Teaching all students how to manage conflicts constructively: The Peacemakers program

David W Johnson

This article describes the principles, practices, and procedures of the Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers program-a comprehensive, schoolwide conflict resolution and peer mediation training initiative targeting grades 1 through 12. Through the Peacemakers program, students are taught to appreciate and manage conflict and to derive benefit and insights from doing so. They also learn a uniform set of procedures and competencies to resolve conflicts constructively, mediate their disputes themselves, and regulate their own and their schoolmates' behavior. Findings from research studies examining the efficacy and impact of the program in diverse school settings are also presented.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION AS A DISCIPLINE PROGRAM

Discipline problems are by definition disruptions to learning and to the overall cooperative nature of the school. Regardless of whether the school is urban, suburban, or rural, public or private, students increasingly report that the unruly behavior of many of their peers is interfering with their ability to learn. Snow (1997), for example, notes that students in suburban Minnesota reported frequent discipline problems in their schools, including problems precipitated by students' physical aggression (e.g., being punched or kicked, or seeing teachers being slapped or hit by students), property damage (e.g., bathroom wastebaskets set afire, lavatory sinks beaten off the wall with baseball bats), and incivility (e.g., profanity in the hallways, swearing at teachers in the classroom).

To address these problems, schools frequently institute schoolwide discipline programs. The bulk of these programs emphasize teacher-administrated external rewards and punishments that control and manage student behavior. They are based on the premise that it is up to school staff to monitor student behavior, determine whether that behavior is or is not within the bounds of acceptability, and force students to terminate inappropriate actions. When the infractions are minor, the staff often arbitrate (e.g., "The pencil belongs to Mary. Jane, be quiet and sit down.") or cajole students to end hostilities (e.g., "Let's forgive and forget. Shake hands and be friends."). If those approaches do not work, students may be sent to the principal's office for a stern but cursory lecture about the value of getting along, a warning that more drastic action will ensue if the conflict continues, and a final admonition to "go and fight no more." If that does not work, students may be sent to a "time-out room" for quiet reflection and cooling off. As a final step, some students may be expelled from school.

Such programs teach students that adults or authority figures are needed to resolve conflicts. They cost a great deal in terms of instructional and administrative time, and they work only as long as students are kept under surveillance. While they help adults to become more skillful in controlling students, they do not empower students to learn the procedures, skills, and attitudes required to resolve conflicts constructively-for and by themselves-in their personal lives at home, in school, at work, and in the community.

As Berk (1994) notes, requiring students to obey rules out of the fear of punishment reduces student self-regulation. By contrast, allowing students to be joint architects in matters affecting them promotes their feelings of control and autonomy, higher level moral reasoning, and ultimate self-regulation of behavior. Thus, at the other end of the school discipline program continuum are those programs aimed at teaching students self-- responsibility and self-regulation. Peer-mediation programs anchor disciplinary efforts of this sort. Such programs are based on the premise that if students are to learn how to regulate their behavior they must have opportunities to (a) make decisions regarding how to behave and (b) follow through on those decisions. In other words, the more students are given the responsibility of regulating their own and their classmates' behavior, the more autonomous and socially competent they can become.

Self-regulation and responsibility, however, require that students be taught a procedure for managing conflicts constructively. They must also be allowed to practice the procedure frequently enough to gain some expertise in its use. Moreover, the normative structure of the classroom must support implementation of the procedure. Thus, the following components must be put into place:

(1) a cooperative learning environment;

(2) an atmosphere in which the nature and desirability of conflict are understood;

(3) a problem-solving negotiation procedure;

(4) a peer-mediation procedure;

(5) frequent follow-up lessons to refine and upgrade students' skills in using the negotiation and mediation procedures (Johnson & Johnson, 1995a, 1995b).

Toward these ends, an innovative, comprehensive, and progressive conflict resolution and discipline program was created in the 1960s. This program, Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers, is based upon the following conceptual foundations:

(1) social interdependence theory (Deutsch,1949; Johnson, 1970; Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Lewin, 1951; Watson & Johnson, 1972);

(2) our research on integrative negotiations (Johnson, 1967), perspective taking in conflict situations (Johnson,1967,1971a), conflict resolution in the school Johnson,1970,1971b; Johnson, Johnson, & Johnson, 1976), communication in conflict situations (Johnson, 1974), and constructive conflict (Johnson, 1970; Johnson & Johnson, 1979); and

(3) our work training thousands of elementary, secondary, and college students, faculty, and administrators to manage conflicts constructively Johnson,1970,1972/ 1997,1978/ 1991, 1983; Johnson & Johnson, F., 1975/1997; Johnson & Johnson, R., 1995a, 1995b, 1995c).

