Conflict Resolution Education: Making Peace a Behavioral Reality
CRE “models and teaches, in culturally meaningful ways, a variety of processes, practices and skills that help address individual, interpersonal, and institutional conflicts, and create safe and welcoming communities” (Association for Conflict Resolution, 2002, p.
5). Initially, the rationale for CRE was the desire to create safe learning environments—a rationale that was responsive to increases in school violence and school shootings in the late 1990s. In 1994, Congress passed the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act that funded the Safe and Drug-Free Schools unit in the U.S. Department of Education. CRE programs, especially peer mediation, were seen as an important violence prevention effort (Greenberg et al., 2003). Success in establishing safe learning environments was measured by decreases in violent incidents, number and severity of intergroup conflicts, and behavioral indicators like suspensions, absenteeism, and dropout rates (Archambault, Janosz, Morizot, & Pagani, 2009).However, as the field of CRE has matured, the superordinate goal has become to create constructive conflict communities that are socially just and tolerant. A constructive conflict community is one in which there is shared responsibility for social ills and social accomplishments. William Ury (2000) talks about this idea as “the third side”:
In our societies, conflict is conventionally thought of as two-sided: husband vs. wife, union vs. employer, Arabs vs. Israelis. The introduction of a third party comes almost as an exception, an aberration, someone meddling in someone else’s business. We tend to forget what the simplest societies on earth have long known: namely that every conflict is actually three-sided. No dispute takes place in a vacuum. There are always others around—relatives, neighbors, allies, friends, or onlookers. Every conflict occurs within a community that constitutes the “third side” of any dispute. (p. 7)
Creating a constructive conflict community requires involving parents and community members in CRE activities. Parents can and should participate actively in CRE—receiv- ing training, modeling effective skills for their children, volunteering with program administration, and so on. The school can also link with other conflict management and dispute resolution efforts in the broader community; for example, having student mediators work with community mediators to handle parentteen conflicts in the community.
Three related fields—SEL, multicultural education, and peace education—are considered here as subfields of CRE. Specifically, SEL builds the foundational social and emotional competencies, like empathy, that are necessary for all communities. Multicultural education develops students’ awareness of and tolerance for other cultures. And peace education emphasizes the importance of positive peace and systems that support peace.