Policymakers and Administrators
Welcome to the Conflict Resolution Education Connection’s resources for policymakers and administrators. Our goal is to provide information that will support administrators interested in promoting or extending conflict resolution work within education. The sidebar menu to your right provides a listing of the content areas we focus on at this site.
CRE Conference Presentations
Conflict Transformation Education for At-Risk Youth: Connecting With Kids
- Presented by: Sarah Bernhardt
- View Presentation and Abstract: Click Here
Harmony Island – Multimedia Enhanced CR Curriculum
- Presented by: Richard Goldsworthy
- View Presentation and Abstract: Click Here
Macro Models of Implementation: Policy to Practice
- Presented by: Terry Pickeral-Cascade Educational Consultants, USA
- View Presentation and Abstract: Click Here
Tri-C Sustained Dialogue Campus Network Overview
- Presented by: Ty Olson, Cuyahoga Community College
- View Presentation and Abstract: Click Here
Report on CRETE Partners in Texas
- Presented by: Margaret Leeds
- View Presentation and Abstract: Click Here
Lessons for Helping Students Develop Emotional Awareness to Support CRE
- Presented by: Christa M. Tinari
- View Presentation and Abstract: Click Here
Sample Catalog Resources
Below you'll find a randomized listing of up to 20 related items (we may have more...) drawn from our Resource Catalog.
| Resource Title | Description | Links |
|---|---|---|
| Developing and Assessing School Culture: A New Level of Accountability for Schools | This 8-page CEP position paper argues that education in our nation is at a defining moment, one with the potential to reshape our national conversation about school improvement. Successful schools--ones that foster both academic excellence and ethics--have positive school cultures (or "climates"). CEP defines a positive school culture broadly to include all aspects of school life, including a safe and caring environment, a powerful pedagogy and curriculum, student motivation and engagement, professional faculty culture and relational trust, parent partnerships, and community collaboration. The paper presents case studies and educational research showing the impact of school culture on students' academic achievement and social behavior. Because a positive school culture is central to student success, the authors argue we must address how to help all schools develop effective cultures. Since what gets measured matters, schools must also be held accountable for having positive school cultures and must have tools for assessing their culture. If we are to prepare students to be lifelong learners and 21st century ethical citizens, we must develop a new "school report card" that includes not only test scores but also concrete indicators of the quality of school culture. | |
| 1st Report to the Nation on Youth Courts and Teen Courts | This national report (43-pages in MS Word format) documents significant highlights and events over a fifteen (15) year period of unprecedented and historic growth of this groundbreaking American juvenile justice prevention and intervention program that utilizes volunteer youth to help sentence their peers. The report begins in 1993, when fewer than seventy-five (75) local youth and teen courts existed in just about a dozen states. The report concludes fifteen (15) years later in 2008, when more than a record 1,000 local communities in 48 states and the District of Columbia now operate these local juvenile justice programs. Historic numbers of youth and adults are now involved, as more than 111,868 juvenile cases were referred to local youth and teen courts and more than 133,832 volunteers to include both youth and adults who volunteered to help with the disposition and sentencing of these juvenile cases. | |
| Restorative justice in the classroom: Lesson 4 the justice circle part 2 | 5-page pdf lesson which provides "students with an understanding of the process of Justice Circles and teaching them how to use this strategy in conflict resolution. Students practice setting restorative consequences and assess whether the consequences they identify would be effective in both healing the victim and helping the offender learn a better way to behave." | |
| Changing patterns of roommate conflict fueled by the net | Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 6, Number 1, (Nov 2005), discusses college roommate conflict and how it has changed in the age of "net-gen" students. | |
| Conflict management skills leadership competencies: A higher ed success model | 26-slide Powerpoint presentation given at the Sustaining Conflict Resolution Education: Building Bridges to the Future conference in Fairfax, VA, which "highlights a successful professional development program for staff at University of Wisconsin-Madison, this program infuses conflict management skills into the workplace culture, from new and aspiring supervisors to experienced program and project managers, teaching conflict resolution, facilitation, and mediation skills and integrating them into a broader leadership development curriculum, the program serves to build bridges and support for student leadership efforts, enhancing opportunities for peer mediation as well." | |
| Conflict resolution education in teacher education: Expanding CRE programs and resources | 22-page Powerpoint panel discussion presented at the Sustaining Conflict Resolution Education: Building Bridges to the Future conference in Fairfax, VA, which "provided an overview of the CRETE (Conflict Resolution Education in Teacher Education) project ... [a] program to provide pre-service teachers and school-based teaching mentors with critical skills and knowledge of conflict resolution education and class room management necessary for cultivating constructive learning environments for children, enhancing student learning and bolstering teacher retention." | |