The Peacemakers program is a guided curriculum for grades 1 through 12 that presents the negotiation and mediation procedures in increasingly more sophisticated ways as children grow and mature. The program is progressively implemented because experience has shown us that a few hours of instruction is insufficient to train students a high level of competence in managing their conflicts constructively. It takes years and years to acquire such competence; yet, by implementing an incremental schoolwide peer-mediation program, students are increasingly empowered not only to solve their own problems but to regulate their own and their classmates' behavior. The result is a comprehensive discipline program that frees teachers and administrators to spend more of their energies on instruction.

The overarching premise of the Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers program is a simple one: In school settings or elsewhere, the program maintains, conflicts are not the problem. Rather, they are part of the solution, an inevitable and pervasive part of school life. Thus, schools should be conflict-positive organizations-that is, they should be orderly places in which conflicts are encouraged and managed constructively. When conflicts are managed constructively, they can:

increase achievement and long-term retention of academic material;

increase the use of higher level cognitive and moral reasoning;

increase healthy cognitive and social development;

focus attention on problems and increase the energy dedicated to solving them;

clarify one's own and others identity, commitments, and values;

identify areas in need of change;

release anger, anxiety, insecurity, and sadness that, if kept inside, may contribute to mental distress and illness; and

strengthen relationships by (a) increasing individuals' confidence in their ability to resolve their disagreements, and (b) minimizing irritations and resentments so that positive feelings can be experienced fully.

Last but not least, the Peacemakers program helps young people to see that constructive conflict resolution can be fun!

Through the interaction between theory, research, and practice, Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers has grown and developed. It has been field-tested in a wide variety of school districts, countries, and cultures. A network of school districts implementing the Peacemakers program has been established throughout North America, Europe, and several other countries in Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, and Africa. Besides regular students, teachers, and administrators, delinquents, runaways, drug abusers, and married couples in therapy have been shown how to manage their conflicts more constructively using this approach.

This article describes the principles, practices, and procedures of the Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers program. It also presents findings from research studies examining the efficacy and impact of the program in diverse school settings.

TEACHING STUDENTS TO BE PEACEMAKERS: IMPLEMENTATION STEPS

Step One: Create a Cooperative Context

If conflicts are to be managed constructively, they must occur in a cooperative rather than a competitive context. In individualistic situations, people do not interact; therefore, no conflict occurs (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). It makes little sense to attempt to teach students to manage conflicts constructively if the school is structured so that students have to defeat each other in order to get what they want or are pitted against each other in competition for scarce rewards (e.g., teacher attention and high grades). For conflicts to be resolved constructively, a cooperative environment must be established. A cooperative context is most easily established by structuring the majority of learning situations so that students must cooperate with each other in order to derive the greatest benefit and rewards from their participation in the classroom (Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1993). In this way, students can more easily be directed toward achieving joint goals (Deutsch, 1973; Johnson & Johnson, 1989).

Step Two: Help All Students Understand the Nature and Desirability of Conflict

Many students, like most adults, tend to see conflicts as events or interactions involving anger, hostility, and violence. They tend to not recognize the benefits of conflict: that it can result in one's gaining insight, provide opportunities for learning, assist in problem solving, and afford a source of laughter. Through the Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers curriculum and participation in conflict simulations, students are taught the value of conflict. They become more aware of how they themselves act when involved in a conflict and learn to recognize what is and what is not a true conflict. To facilitate their role as peacemakers, they are also presented with criteria for determining whether or not a conflict has been resolved constructively.

Step Three: Teach All Students the Problem-Solving Negotiation Procedure

The heart of conflict resolution training is teaching students how to negotiate constructive solutions to their problems. It is not enough to tell students to "be nice" or "talk it out"-they must be shown how to engage in integrative or problem-solving negotiations. These types of negotiations differ from distributive or "win-lose" negotiations in which one person benefits only if the other agrees to make a concession. Disputants engaged in integrative negotiations work together to create an agreement that benefits all involved (Johnson & Johnson, 1995a, 1997). In ongoing relationships, only a problem-solving approach to negotiations is constructive.

