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Resolving Conflicts in Schools & Classrooms Online


Course Outline


Course Description

Resolving Conflicts in Schools & Classrooms presents a proven and innovative approach to creating safer, more productive classroom environments based on creating "Peaceable Classrooms." This model emphasizes the classroom and the school as communities of caring and respect where six themes are emphasized: cooperation, communication, emotional expression, responsible decision-making, appreciation for diversity and conflict resolution. This approach was developed out of classroom teachers' practice and has been tested in schools across the United States and Canada.

Objectives

  • Explain conflict resolution
  • Discuss the importance of conflict resolution in school
  • Explore the three levels of conflict resolution
  • Evaluate the common myths about conflict resolution
  • Test the five different conflict resolution styles and their uses and limitations
  • Formulate one’s preferred conflict management style(s)
  • Plan a way to think about choosing conflict management styles
  • Examine a basic conflict solving method
  • Develop practices using the Win-Win Grid
  • Analyze the role of emotions in conflict
  • Discover formula for "I-messages"
  • Examine principles of teaching anger management
  • Evaluate degrees of anger
  • Develop various techniques for "cooling off"
  • Explore the role of communication in conflict and conflict resolution
  • Explain the five "Communication Potholes" and their effects on conflicts
  • Determine the importance of active listening
  • Develop active listening techniques
  • Evaluate the difference between positions and interests
  • Examine the process of principled negotiation
  • Assess the mediation process
  • Develop classroom applications of the principled negotiation and mediation
  • Evaluate the relationship between conflict resolution, community building, cooperation and perspective taking
  • Examine skills and attitudes which affect the productivity of a group and the satisfaction of its members
  • Mark the characteristics of different stages of team development
  • Interpret various points of view in conflict situations
  • Evaluate fears and expectations about issues around diversity
  • Distinguish between prejudice and discrimination
  • Determine institutional '-isms' that exist in our society
  • Develop strategies for addressing issues of diversity in the classroom
  • Examine four levels of cultural competence and how they affect the understanding of differences
  • Discuss the relationship between diversity issues and conflict
  • Develop strategies for building alliances
  • Determine the key challenges in dealing with issues of diversity and to model appreciation for diversity in the classroom
  • Explain the relationship between conflict resolution, classroom management, and approaches to discipline
  • Discuss the idea of punitive and instructional discipline and identify strategies that enable students to move from unskillful to skillful behavior
  • Evaluate the Prevention - Intervention - Invention model as a frame for classroom management and effective teaching
  • Choose strategies that help prevent student misbehaviors and encourage positive participation and a sense of belonging
  • Discuss effective intervention strategies that can help teachers defuse and manage conflicts and confrontations
  • Develop rationale for infusing conflict resolutions skills and concepts into the standard curriculum
  • Discuss strengths and limitations of various conflict resolution program components
  • Design program planning
  • Complete the final integration project

Curriculum Design & Time Requirements

Resolving Conflicts in Schools & Classrooms is a 13 week 3 credit graduate level or sixty hour professional development course taught online. Most modules take one week to complete. Module 10 will be completed over two weeks so students have time to revise and complete the final integration project.

Hardware & Computer Skill Requirements

Students may use either a Macintosh computer or a PC with Windows 2000 or higher. Students should possess basic word processing skills and have internet access with an active e-mail account. Students also are expected to have a basic knowledge of how to use a Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla Firefox etc.

Course Materials

Course Materials: Text - Waging Peace in Our Schools, Linda Lantieri & Janet Patti, Beacon Press, 1996, and the Resolving Conflict in Schools & Classrooms Participant Workbook.

