Domestically and globally many students are in physically and/or emotionally unsafe learning environments that are tak­ing a toll on their academic, physical, and mental health.

The following data from the National Center for Education Statistics (Robers, Zhang, & Truman, 2010) confirms the seriousness of the problem in the United States:

• In 2009, 8% of students reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property.

• In 2009, 10% of students aged 12 to 18 years reported that someone at school had used hate-related words against them, and 35% reported seeing hate-related graffiti at school.

American school children are not unique in their condition. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2009), in its report on violence and youth, reports that all over the world children are facing violent and unsafe contexts that must be improved.

Students are not taught how to deal with conflict and how to create communities in which social aggression is not acceptable. Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, and Schellinger (2011) summarize,

In a national sample of 148,189 sixth to twelfth graders, only 29%-45% of surveyed students reported that they had social com­petencies such as empathy, decision making, and conflict resolution skills, and only 29% indicated that their school provided a caring, encouraging environment. (p. 405)

The lack of basic competencies often trans­lates into inability to prevent or de-escalate potentially destructive situations as the Search Institute (1997) found; 41% of youth sur­veyed reported that when provoked they could not control anger and would fight.

One answer is to provide children with educational opportunities that build basic social competencies. As WHO (2009) con­cludes, “Interventions for developing life skills can help young people to avoid violence, by improving their social and emotional compe­tencies, teaching them how to deal effectively and non-violently with conflict” (p. 3).

To accomplish the outcomes recommended by WHO, we need to build better educational organizations and prepare them to deliver programs to increase the conflict, social, and emotional competence of youth. This chapter argues this point in three sections. The first section introduces the field of “conflict resolu­tion education” (CRE). CRE is defined and explained in relation to social and emotional learning (SEL), multicultural education, and peace education. The second section spot­lights exemplary CRE programs proven to build constructive conflict communities in educational contexts. The spotlight programs include the PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies), Second Step, and Strong Start SEL curricula; peer mediation and nego­tiation, bullying prevention, and restorative practices programs in schools. The final sec­tion contains guidelines for developing CRE systems with special attention to global initia­tives and teacher education/teacher prepara­tion. The Conflict Resolution Education in Teacher Education (CRETE) program is pre­sented as a model of strong teacher education and professional development in CRE.