Why do typical school conflict management programs fail?
Our work calls into question several common features of typical school conflict management approaches. These common features are: • they are top-down: adults (teachers and counsellors) use power and authority to restore acceptable (if unequal) power relationships – even peer mediation involves training young people to act as quasi-adults with the authority of the school behind them • they are ad hoc: conflicts and bullying are dealt with as they occur, as if isolated occurrences in a conflict-free landscape • they are extra-curricular – neither conflict nor its study are explicitly part of the classroom curriculum, and in theory (at least!