Session Outline

Session 1: Overview of Violence Prevention and Conflict Resolution
Contents:
  1. Introduction: Violence in our society
  2. Roots and causes of violence
  3. The link between violence and conflict
  4. What is positive about conflict?
  5. Introduction to "win-win" conflict resolution
  6. Inventory: Styles of handling conflicts
  7. Talking about conflict
  8. How conflicts escalate
  9. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 2: Communication to De-escalate Conflict
Contents:
  1. The role of communication in conflict and conflict resolution
  2. The communication process
  3. Back to back: Understanding misunderstandings
  4. Demonstration of Active Listening
  5. Listening practice
  6. Demonstration lessons
  7. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 3: Feelings in Conflict
Contents:
  1. The importance of dealing with feelings in conflict
  2. Feelings on the escalator
  3. Expressing feelings: "I Statements"
  4. Principles of anger management: What the research tells us
  5. Cooling off techniques
  6. Demonstration lessons
  7. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 4: Solving Conflicts
Contents:
  1. Return to conflict styles
  2. Problem solving in conflicts
  3. Using the Win-Win Grid
  4. Practice solving conflicts
  5. Demonstration lessons
  6. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 5: Negotiation and Mediation
Contents:
  1. Principles of principled negotiation
  2. Positions and interests/demands and Really Needs
  3. Negotiation demonstration
  4. Negotiation practice
  5. Introduction to mediation
  6. Mediation demonstration
  7. Creative questioning
  8. Mediation practice
  9. Demonstration lessons
  10. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 6: Cooperation and Perspective-taking
Contents:
  1. Introduction to cooperation and community building - cooperation/competition and violence
  2. Principles of cooperative learning
  3. Practice cooperation principles
  4. The role of perspective taking in resolving conflict
  5. The Believing Exercise
  6. Demonstration lessons
  7. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 7: Diversity and Conflict
Contents:
  1. Introduction: What is diversity? Why include diversity in conflict resolution and violence prevention?
  2. Diversity: What the research tells us about valuing diversity
  3. Exploring our heritage/Groups we are a part of and why
  4. Microlab: ethnic and cultural sharing
  5. Introduction to assessing cultural competencies model
  6. Using the assessing cultural competencies model
  7. Looking at privilege
  8. The oppression/internalized oppression model
  9. Demonstration lessons
  10. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 8: More on Diversity and Conflict
Contents:
  1. Diversity and the conflict escalator
  2. What the research tells us about prejudice and stereotyping
  3. Microlab: Personal experiences interrupting prejudice
  4. Introduction to strategies for interrupting prejudice
  5. Practicing interrupting prejudice
  6. The role of allies
  7. Demonstration lessons
  8. Implications for teaching and classroom management

Session 9: Conflict Resolution as a Component in Classroom Management and Discipline
Contents:
  1. Introduction to conflict resolution and classroom management/discipline
  2. Overview: The prevention/Intervention/Invention model
  3. Using the PII model to think about classroom practice
  4. Case studies: Intervening in conflicts
  5. Peaceable Classroom assessment inventory

Session 10: Infusion and Implementation
Contents:
  1. Infusion models: What do they mean?
  2. Examples of infusion in action
  3. Overview of implementation models
  4. Different ways of teaching conflict resolution
  5. Developing implementation plans

Grading

    Assignment Points   Grading Scale  
  Forum Participation   25      100 – 93 A
  Reading/Reflection Assignments   50       92 – 85 B
  Final Integration Project   25       84 – 77 C
  Total Points 100    

Student Requirements

  1. Actively participate in all Forum discussions and activities.
  2. Complete all reading and reflection assignments.
  3. Choose one of the following two assignments for your final integration project:
   
  A.) Develop an outline of ten beginning lessons in conflict resolution which the participant would like to teach, and provide a narrative description of how conflict resolution will be integrated into one's classroom or school. The lessons need not be wholly original, but they should at least be adaptations of other lessons.
  B.) Complete a three to five page paper or project on one of the following topics:
   
  1.) After reading pages 21-27 in Waging Peace in Our Schools, write a narrative describing what people would experience if they were visiting your classroom. What about this scenario would you like to change? What do you feel good about?
  2.) Read and review Chapter 8 in Waging Peace in Our Schools. Create a mini-workshop you would conduct for the parents of your class, based on the information shared in that chapter.
  3.) Read and review Chapter 10 in Waging Peace in Our Schools. How does the description of peaceable schools reflect the school in which you currently work? What are some similarities, differences, and/or recommendations you would make?
  4.) Read and review Chapter 9 of Waging Peace in Our Schools, especially pages 216-222. Given this information about the RCCP model, what are the several first steps you would recommend taking in your own school in creating a more comprehensive conflict resolution program?

Student Academic Integrity

Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by our partnering colleges and universities and is subject to academic disciplinary action.

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To register to take TEI's Resolving Conflicts in Schools and Classrooms Online course, go to the Course Registration page.