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.

A very young administrator working at desk

CRE Conference Presentations

Connecting Schools, Communities, and Families through SEL

  • Presented by: Linda Lantieri, Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
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Lessons for Helping Students Develop Emotional Awareness to Support CRE

  • Presented by: Christa M. Tinari
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Developing Courses in Peace and Conflict Studies

  • Presented by: Vincent D’Agostino and Patricia Golesic, Sault College
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Preventing and Addressing Sexual Violence Against Children: Local Solutions for Ohio

  • Presented by: Debra Seltzer, Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence Prevention Program, Bureau of Health Promotion and Risk Reduction, Ohio
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Words Work

  • Presented by: Tricia Jones and Tim Hedeen
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Citizen Diplomacy as CRE: Building Mutual Understanding and Peaceful Relations

  • Presented by: Michelle Watson & Dr. Susan Colville-Hall
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View More Presentations 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
International Conflict Resolution Education Summary Slideshow Powerpoint presentation examining conflict resolution education activities around the globe.
PROS: Peaceful resolution for Oklahoma [high school] students 106-page PDF manual designed to help teachers and trainers teach high school students the art of peer mediation. Includes definitions, exercises to improve communication skills, leadership and problem solving.
Conflict resolution skills ladder 1-page PDF document which outlines a progression of skills and the behaviors associated with them in conflict resolution.
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.
Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL): Improving behaviour, improving learning This fully articulated curriculum resource from the United Kingdom is available as a 90MB zip file containing the full kit or as individual pdfs. It aims to develop the underpinning qualities and skills that help promote positive behaviour and effective learning. It focuses on five social and emotional aspects of learning: self-awareness, managing feelings, motivation, empathy and social skills. The materials help children develop skills such as understanding another's point of view, working in a group, sticking at things when they get difficult, resolving conflict and managing worries. They build on effective work already in place in the many primary schools who pay systematic attention to the social and emotional aspects of learning through whole-school ethos, initiatives such as circle time or buddy schemes, and the taught personal, social and health education (PSHE) and Citizenship curriculum. The materials are organised into seven themes: New Beginnings, Getting on and falling out, Say no to bullying, Going for goals!, Good to be me, Relationships and Changes. Each theme is designed for a whole-school approach and includes a whole-school assembly and suggested follow-up activities in all areas of the curriculum. The colour-coded resources are organized at four levels: Foundation Stage, Years 1 and 2, Years 3 and 4, and Years 5 and 6. Pupil reference material and photocopiable teacher reference material accompany each theme.
Mediation on campus: A history and planning guide Pdf article reprinted from the June/July 1991 Issue (Vol 33) of The Fourth R, The Newsletter of the National Association for Mediation in Education exploring the role of mediation at colleges and universities, with a list of questions that those thinking of starting mediation programs should ask themselves.
Institutional and Program/Practitioner Guidelines For Conflict Management in Higher Education Document (30-page pdf) provides a set of guidelines designed to support the development of comprehensive, educational, integrated and conflict-friendly approaches to managing conflict and disputes in institutions of higher education. The target audience includes key decision makers such as senior administrators, deans and department heads, ombudspersons, anti-harassment officers, housing and security administrators, faculty, student affairs professionals, and various frontline conflict services staff. The consensus document was developed by a national working group including the full spectrum of campus conflict resolvers. Presents a set of nine core principles that are elaborated on reflecting best practices in the higher education ADR field. Includes appendix with resource links.
Multiple Responses, Promising Results: Evidence-Based, Nonpunitive Alternatives To Zero Tolerance Research brief by Child Trends that finds that zero tolerance school discipline policies have not been proven effective by research and may have negative effects, making students more likely to drop out and less likely to graduate on time. Instead, the brief recommends the use of nonpunitive disciplinary action, such as behavior interventions, social skills classes, and character education.
Assessing the status of your school's comprehensive bullying prevention plan Pdf document which presents a series of questions to help educators determine the status of bullying programs, based on Dan Olweus's, "Bullying prevention program."