The Peacemakers program repeatedly guides students in learning and using the following steps in negotiating conflict resolution until they become a matter of habit:

(1) Describe what you want (e.g., "I want to use the book now."): Define the conflict as a small and specific mutual problem.

(2) Describe how you feel (e.g., "I'm frustrated."): Explore your feelings and communicate them openly and clearly.

(3) Describe the reasons behind your wants and feelings (e.g., "You have been using the book for the past hour. If I don't get to use the book soon, my report will not be done on time. It's frustrating to have to wait so long."): Identify and express cooperative intentions, separate interests from positions, and differentiate interests before trying to integrate them.

(4) Summarize your understanding of what the other person wants, how he or she feels, and the reasons underlying both (e.g., "My understanding of your opinion or position is. . ."): Attempt to see the problem from both perspectives simultaneously.

(5) Propose three options for resolving the conflict that maximize joint benefits (e.g., "Plan A is....; Plan B is...; and Plan C is..."): Engage in creative thinking about ways to realize a win-win solution.

(6) Jointly choose one solution and formalize the agreement with a contract or a handshake (e.g., "Let's agree on Plan B!"): Reach an agreement, either formally (written) or informally (verbal) that specifies how each disputant should act in the future and how the agreement will be reviewed and renegotiated if it does not work; respect the terms of the agreement (Johnson & Johnson, 1995a, 1995b).

Constructive conflict occurs when all participants are satisfied with their outcomes and believe they benefit from the agreement (Deutsch, 1973; Johnson & Johnson, 1995a).

Step Four Teach All Students the Peer-Mediation Procedure

This aspect of the Peacemakers program involves the designation of students as mediators or neutral persons who are called upon to help two or more students resolve any conflict they cannot resolve themselves, usually by negotiating an integrative agreement. Mediating classmates' conflicts is perhaps the most effective way of teaching students the steps involved in the negotiation procedure. It differs from arbitration, which typically involves the submission of a dispute to a disinterested third party, such as a teacher or principal, who makes a final and binding judgment as to how the conflict will be resolved.

Each day, the teacher selects two class members to serve in this role, which is rotated so that all students in the class or school serve as mediators an equal amount of time. Initially, students mediate in pairs. This ensures that shy or nonverbal students get the same amount of experience as more extroverted and verbally fluent students. The mediators wear official tee-shirts, patrol the playground and lunchroom, and are available to mediate any conflicts that occur in the classroom or school.

The mediation procedure outlined in the Peacemakers program consists of four steps that those students who are serving as mediators are instructed to follow:

(1) End the hostilities: Separate the disputants, giving each adequate time to "cool off."

(2) Convince the disputants to commit to the mediation process and agree to negotiate in good faith: Introduce yourself to the disputants, explain the process of mediation and the role of the mediator to them, and lay out the ground rules for conflict resolution that they must follow.

(3) Help the disputants successfully negotiate with each other: Take the disputants through the problem-solving negotiation sequence outlined above.

(4) Monitor the disputants' compliance with the terms of the agreement: Serve as the "keeper of the contract," recording the terms of the negotiated agreement and routinely checking on the status of the relationship that evolves as a result.

If peer mediation fails to resolve a conflict between students, the teacher is enjoined to serve as mediator. If teacher mediation fails, then the teacher must arbitrate the dispute, deciding who is right and who is wrong. If that fails, the principal is called upon to serve as mediator; and if resolution cannot be achieved by that route, the principal arbitrates a decision.

Step Five: Reinforce and Upgrade Students' Conflict Resolution Skills

One of the most natural ways to integrate negotiation and mediation training into the fabric of school life is to integrate it into academic lessons. Therefore, at least twice a week, teachers are encouraged to incorporate into their instructional plans lessons that reinforce and upgrade students' skills in understanding and using the Peacemakers program's negotiation and mediation procedures. Almost any lesson in any subject area can be modified to involve students in role-playing situations that help them to better understand and utilize the steps involved in conflict resolution. For example, Peacemakers training exercises can be integrated into English literature units. Teachers can help students identify the major conflicts in a given novel and direct students to follow the negotiation and/or mediation steps to resolve these conflicts constructively. They can also lead them in role playing to accomplish this goal.

