When teachers wonder “What should I do?” in response to challenging student behaviors, the answers are not as simple as they might seem. What teachers can do also depends, at least in part, on external demands (e.g., discipline codes, principal expectations, time pressures on teaching content and testing) that can either facilitate or thwart positive resolutions of conflicts. The most effective teachers in working with challenging students had very positive relationships with them. For years, many school districts have provided training or support around positive discipline but with little evidence of improving the culture of punishment that pervades many New York City schools. This author found that most educators were not directly trained in the strategies their schools were trying to implement. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a tiered framework of positive behavior systems in a school. Success depends on having clear expectations that are taught, rehearsed, and reinforced consistently across settings. In spring 2012, The Atlantic Philanthropies awarded a three-year, $300,000 grant to the consortium that helped cover start-up costs, technology, and professional development. With this grant, the consortium has sought to support schools regarding student behavior. This was the beginning of what would become the Positive Learning Collaborative (PLC), an initiative jointly run by the United Federation of Teachers and the New York City Department of Education to help educators create positive school environments. The Positive Learning Collaborative (PLC) is a holistic approach that focuses on teaching reflective and restorative practices and was implemented in the New York City school system. To that end, educators are coached to be mindful of their own internal dialogue and to teach students coping skills to deal with feelings such as anger and frustration.
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Restorative Practices: Fostering Healthy Relationships and Promoting Positive Discipline in Schools
As educators partner with districts to move away from zero tolerance discipline policies and ramp up e orts to strengthen safe and supportive schools, address con ict, improve school climate, and build a positive school culture that students are connected to, many campuses are looking to implement alternative, restorative approaches.
This toolkit was developed to illustrate how restorative strategies can be seamlessly integrated into the classroom, curriculum, and culture of schools. It de nes what restorative practices are, explains why they are a transformational tool for fostering healthy relationships in schools and shows how they can be useful processes for students, educators, and learning communities.
This toolkit is intended for all educators who support the growth and health of students in schools. It is an introduction for those new to the concepts and will help support and enhance the work of teachers already implementing these practices in their classrooms. e toolkit includes digestible models, frameworks, and action steps for school-wide implementation, accompanied by guiding questions to support re ection for practitioners looking to make restorative methods part of the fabric of daily life in schools. It also recognizes the signi cant role all education professionals play in maintaining a school community that models respectful, trusting, and caring relationships.
Five Critical Steps for Reducing Peer Aggression: Early Childhood Practitioner Training Program
STEPS for Early Childhood Practitioners is a comprehensive training program using The Ophelia Project’s Five Critical Steps framework. Through this training, Early Childhood practitioners learn to observe aggression in the classroom and develop skills to carefully and consciously change the social climate of preschools and childcare centers. The training modules empower practitioners to integrate using positive language and pro-social norms as part of their everyday interactions with children and also shows how to create lesson plans to promote empathy, conflict resolution, respect, civility, and manners.
The Zone – Online Conflict Learning Module for Youth by Aik Saath
An interactive online learning module focusing on conflict and conflict resolution for young people of diverse backgrounds. Topics include the roots, the conflict, the effects and the resolution. Illustrated with animated storyboards and roll-over graphics.
A Comparison of Two Models Used to Predict Student Strategy Choice for Classroom Conflicts
Although the topic of conflict has received much attention in communication literature, the topic of conflicts between students and teachers has not. The purpose of this dissertation was twofold: to examine what classroom conflicts exist between students and teachers, and to determine which of two existing model best predicts conflict strategy choices for students. In communication literature, there is a divide in how conflict resolution is examined. Some researchers do so using communication predispositions such as argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, communication anxiety, and communication competence as a basis for predicting conflict strategies. Other researchers predict strategies from the perspective of attributions made in conflict episodes. In this research, two studies were conducted. First, 710 students were asked to identify conflicts they had experienced with classroom teachers. These conflicts were coded and categories of classroom conflicts emerged around the themes of class/work conflicts and teacher personality conflicts. From these responses, a new instrument for studying conflict, the Student-Teacher Conflict Index, was developed. In the second study, 171 students were presented with the new index which contained several hypothetical classroom conflicts. The students were asked to identify how they would respond in each situation. Discriminant analyses were conducted to determine whether a communication predisposition model or an attributional model best predicted students’ strategy choices. A mixed model was determined to best predict strategies with the trait of verbal aggressiveness, and attributions of responsibility, stability, and personal control being the strongest predictors. Additionally, it was determined that strategy choice seemed to influence channel selection: More students who chose distributive strategies selected mediated channels to communicate than did students who chose integrative strategies. Most of the hypotheses involving communication predispositions and strategy choice were supported, while the hypotheses involving attributions and strategy choice were not. These results were interpreted and discussed. Following this, suggestions for future research are proposed. Examining teachers’ approaches to conflict, or examining the affect of culture on classroom conflict are two examples of ways that this research could be developed further.
Application of the transactional view, An: A unique role for ombudsmen in campus protest
Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 3, Number 3, (May 2003), which examines the role of the Observer Program at University of Colorado, created by the Ombudsman office, in student protests.
Community justice in the campus setting
Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 3, Number 1, (Oct 2002), which examines the idea of community justice and how it can be used on college campuses to address student misconduct and improve socialization. Includes bibliography.