| Conflict negotiation skills for youth | 186-page PDF training manual on Conflict Negotiation Skills for Youth. The manual is directed at government and nongovernmental organization personnel working with young people. It presents a variety of participatory training methods and exercises. Users are encouraged to refine and adapt the materials. The contents are organized as follows: Conflict Negotiation Skills for Youth: Facilitator's Guide Section I: Youth and the conflicts they face in daily life, Session 1: Understanding youth, Session 2: Understanding conflict, Section II: Techniques for resolving intra-personal conflicts, Session 3: Self-awareness, Session 4: Communication, Session 5: Negotiation, Session 6: Mediation, Section III: Techniques for resolving group conflict, Session 7: Group building, Session 8: Team building and cooperation, and Session 9: Advocacy for youth development References. | |
| Collegiate mediation programs: A critical review | Pdf article reprinted from April/May 1994 issue (Vol. 50 pp. 36-37) of The Fourth R, the Newsletter of the National Association for Mediation in Education discussing mediation programs at colleges and universities. Although these types of programs, like community medation, can be helpful in solving problems the author worries that mediation centers can become a controlling arm of university administration rather than a "meaningful way for the issues to be confronted by the community," remedies for overcoming this challenge are suggested. | |
| Promoting mediation center quality awareness using guided self-assessment | Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 4, Number 1, (Oct. 2003), which introduces "NAFCM's [National Association for Community Mediation] manual ... [which focuses] ... not on the direct provision of services themselves, but rather on the quality of the system through which cases are managed, mediators are trained and evaluated, and mediation centers determine what "quality"Â means in their communities, by encouraging community mediation centers to examine their goals and values in light of their communities' needs and values and to develop their own approaches to serving these needs effectively, NAFCM's self-assessment approach aims to increase quality without imposing restrictive and inappropriate standards." | |
| Strategies to prevent youth violence | 92-page pdf chapter from "Best Practices of Youth Violence Prevention: A Sourcebook for Community Action," which investigates "Social-cognitive interventions strive to equip children with the skills they need to deal effectively with difficult social situations, such as being teased or being the last one picked to join a team. They build on Bandura’s social-cognitive theory, which posits that children learn social skills by observing and interacting with parents, adult relatives and friends, teachers, peers, and others in the environment, including media role models (Bandura 1986). Social-cognitive interventions incorporate didactic teaching, modeling, and role-playing to enhance positive social interactions, teach nonviolent methods for resolving conflict, and establish or strengthen nonviolent beliefs in young people ... Mentoring—the pairing of a young person with a volunteer who acts as a supportive, nonjudgmental role model—has been touted by many as an excellent means of providing a child or adolescent with a positive adult influence when such an influence does not otherwise exist. Evidence has shown that mentoring can significantly improve school attendance and performance, reduce violent behavior, decrease the likelihood of drug use, and improve relationships with friends and parents." | |
| Practicing peace: A peace education module for standards 4 through 6 in Solomon Islands | 87-page word document which presents peace education for the Solomon Islands context. "The primary method used in peace education is generally referred to as a "facilitated" or "interactive" model of teaching. In this method, the teacher becomes a facilitator of learning and a co-learner with the students. Students and teachers use experiential strategies to practice skills for peace. There is a shift in the value placed on being a teacher. Using the facilitated processes of conflict resolution and peace education, teachers and students learn together and teach each other." Covered areas include: Interpersonal skills; Understanding and accepting differences; Children's rights; Building community and Mediation. | |
| Social and emotional learning (SEL) and student benefits | 12-page pdf document brief which "shares the latest research on the effects of social and emotional learning SEL) on students and includes strategies for implementing SEL, it explains how SEL works, elaborates on how SEL can be an integrative prevention framework that addresses the Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) core elements, and spells out implications of the research for SS/HS grantees." | |
