Building the Bridge From Home to School: Strengthening Conflict Negotiations on School Bullying Through Role-Play

• In Event: Peaceable Action: Shaping and Strengthening 21st-Century Resilience Pedagogy

Abstract

Objective:
In cases of reconciliation involving bullying, teachers and parents often lack necessary mediation skills. Further, parents have traditionally played a passive, outsider role. Parent-child, student-teacher, teacher-teacher, and teacher-administrator conflicts have been the focus of conflict resolution programs; whereas, conflict between parents and teachers has not amassed significant attention. Positional grounding can take over as the primary objective of both parties. This positional bargaining disconnects each party’s relationship with others. This paper suggests using the integrative and principled negotiation model from a standpoint of care; integrating roleplay into the mediation process involving both parents of the bully, bullied, and the teacher. In this model, parents rehearse scenarios in a roleplaying fashion, including role reversal to promote empathy. Reflection remains an integral part of this healing process and participant well-being. The objective is to examine the efficiency of the integrative negotiation peace model infused with an ethic of care approach.

Modes of Inquiry:
This paper covers general conflict resolution theory with an emphasis on the relationship between parents and teachers by employing strength-based theoretical frameworks (He, 2009), including Betty Reardon’s (1988) notion that schools should be places of care, concern, and commitment and Nel Noddings’ “ethics of care” (2003).

Data Sources:
Participants included an administrator, a kindergarten teacher, parents of the bully, a school counselor, and the parent of a bullied child. Parents were directed to sit facing each other across a large table during the roleplay. Data collections sources include observations, archival data, and face-to-face meetings, as well as a comprehensive literature review of conflict resolution principles and strategies was also conducted. School programs were also reviewed with a focus on parents’ roles. Using this variety and range of data sources will ensure triangulation while maintaining the integrity and translucency in data results.

Findings:
Coded data reveal remnants of traditional organizational structure interfering with the successful implementation of roleplayed conflict resolution approaches, as well as the need for increased dialogue about how culture pluralism is impacting conflict resolution program in American school systems. Findings suggest that the administrators and teachers strategically sought positions of power during interventions.

Scholarly Significance:
By revealing parents’ interest and desire for involvement, research suggests that parents be intimately involved in conflict resolution. This paper, however, recognizes conflict between parents and teachers and highlights the lack of parental inclusion in school-based conflict resolution education. This paper encourages attendees to look at operationalizing integrative and principled negotiation as a productive approach for dealing with conflict resolution sessions, particularly in cases of bullying. This paper supports the need to perceive the opponent's differing position for the conceptualization between self and the ‘other' to be obtained. By connecting with the parent of the bully, the mother of the child who was bullied was able to comprehend and achieve a reconnection with herself via empathizing with the ‘other’ and manifest a sound moral judgment that informed her actions positively throughout the conflict resolution session. The results affirmed the efficiency of the integrative negotiation- ethic of care infused model.

Authors

• Leigh Nicole Hammons, University of Cincinnati

• Fawzeyah Al-Awadhi, Kuwait University