Empowering the School Community: Conflict Resolution and Mediation (From Crime at School: Proceedings of a Seminar Held 2-4 June 1987 in Canberra, P 61-67, 1987, Dennis Challinger, ed. -- See NCJ-110911)

• NCJ Number: 110916
• Author(s): H Cornelius
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 7 pages
• Sale Source: Australian Institute of Criminology; National Institute of Justice/
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: Australia
• Note: For microfiche, see NCJ-110911.

Annotation

The Australian Conflict Resolution Network, a Peace Program of the United Nations Association (Australia), is helping to provide conflict resolution training for teachers, students, and parents in many Australian schools, which is intended to help reduce student misconduct and crime.

Abstract

The Conflict Resolution Network has conducted conflict resolution workshops for teachers to teach them conflict resolution skills which include win/win strategies, creative response, empathy, appropriate assertiveness, cooperative power, managing emotions, willingness to resolve, mapping the conflict, development of options, negotiation, broadening perspectives, and the third party mediator. The teachers in turn teach these skills to students in the context of such courses as general studies, history, and English. In some cases, teachers include parents in the classroom presentations and exercises. An outgrowth of the program has been the development of peer mediation programs in some schools. Trained student mediators conduct mediation sessions for students involved in conflicts. The program reduces teacher-dominated, authoritarian discipline, helps students to manage their behaviors constructively, and introduces parents and students to new ways of resolving conflicts in the family.