Evaluation of the 2006-2007 Students' Creative Conflict Program

Yungbluth, S.C. (2008). Evaluation of the 2006-2007 Students’ Creative Response to Conflict Program. Retrieved from ERIC database. (ED505840).

Summary:

This article is an evaluation of the Student’s Creative Response to Conflict (SCRC) program. SCRC is based on the principles of conflict resolution education and social-emotional learning. There are five major themes to this program: affirmation, communication, bias awareness, creative conflict management, and cooperation.

Affirmation: To show appreciation and value the gifts, talents, and abilities of others. Increases caring and empathy. Helps students feel more comfortable expressing their feelings. Reduces blaming and name calling.

Communication: Encourages expression of feelings and empathy. Teaches to look for nonverbal cues that might signal a possible conflict. Develops the ability to listen patiently to others, recognize their feelings, and state problems in a clear and concise way that will promote cooperation. Summarizes and restates what others say and not altered by personal feelings. In a non-threatening way help students use a confident speaking voice and appropriate eye contact.

Bias Awareness: Understand the importance of the differences between people and see that we are interdependent. Recognizes the similarities in others. Having pride in their individuality while showing respect to other’s differences. Discourages put-downs.

Creative Conflict Management: Uses respectful communication and provides different ways to manage conflicts. Promotes a willingness to hear the other side of an issue and uses problem solving skills that shows concern of all involved parties. Separates people from problems. Teaches to become reflective and see if one’s own actions are positive or negative.

Cooperation: Develops a sense of “we-ness”. Praises others’ contributions. Teaches the awareness of the needs and feelings of others. Values sharing and helping others to work together to create a peaceful environment.

Using the five major themes of SCRC four important hypotheses were developed for this study. 1. Students who have experienced SCRC will view aggression as less appropriate than those who have not yet experienced SCRC. 2. Students who have experienced SCRC will exhibit more supportive behaviors than those who have not yet experienced SCRC. 3. Students who have experienced SCRC will be better able to handle strong emotions that could be destructive to relationships than those who have not yet experienced SCRC. 4. Students who have experienced SCRC will show less problem behaviors than those who have not yet experienced SCRC.

The Center for Peace Education (CPE) conducted the study. The CPE trainers used pre and post surveys to K-8 grade students from 10 different schools. They used the Normative Beliefs about Aggression scale (Huesman, Guerra, Miller, & Zelli, 1992, cited in Dahlberg, Toal, & Behrens, 1998) and the Modified Aggression Scale (Bosworth & Espelage, 1995, cited in Dahlberg et al., 1998). The findings stated that students’ attitudes generally decreased in the use of aggression but did not find any differences in the ways students deal with anger.

Analysis:

I found this to be an interesting article. The SCRC would be a great program to do more research in. This article did not explain the process of learning that the students had between the pre and post tests. I would like to see that information so I can find a way to possibly incorporate those lessons/ideas into my future research.

Quotes:

“Social Emotional Learning (SEL) competencies help students to recognize that others care for them and it helps them to see how these vital, supportive relationships can be nurtured by managing their emotions and communicating with others more effectively, particularly in conflict situations where strong emotions may surface and lead them to aggressive behaviors they may later regret.” (4)

“Students can feel safe expressing their ideas to promote interaction by opening the channels of communication.” (4)