), but what they learn at home is especially important, because their families are their first role models. Some parents, for example, never become violent, and try to avoid the violence of others.
Other parents, because of their upbringing or their experiences in life, believe that there is no way to avoid violent confrontations, and that it is all right to use violence to express their anger or to solve conflicts.
Parents' Attitudes
Parents may have attitudes toward violence that can lead their children to think it is all right to be violent. Here is a checklist of some of these attitudes:
| You must win an argument, no matter what the cost.
|
| Walking away from a dispute, even if it doesn't really
affect your life, is a sign of weakness.
|
| Compromising to settle a disagreement is a loss you can't
live with.
|
| "Real men" are aggressive, and it is important to
encourage aggressive behavior in sons.
|
| "Real women" are submissive and dependent, and shouldn't protect themselves from abuse, and daughters should learn to defer to the men in their lives. |
The best thing parents can do is teach their children to be nonviolent by example. However, even if you do not reject violence all the time, you can help your children learn to solve disputes without using violence and without allowing themselves to become victims. This is particularly important because of such easy access to weapons. It is necessary to teach your children that relying on violence to solve problems can have deadly consequences.
Here are some principles that parents can teach:
| Figure out what methods to control personal anger work
(like leaving a tense situation temporarily or finding a calm person to talk
to), and use them before losing control.
|
| Think beforehand what the consequences of different actions
will be: anger and violence versus walking away from a dispute or
compromise.
|
| Use humor to cool hostility.
|
| Never fight with anyone using drugs or alcohol, or likely
to have a weapon.
|
| Get as much information about a disagreement as possible,
to help solve it and to head off feelings of uncontrollable anger.
|
| Try to think of solutions to a dispute that will give both
sides something, and try to understand an opponent's point of view.
|
| Show respect for an opponent's rights and position.
|
| Don't make bias against an opponent's race, religion, sex,
or sexual orientation a reason for a dispute.
|
| Show character by rejecting the bait for a fight, or
accepting a compromise to a dispute, rather than responding with violence.
|
| Don't coerce a partner or be violent in a relationship;
this behavior causes distance, loss of respect and love, and feelings of
fear and guilt, in addition to the more obvious consequences of physical
harm to the victim and arrest of the abuser.
|
| Show that people like and respect nonviolent problem-solvers more than bullies, and be a nonviolent problem-solver yourself. |
Teach problem solving through your own consistently positive approach.
| Teach about ordinary heroes who stand up for others.
|
| Teach one on one, attentively, respectfully, equitably and
embracingly within commonly relevant contexts.
|
| Teach co-workers and peer service workers the benefits of
uniting around these principles.
|
| Teach how to teach. |
| Train not just to deflect violence but to aim for a
positive outcome (mutual gain) within an interpersonal situation.
|
| Train to train. Always learn from the standpoint of a
teacher. In order for training to pay off it must be reproductive, and in a
crisis situation, the likes of which is now confronting our kids, social
skills training needs to be taught and demonstrated at all times and
everywhere.
|
| Train in simulated real life scenarios.
|
| Keep a trainer's resource bookcase updated and handy. Keep
training as an ongoing one-on-one program. Train kids to train kids
throughout a program year with the goal of having everyone be trained at its
culmination.
|
| Involve everyone in training. Clerks, cooks, bus drivers, custodians, principals, personnel directors, health inspectors. Everyone has to know the same rules because innocent adults can inadvertently undermine training with deviating behavior. |
| Your trainer should know more than self-defense. A good
trainer will teach you how to turn a potentially lethal situation into an
opportunity for some growth of trust.
|
| Your trainer should train you to train others.
|
| Your trainer should be able to train you hands-on, in a
discrete amount of time. If a prospect cross-promotes going to seminars,
conferences, or buying all sorts of manuals, and videos, and games keep
shopping for another trainer.
|
| Your trainer should provide telephone numbers for further
assistance and information about reference materials and recommended
resources for specific situations.
|
| Your trainer should be able to train small groups of all different kinds of workers together, regardless of previous knowledge or job classification. |
Examination
The examination for this course is attached to this page. PRINT OUT THE EXAM. All examinations consist of both True-False and/or Multiple-Choice items with five answers. You must score 80% on the exam to gain the contact hours. When you have printed the exam, read each question carefully, choose the BEST answer and circle the letter of the answer you choose. Return the exam by mail to Dr. Budd A. Moore, Exam Scoring At CounselingCEUsOnline along with the signed Honor Pledge and a check or money order for $36.00 payable to Dr. Budd A. Moore. The exam and the honor pledge can also be faxed to our office at 1(717)597-2302; however, it will not be scored until the scoring fee is paid in full. When the fee and all of the materials are received, the exam will be scored within 48 hours. Results will be e-mailed to you as soon as they are available. A letter of congratulations, a certificate from CounselingCEUsOnline, and an official transcript will be mailed to you. Examinations will not be returned to the student. Records of your scores will be maintained by CounselingCEUsOnline and will be available for you for a $5.00 transcript fee.
Mail: Exams, CounselingCEUsOnline, 8864 Lorford Drive, Chambersburg, PA 17201-9335 OR
FAX: 1(717)597-2302
EXPRESS EXAM!!! CCEUS07 [Click Below]
Best experienced
with Microsoft
Internet Explorer