| Promoting SEAL through circle time | 7-page PDF document promoting Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning through circle time for secondary students. "Circle time sessions provide a potential vehicle for the classroom delivery of the SEAL curriculum. Circle time is a time set aside each week when a whole class of young people and their teacher sit in a circle and explicitly engage in a structured programme of games, experiential activities, discussion and relaxation strategies ... It aims to provide an emotionally safe forum for participants to engage with a range of key issues, including peer relationships, conflict resolution, shared goal setting, justice, friendship, democratic principles, respect for individual differences and freedom of choice." | |
| The Dignity in Schools Campaign Model Code on Education and Dignity | The Dignity in Schools Campaign Model Code on Education and Dignity presents a set of recommended policies to schools, districts and legislators to help end school pushout and protect the human rights to education, dignity, participation and freedom from discrimination. The Code is the culmination of several years of research and dialogue with students, parents, educators, advocates and researchers who came together to envision a school system that supports all children and young people in reaching their full potential. Five chapters organize the 104 page document. They cover Education, Participation, Dignity, Freedom from Discrimination, and Monitoring and Accountability.In October 2013, DSC released a new revised version of the Model Code, which includes new sections on: social and emotional learning, prevention and response to bullying behavior, reducing tickets and summonses issued in school, reducing racial disparities in discipline through culturally responsive classroom management, creating safe schools for LGBTQ students and other topics. A community toolkit was also created to help groups make good use of the Model Code. It is available separately. | |
| Evaluation report on progress made through the OSCE's efforts to unify the Gymnasium Mostar: Summer | 51-page PDF evaluation "of the unification of the Gymnasium Mostar in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as commissioned by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to BiH ... the Gymnasium Mostar was an historic and premier secondary school prior to the war of 1992-1995. It was completely destroyed during the war and had become the centre of an effort to revitalize the historic Mostar downtown. An initiative to restore the multinational and high-quality nature of the school was viewed as an opportunity to use this divided school in this divided city as a model or beacon for potential reform efforts throughout the country." | |
| Reaching across boundaries: Talk to create change | 21-page pdf handbook which, "shows you how to conduct Mix It Up Dialogues. In the dialogues, participants will have honest discussions about social boundaries, and they will plan action projects that help cross those boundaries ... Mix It Up Dialogues aren't just about talking, however. They're also about taking action -- changing personal behaviors that may hurt or exclude others and engaging in collective projects to improve school climate." | |
| Role of conflict/conflict resolution in anti-racism education curriculum | Essay which "examine[s] the role of conflict and conflict resolution in antiracism education curriculum in school settings, the role of explicit antiracist curriculum in facilitating questioning, talk back, rethinking, positive conflict, and re-evaluating, are important conditions in teaching for equity and social justice, the impact of how the curriculum is used will also be analysed and explored throughout this paper." Includes bibliographical references. | |
| Gender Toolkit: A manual for youth peace workers | This guide aims to provide flexible and context-sensitive tools for supporting awareness and gender mainstreaming in youth peacebuilding organisations. It address the challenge of how to include a "gender lens" in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of different projects while integrating gender issues at the structural and organisational levels. These challenges can be addressed first by acknowledging their existence and making corrective entries to the organisations' apparatus of power, and secondly by transforming the challenges into something positive and productive. The 69-page guide provides a short overview of internal gender mainstreaming and gender mainstreaming in project management backed up by checklists and annotated resources in every section, best practices and trouble-shooters, as well as tips, quotes and advice. An appendix provides some activity modules that will lend a hand in addressing gender issues in organisations and projects. | |
| Conflict resolution, negotiation & team building: Reviewing an impossible course that worked | Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 5, Number 1, (Sept 2004), which presents the story of a "course teaching dispute resolution, negotiation and team building (ACS 201: Dispute Resolution and Team Building) [which] was designed to fit into the program's first year curriculum, this essay reviews the nature of the course and in some detail the student response to it." The course was taught at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario. | |
| Multi-party roommate conflict | Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 5, Number 1, (Sept 2004), which presents a "roleplay for a graduate course in interpersonal and small group conflict resolution, while it could be used for a mediation roleplay, it's written to be a 4-5 person small group conflict with no formal, outside intervenor, the expectation is that students can represent the characters and still demonstrate conflict resolution skills." |