How teachers understand and strategize about emerging conflicts

Abstract

This article concerns what have been variously called mild misbehaviours, minor distractions or emerging conflicts, i.e. situations of mild tension between the teacher and pupils in the classroom. The article responds to calls for further studies on the link between how teachers understand these emerging conflicts and the strategies they suggest to handle them. We carried out two studies on primary school teachers in Sweden, using a qualitatively driven mixed‐method design, i.e. the studies were carried out sequentially using different qualitative methods. The first study, the main study, based on individual interviews with 20 teachers, used a phenomenographic approach, capturing these teachers’ different understandings of emerging conflict. The second study, the supplemental study, based on six group interviews with 18 teachers, built on the main study and used a hermeneutic approach, capturing how these teachers link a certain understanding of emerging conflicts to certain themes of suggested strategies. By utilizing this design, we were able to investigate the aforementioned link and build a model of nine different understandings, each linked to one to four strategy themes. Altogether, 22 different strategy themes, together encompassing a multitude of separate strategies, were recognized and linked to the nine different understandings. The results suggest that teachers have a more divergent and nuanced understanding of emerging conflicts, and how to handle them, than earlier studies of this link have reported. The results give valuable insights into developing more accurate quantitative surveys as well as more suitable teacher training programmes.

How do teachers and students deal with conflict? An analysis of conflict resolution strategies and goals

“…They showed themselves also more flexible in changing their minds and accepting other people's positions (adaptation with understanding) compared to their teachers' apparent rigidity and unwillingness to accept their students' points of view and mediation Regarding goals, the comparison between teachers and pupils provides even more conclusive results: The student body not only conducts itself more constructively, but also agrees more with Long-term goals than the faculty. Another unexpected result that deserves to be highlighted, since negative teachers' perceptions may be triggering nonconstructive responses to cope with conflicts, even if dealing with minor conflicts as disruptions (Jurado de los Santos et al, 2020;Larsson et al, 2022).…”

“…Whereas, on the part of teachers, it may rely on the type of conflict (with adult authority or between peers). Thus, they may opt for more dominance strategies when they feel that students defy them or the school rules (Larsson et al, 2022), ignoring students' voices (Finefter-Rosenbluth et al, 2021); and with more avoidance (Díaz-Better, 2016) or integration strategies when conflicts only involve students (Bayraktar & Yilmaz, 2016;Obraztsova, 2018).…”

“…Specifically, the most recurrent are disruptions in the classroom (Nieto-Campos et al, 2022), although again it should be underlined that they must not be confused with school violence, as disruptions are probably the product of demotivation and boredom (Córdoba-Alcaide et al, 2016). Nevertheless, from the teachers' perspective, these are very serious cases (Larsson et al, 2022) because they interfere with their work and affect them emotionally (Yang et al, 2021).…”