Turning points: Conflict mediation in a secondary school in the UK

• In Event: Publication mentoring workshop session
  In Special Session: Citizenship & Peace Education

Proposal

• I am a Recent Graduate.

•The purposes of the research;
This research examines dialogue between disputing students and the teacher/facilitator in restorative meetings (mediation), and discusses what kind of teacher/facilitator’s actions help disputing students find a constructive solution, or even relational transformation.

•The main research questions;
•What is the turning point in conflict mediation?
•What supports turning points?
•What impairs turning points?



•Theoretical Framework
Key theories that inform my research are taken from Martin Buber and Carl Rogers. Buber argues that humans needs to set him/herself at a distance to see the other as an independent existence, and that humans enter relationship through self-becoming, and confirmation of the different other’s existence. This is very difficult to achieve in a conflict situation, but Rogers’ core conditions of Person Centred Therapy: Unconditional positive regard; Empathy; Genuineness, fill this gap. The restorative facilitator can help this process.

•Research design, data collection methods, and analytic techniques;
Data for the study was taken from a secondary school in England. I investigated how restorative dialogue enabled students to restore damaged relationships, and what kinds of facilitation were helpful for them to do so. I examined the outcomes of twenty-four video-recorded meetings, grouped into three categories: Relational Transformation; Resolution Only; Conflict not transformed. I selected three meetings each (nine in total) for thematic coding and conversation analysis. Coding for facilitation includes: elicitive; empathetic; judgemental; directive, and for students: open; expansive; respectful; attacking; defiant. Coding framework are developed based on the theories of Martin Buber and Carl Rogers, as well as previous research on conflict mediation and restorative justice.

Conversation Analysis was used to inform the coding at a micro level, and to throw light on the flow of the dialogue.

•Results and evidence to support conclusions
Elicitive and empathetic facilitation appeared most frequently in Relational-Transformation cases, whereas judgemental and directive facilitation were observed most frequently in Conflict-not-transformed cases. As for student’s actions, openness and expansiveness appeared most frequently in Relational-Transformation cases, and attacking and defiance appeared most frequently in Conflict-not-transformed cases. Resolution-Only cases lie between these two categories. These findings suggest that restorative dialogue favours elicitive and empathetic facilitation, and has the potential to transform student relationships. When the facilitator/teacher shows judgement and directiveness, students respond with attacking and defiance, which impairs restorative process.

The research also identified turning points. These turning points appeared most explicitly as mutual apology, in which the two students showed ‘respect’ to each other. None of the recorded apologies, however, occurred through demands from the other, but had a precursor that was acknowledgement of the other, or the other’s feeling, which was coded as ‘expansive’. Conversation analysis revealed that the student, who first received an apology, had signalled a readiness for accepting it right before they received it. Such signal was not always explicit, but took the form of an acknowledgement token ‘um,’ or a single word such as ‘us’. ‘Expansive,’ however, did not appear on its own, but always preceded by ‘open,’ which showed student’s expression of feelings or concerns. In short, students showed that they were ‘open’ towards themselves, and then ‘expansive’ to the other.

The research explained the process to relational transformation with Buber’s concepts of ‘I and Thou’. Buber argues that two humans only enter relation after having set him/her at a distance from the other, by confirming the other’s uniqueness and potentiality; He also pointed out the three elements that are required for the growth of human relation: being, as opposed to seeming; sufficient confirmation; unfolding, as opposed to imposition. The research found that students become who they are, or ‘being’ by demonstrating ‘open,’ which allows them to set themselves at a distance from the other student. Only after having revealed ‘being,’ can they get themselves ready for confirmation of the other. Buber proposes that confirmation cannot be achieved by one person’s effort, but requires both interacting and helping each other. Confirmation is therefore a mutual process.

Buber asserts that ‘imposing’ is the most harmful on dialogue, as it contains intention to interfere the other being. The facilitator’s ‘judgemental’ and ‘directive’ language and student’s ‘attacking’ and ‘defiant’ language interfere with the other’s being. Such actions not only prevented students from ‘being’ and confirming the other, but also provoked unnecessary ‘attacking’ and ‘defiant’ language towards the other, which sometimes led to re-victimisation of the students during the meeting. Therefore, the restorative meetings with frequent imposing (Conflict-not-transformed cases) do not reach neither relational transformation nor resolution.

Author

• Toshiyasu Tsuruhara, Research Associate, University of Cambridge