Teachers whose students are engaged in Peacemakers training are also encouraged to structure into their instructional program classroom activities that foster academic controversy. Academic controversy exists when one student's ideas, information, conclusions, theories, and opinions are incompatible with those of another. To resolve their intellectual conflicts, students must engage in academic activities that support and reinforce constructive problem-solving negotiation and mediation. They are first guided to prepare written statements advocating their positions on an academic issue. In these statements, they must also review and refute the positions of their opponents as well as rebut criticisms of their position. Lastly, they must offer a formal consensus of the "best reasoned judgment" based on a synthesis of the two positions.

FINDINGS FROM RESEARCH ON THE PEACEMAKERS PROGRAM

Although conflict resolution training programs are generally viewed as effective and the assumption that students should be trained to manage conflict constructively is widely accepted, there is very little empirical evidence confirming either perspective. To validate these assertions and extend the theory of constructive conflict resolution, we have engaged in a long-term research effort examining the effectiveness of the Peacemakers program. Thus far, over 12 carefully controlled field experimental studies with high internal and external validity have been conducted examining various aspects of the program and its impact (see Table I). Program sites were evaluated over a period of several months to a year. The studies focused on implementations in elementary, middle, and high school settings in urban and suburban school districts. The students included in the samples varied in socioeconomic background from lower- to upper-middle-class and were from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Student Conflict Behavior Prior to Peacemakers Training

Before exposure to the Peacemakers program, many of the students sampled were found to be involved in conflicts daily. The conflicts reported, ranked by frequency, included put-downs and teasing, playground conflicts, access or possession conflicts, physical aggression and fights, academic work conflicts, and conflicts over turn-taking. Lacking knowledge about how to engage in integrative, problem-solving negotiation procedures, the students typically used one or more of the following procedures to address their conflicts: (a) they referred the majority of their conflicts to a teacher for arbitration; (b) they tried to "win" by forcing the other student to concede, which typically tended to escalate the conflict; or (c) they withdrew from the situation and the person, leaving the conflict basically unresolved or stalemated. As one teacher noted in her log: "Before training, students viewed conflict as fights that always resulted in a winner and a loser. To avoid such an unpleasant situation, they usually placed the responsibility for resolving conflicts on me, the teacher." These findings indicated that the majority of students were either not being taught or simply not employing constructive conflict resolution procedures and skills in their homes or communities-at-large. All students were thus in need of training to learn how to manage conflicts constructively.

Types and Frequencies of Student Conflicts Prior to Peacemakers Training

In the urban elementary schools included in our evaluations of the Peacemakers program, the vast majority of conflicts referred for mediation involved physical and verbal violence. In the suburban schools, the majority of conflicts involved the possession of and access to resources, preferences, playground disputes, and conflicts over turn-taking. Only a small percentage of the suburban school conflicts involved physical and verbal aggression. In both settings, however, more different types of conflicts were reported as occurring in the school than in the home. More conflicts over preferences/values and possession/access and fewer conflicts over beliefs and relationships were reported in the home than in the school. There were also reportedly more conflicts involving physical fights and verbal insults at school than at home. Very few conflicts occurred over academic work in either setting. Value conflicts were almost never reported by these elementary-- age children.

Student Retention of Program Information

Following implementation of Peacemakers program training in each of the schools included in our evaluative research, students were given a test that required them to list, from memory, the steps involved in the problem-solving negotiation and mediation procedures. Across our studies, over 90% of the students accurately recalled 100% of these critical steps (see Table I). Up to a year after the research training had ended, an average of over 75% of the students were still able to recall all the negotiation and mediation steps. These results indicate that the Peacemakers program has been quite effective in teaching students how to negotiate and mediate conflicts and resolve them constructively.

Student Application of Program Procedures and Strategies

Five measures were used to determine whether students actually used the program's recommended negotiation and mediation procedures in resolving conflicts:

(1) Conflict Report Forms, on which students periodically recorded information on the conflicts in which they had been involved and on the steps taken to resolve them;

(2) Students' Written Responses to Conflict Scenarios: Students were given descriptions of conflict situations (e.g., a dispute conflict over access to a computer, or one in which personal insults or name calling was occurring) and asked to write about how they would resolve the conflict;

(3) Students' Oral Responses to Conflict Scenarios: In one-on-one interviews, students were provided a description of a conflict and asked to verbally explain how they would resolve it;

(4) Videotaped Role-playing Responses to Conflict Scenarios: Students were randomly assigned to pairs. Each student was assigned a role in a common conflict and asked to roleplay how they would resolve it;

(5) Student Responses to Real Conflicts with Classmates: Each student was asked to rank several alternative ways of completing an assignment and then paired with another student who ranked the alternatives differently. The pairs were asked to decide upon one alternative and write out, step-by-step, the actions they took to resolve the conflict on the report form described above.

