Our browseable glossary of terms related to conflict resolution in education provides quick access to terms you may hear used in the field.

Another useful tool for understanding more general education-related terms is the ERIC thesaurus.

• Accommodation/smoothing

  Definition: A style of conflict resolution in which one person gives in or accedes to the wishes of the other

  Related term(s): Giving in - nurturing style of conflict management

• Acknowledgment

  Definition: confirming behavior that indicates awareness of or interest in the other person's perceptions, comments, or questions

• Action-oriented listeners

  Definition: listeners who concentrate mostly on the task at hand and prefer to listen to people who present information in a logical and organized way

• Affect displays

  Definition: spontaneous facial expression of emotion

  Related term(s): Emotional expressions, facial expressions

• Bargaining

  Definition: Competitive negotiation process

  Related term(s): Competitive negotiation, win-lose negotiation, hardball negotiation

• Bargaining range

  Definition: The overlap of the settlement ranges of the bargainers

• Biases

  Definition: Perceiving something in a way that is not accurate

  Related term(s): misperception

• Brainstorming

  Definition: Generating ideas for solving a problem before evaluating or critiquing those ideas

  Related term(s): Generating solutions

• Bullying

  Definition: Repeated, intentional aggressive behavior intended to harm another and to create power imbalance

  Related term(s): teasing

• Caucusing

  Definition: When a mediator meets individually with one of the parties in the mediation to talk about issues

• Causal inference

  Definition: Assumptions we make about what causes a certain effect, usually refers to judgments we make about why people do things

  Related term(s): attributions

• Certainty communication

  Definition: Defensive communication that suggests you are completely right and completely certain that you are right

• Clarifying response

  Definition: a confirming behavior that acknowledges someone by asking for more information about what they've just said or done

  Related term(s): Asking for clarification

• Classroom agreements

  Definition: Agreements negotiated by students and teachers about acceptable behavior in the classroom

  Related term(s): Classroom rules

• Classroom management style

  Definition: A general tendency to be either hands-on, hands-off or hands-together as a style of dealing with classroom management