Preventing and countering school-based harassment: A resource guide for k-12 educators, rev. ed. 76-page PDF guide which "is the result of two conferences on racial harassment and numerous training-of-trainer administrator workshops conducted during the past eight years by the Equity Center (formerly the Center for National Origin, Race, and Sex Equity—CNORSE) where the intersection of the issues of racial and sexual harassment have been made clear by educators in the field. Although much national attention has been focused separately on the issues of racial harassment and sexual harassment, the reality is that when one form of harassment occurs, the opportunity exists for all types of harassment. Focusing only on one type of harassment can allow another type of harassment to go unchallenged. This guide addresses the more comprehensive issue of school-based harassment by capturing similarities in cause of, type of, and remedy for all forms of harassment while also addressing the unique and legal aspects of racial and sexual harassment, as appropriate. The hope is that the material will help school staff, families, students, and communities to create a safe and bias-free learning environment."
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."
National policies on education for democratic citizenship in the Americas: Analytic report 48-page PDF report with the goal of "address[ing] the gap in the literature on national policies in citizenship education in the Americas, providing an initial “mapping” of these policies, at the formal and non-formal levels. To that end, the analysis focuses on national policies and standards, the school curriculum within which citizenship education is embedded, places and age levels where citizenship education occurs, and the extent to which citizenship programs are evaluated. Twenty-five countries participated in this study. Selected demographic characteristics of the countries are reported in Appendix 1."
Introducing cooperation and conflict resolution into schools: A systems approach 29-page PDF chapter in the 2001 publication: Peace, conflict and violence: Peace psychology for the 21st Century by D.J. Christie, R.V. Wagner and D.A. Winter. The chapter argues the fundamental importance of a systemic approace to peace and conflict resolution education. The authors discuss five levels of "school systems through which one can introduce cooperation and conflict resolution concepts, skills, and processes: Level 1, the student disciplinary system; Level 2, the curriculum; Level 3, pedagogy; and Level 4, the school culture and Level 5, the community—will enhance the view of the school system as an “open system” embedded in a larger communal system which can aid in the sustainability of school system change."
Inter-agency P.E.P.:Skills for constructive living: Manual for training of facilitators I 59-page pdf manual which is one of the components of the “Inter-Agency Peace Education Programme, the programme is designed for education managers of ministries dealing with both formal and non-formal education and for agencies which implement education activities on behalf of the government ... the manual looks at the skills required to develop effective facilitation of adult learners, these skills are useful not just for a Peace Education programme but also for all aspects of the professional life of the people with whom you are working."
Community mediation centers and campus mediation Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 3, Number 2, (February 2003), which "presents some of the similarities between campus mediation work and that of community mediation centers and provides readers of the Report with more information on some of the potential benefits of membership in the National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM)."
Immigration & me: Lesson & activity excerpted from the Tanenbaum curriculum passages to immigration 3-page PDF lesson plan in which students (grade 2-6) interview family members to investigate their immigration story and discover where family traditions came from.
Making class matter and engaging difference 42-page Powerpoint presentation given at the Sustaining Conflict Resolution Education: Building Bridges to the Future conference in Fairfax, VA, which "explore[d] ways to make ideas relevant and memorable so students take the ideas home and apply them to their every day lives, examples will include exercises on how to understand and engage difference well."
Teach kids a lesson ... or help them to learn? 11-page PDF paper which promotes the idea of restorative justice practices in education as opposed to punitive ones. "Restorative justice philosophy views misbehavior in terms of how it has impacted upon relationships in the school community. Once the harm is acknowledged in a concrete way the process moves beyond harm to ask how can this harm be repaired? If schools are places of learning, where young people are encouraged to be independent and creative thinkers, are able to share their ideas and opinions, learn to accept the view of others, to be responsible and accountable for their learning, it stands to reason that the "punitive school" is being counter productive in achieving these desired outcomes."
Similarities and differences between campus ombudsing and mediation Pdf article from Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, Volume 3, Number 1, (Oct 2002), which "identifies and discusses some of the similarities and differences between mediation centers and ombuds offices on college and university campuses."
The Role of Restorative Justice in Teen Courts: A Preliminary Look In March 2000, the American Probation and Parole Association convened a focus group to examine and discuss the role of restorative justice in teen court programs (also called youth and peer courts). The panel consisted of persons working actively in teen courts and persons working actively in more traditional restorative justice-based programs. This paper provides a brief overview of restorative justice principles and addresses several key issues the focus group members identified that serve as a promising foundation from which teen courts can begin to move toward integrating more restorative justice-based practices within their programs. Key issues discussed include how youth courts can rethink the role of victims and the community within their programs, how youth courts can alter the way that their proceedings and practices are structured, and how youth courts can rethink and redefine sentencing options so that they are based on the restorative justice philosophy.