The results from the four measures were consistent. Students who were not exposed to the Peacemakers program indicated more frequently that they would resolve the conflict scenarios by either forcing the other person to submit (e.g., using threats, aggression, commands, and/or other competitive strategies to win) or by withdrawing unsatisfied from the situation and the relationship. None of the untrained students indicated that they would use integrative negotiations as a means to resolve the hypothetical conflicts. Neither the trained nor the untrained students indicated much inclination toward abandoning their individual goals in order to maintain high-quality relationships with real or imagined disputants; however, the trained students tended to use integrative negotiation and mediation procedures to resolve conflicts more frequently than did their untrained peers. No significant differences were noted between males and females in the types of strategies used to resolve conflicts, nor were any significant differences noted between the conflict resolution strategies children used in the school and in the home. Although the Peacemakers training took place in school and focused on school conflicts, students reportedly used the program strategies they learned in school just as frequently in the home as they did in school.

As indicated by the information provided on the conflict report forms, very few of the disputes reported by both the control or experimental groups had to be arbitrated by adults or resolved through forgiving. The number of integrative solutions attained, resulting in both sides achieving their goals, was much higher among the trained than the untrained students. Untrained students left many conflicts unresolved. No significant difference was found between the solutions derived for conflicts in school or at home.

Student Use of Peacemakers Problem-Solving Negotiation and Mediation Procedures in School and Non-School Settings

An important issue in conflict training is whether the procedures and skills learned will transfer to non-classroom and non-school settings. Three types of measures were used to determine the extent of school-to-home transfer for students receiving Peacemakers training:

(1) assessments of students' spontaneous use of the negotiation and mediation procedures in settings other than the classroom;

(2) analysis of students' written descriptions of conflicts in which they were involved outside of the classroom;

(3) systematic observation of students in non-classroom settings.

Analysis of these data reveal that the integrative negotiation and mediation procedures students learned at schools implementing the Peacemakers program were being transferred to non-classroom and non-school situations. Students reported using Peacemakers conflict resolution procedures on the playground, in the lunchroom, in the hallways, on school buses, and in the home. Several wrote spontaneous stories about using the program's negotiation and mediation procedures; others wrote skits, presented during school assemblies, that allowed them to act out situations in which the procedures could be successfully applied. Several parents reported that their children were following Peacemakers practices in their interactions with their brothers and sisters, their neighborhood friends, and even their pets. As one student, a fourth-grader, wrote on a conflict report form:

My conflict was when me and my brother were fighting about who would get the dry baseball and who would get the wet one. So me and my brother did conflict resolution and it ended up that I first got the wet ball and my brother got the dry ball, then I got the dry ball and my brother got the wet ball.

Student conflicts observed on the playground and other non-classroom settings in the school were classified as either low- or high-investment conflicts. Low-investment conflicts are usually lighthearted and typically last for only a brief time (30 seconds to one minute). For example, in one instance, a student wanted to give a picture to somebody and asked a group of her classmates, "Who wants this?" More than one student responded favorably and a conflict started. When the girl gave the picture to one of the students, the others stopped arguing and began to laugh. One of them said, "Do you see what we gave up?" The entire conflict was over in about a minute and consumed very little of the class's emotional or academic energy. Formal negotiation and mediation procedures were not used, even though the students were trained in them, nor were they necessary.

High-investment non-classroom conflicts are those that affect students emotionally, either by detracting from their ability to do academic work or blocking them from interacting with classmates in a positive manner. Often these conflicts last for several days or longer. For example, prior to exposure to the Peacemakers program, a group of fifth-- grade students were locked in the following high-investment conflict: Bill and his friends believed that a student named Doug and his friends were passing notes that made nasty statements about Bill. Doug denied it, but Bill responded, "Since you are doing this to us, we are going to do it to you." So Bill and his friends started passing nasty notes about Doug. After receiving the Peacemakers training, these same students entered into integrative problem-solving negotiations and mediation. After several days, the conflict was constructively resolved and the note-passing ceased.

Student Preferences for Distributive (Win-Lose) Problem-solving Negotiations Versus Integrative (Win-Win) Negotiations

A number of our studies have examined the impact of the Peacemakers training on students' approach to negotiating solutions to their conflicts. In one study, students were placed in a simulated negotiation situation that involved the buying and selling of commodities. Prior to the negotiations, students were told they could either adopt a win-lose approach to maximize their own outcomes in the exercise or they could adopt an integrative stance to maximize joint outcomes. Students who received Peacemakers training chose the integrative approach significantly more frequently than did the untrained students. No untrained student adopted the integrative approach to negotiations, while almost all students in the experimental Peacemakers group did so.

Integration of Peacemakers Principles into Academic Subject Matter and its Effects on Student Achievement

In many settings, the Peacemakers program has been integrated into both English literature and history curricula and its impact on academic achievement assessed. The basic design for studies examining this aspect of the program was to randomly assign students to classes into which Peacemakers training either had (experimental) or had not (control) been integrated. Students in the experimental groups tended to score significantly higher on achievement and retention tests than did students in the control groups. Additionally, students in the former groups not only learned the content information presented in the academic unit better, they were better able to interpret that information in more insightful ways. This higher achievement is all the more notable when one realizes that the students in the control classes spent all their time studying the academic material, while those in the experimental classes had to learn both the novel and the negotiation and mediation procedures in the same amount of time.

Over the past 25 years, we (with such colleagues as Dean Tjosvold and Karl Smith) have developed a theory of academic controversy and tested it by conducting over 20 experimental and field-experimental studies. From this research, we have developed a series of curriculum units on energy and environmental issues that have been structured to foster academic controversies. Students' participation in the conflict resolution activities that are built into these units has been found to motivate increased achievement, engagement, and use of higher-level reasoning skills Johnson & Johnson, 1995c). We have trained teachers in schools and colleges throughout the United States, Canada, and a number of other countries to utilize these units in their classrooms Johnson & Johnson, 1979, 1989,1995c).

Impact of the Program on Students' Attitudes Toward Conflict

One of the goals of conflict resolution and peer mediation training is to create positive attitudes toward conflict; thus, several studies of the impact of the Peacemakers program have measured students' attitudes toward conflict. Based on their responses to a word association task, the overwhelming number of students held negative attitudes toward conflict prior to receiving the training, the majority seeing almost no potential positive outcomes to be derived from conflict. Though still perceiving conflict more negatively than positively, the attitudes of students after training became markedly more positive and less negative, while those of untrained students stayed essentially the same-that is, highly negative.

Responses of Teachers, Principals, and Parents

A number of participating teachers and principals have been interviewed to determine their opinions about the Peacemakers program and its impact on their students. All have endorsed the program. The teachers overwhelmingly reported that Peacemakers training resulted in a lessening of the severity and destructiveness of students' conflicts. As a result, they noted, the climate of their classrooms became more positive and they and their principals spent much less time resolving conflicts among students. They also conceded that the number of conflicts referred to teachers was reduced by 80%, and the number of conflicts referred to the principal was reduced to zero. Moreover, all the teachers and principals interviewed maintained that, without qualification, they would become involved in Peacemakers training in the future. As one teacher commented:

The negotiation and mediation skills we are teaching our students will have a definite positive impact on the way our students interact with each other. ..these skills go beyond the scope of the classroom, and contribute to the betterment of our community, and our world.

Parents also reported that their children who received the Peacemakers training at school were better able to mediate conflicts constructively at home and in other contexts away from school. One parent reported that a daughter in the third grade utilized Peacemakers procedures to mediate a conflict between her older sister and the older sister's boyfriend while the three were attending a movie. Another reported that a fourth-grade child interrupted and mediated a conflict in which the parents were heatedly arguing over whether to refinish the dining room table after her younger brother had accidentally spilled nail polish on it. The child took her parents through all the steps of constructive conflict resolution.

Many parents whose children have not yet received the Peacemakers training have requested that their children be exposed to it so that they might benefit from it at school and at home. Other parents in this group have requested that they themselves receive the training so that they can apply the negotiation and mediation procedures to manage conflict in the family and share that knowledge with their children.

CONCLUSION

The frequency of conflicts is not the problem facing today's schools; conflict has many positive outcomes that can never be realized unless it is encouraged. Instead, it is how to increase the occurrence of conflicts while ensuring that they will be managed in constructive and healthy ways. The major barrier to doing so is students' lack of knowledge about effective conflict resolution procedures. The procedures most students utilize to resolve conflicts often are not constructive nor are they shared among all of their classmates. This is especially true when students come from different cultural, ethnic, social class, and language backgrounds. Generally, most students do not know how to manage conflicts; thus, when problems arise between them or between students and faculty, students are likely to act in destructive and uncivil ways.

In many cases, schools are too conflict-avoidant and actually need to increase the frequency with which conflicts occur among students and between students and faculty. Conflict-avoidant schools that try to reduce conflict by placing police in the hallways, searching students and their lockers, establishing "zero-tolerance" rules, suspending and expelling large numbers of students who present disciplinary problems, and increasing the punishment for small infractions may suppress destructively managed conflicts. However, in the long run, such conflict-avoidant practices become part of the problem rather than the solution because they decrease rather than improve students' ability to regulate their own behavior.

Schools must become conflict-positive. They must become places where conflicts are encouraged; where students have the opportunity to resolve their disputes themselves, in mutually satisfactory ways, without having to engage the attention of a teacher; and where the same set of negotiation and mediation procedures are known to and used by everyone. The result is a schoolwide discipline program that focuses on empowering students to regulate and control their own and their classmates' actions. In such settings, teachers and administrators can devote less time to establishing and maintaining control over students and more time to instruction and instructional leadership.

Every student needs to learn how to manage conflicts constructively. Without such training, many students may never learn how to do so. Teaching all students how to negotiate and mediate will ensure that future generations are prepared to manage conflicts constructively in career, family, community, national, and international settings. There is no reason, however, to expect that this process will be easy or quick. It took over 30 years to reduce the rate of smoking in the United States. It took over 20 years to reduce drunk driving. It may take even longer to ensure that children and adolescents can manage conflicts constructively. Yet, the more years students spend learning and practicing negotiation and mediation procedures such as those emphasized in the Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers program, the more likely they will be to actually use those procedures skillfully both in the classroom and beyond the schoolhouse door.

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Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1995c). Creative controversy: Intellectual challenge in the classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1996). Conflict resolution and peer mediation programs in elementary and secondary schools: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 66(4), 459-506.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Cotten, B., Harris, D., & Louison, S. (1995). Using conflict managers to mediate conflicts in an elementary school. Mediation Quarterly, 12(4), 379-390. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Dudley, B. (1992). Effects of peer mediation training on elementary school students. Mediation Quarterly, 10, 89-99. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Dudley, B., & Acikgoz, K. (1994). Effects of conflict resolution training on elementary school students. Journal of Social Psychology, 134, 803-817. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Dudley, B., Fredreickson, J., & Mitchell, J. (1997). The impact of conflict resolution training on middle school students. Journal of Social Psychology, 137(1), 11-21. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Dudley, B., & Magnuson, D. (1995). Training of elementary school students to manage conflict. Journal of Social Psychology, 135(6), 673-686. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Dudley, B., Ward, M., & Magnuson, D. (1995). Impact of peer mediation training on the management of school and home conflicts. American Educational Research Journal, 32(4), 829-844.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Holubec, E. (1993). Circles of learning (4th Edition). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Johnson, F. (1976). Promoting constructive conflict in the classroom. Notre Dame Journal of Education, 7, 163-168.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Mitchell, J., Cotten, B., Harris, D., & Louison, S. (1996). Conflict managers in an elementary school. Journal of Educational Research, 89(5), 280-285. Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York: Harper. Snow, M. (1997, March 6). Mindworks: Disbehavior. Minneapolis Tribune, El, E2, E14. Stevahn, L., Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Green, K., & Laginski, A. (1997). Effects of conflict resolution training integrated into English literature on high school students. Journal of Social Psychology, 137(3), 302-315.

Stevahn, L., Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., Laginski, A., & O'Coin, I. (1996). Effects on high school students of integrating conflict resolution and peer mediation training into an academic unit. Mediation Quarterly, 14(1), 21-36.

Stevahn, L., Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Real, D. (1996). The impact of a cooperative or individualistic context on the effectiveness of conflict resolution training. American Educational Research Journal, 33(4), 801-823.

Stevahn, L., Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Schultz, R. (1997, March). Effects of conflict resolution training integrated into social studies curriculum in a high school. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.

Watson, G., & Johnson, D. W. (1972). Social psychology: Issues and insights (2nd Edition). Philadelphia: Lippincott.

David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson, University of Minnesota

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