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Teaching Students to ManageIntercultural ConflictsConstructivelyDavid W. Johnson &Published online: 28 Jul 2006.

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European Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1998 155

Teaching Students to ManageIntercultural Conflicts ConstructivelyDAVID W. JOHNSON & ROGER T. JOHNSON

ABSTRACT This article focuses on teaching students how to resolve their conflicts withschoolmates and faculty constructively. The topics discussed are: (a) the nature of conflict;(b) the strategies used to resolve conflicts; (c) the problem-solving negotiation procedure;(d) the procedure for mediating schoolmates' conflicts; and (e) the implementation of aconflict resolution and peer mediation program in the school. Finally, the use of conflictresolution procedures to manage conflicts between students with and without disabilities willbe discussed.

Diversity: promise or problem?

Cultural pluralism among individuals creates an opportunity, but like all opportuni-ties, there are potentially either positive or negative outcomes. Diversity amongstudents can result in increased achievement and productivity, creative problemsolving, growth in cognitive and moral reasoning, increased perspective-takingability, improved relationships, and general sophistication in interacting and workingwith peers from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds (Johnson & Johnson,1989). Or, diversity among students can lead to the negative outcomes of lowerachievement, closed-minded rejection of new information, increased egocentrism,and negative relationships characterized by hostility, rejection, divisiveness, scape-goating, bullying, stereotyping, prejudice and racism. Whether diversity amongstudents leads to positive or negative outcomes largely depends on whether students(a) interact within a cooperative context (as opposed to a competitive or individual-istic context) (Johnson & Johnson, 1989) and (b) manage their conflicts with eachother in a constructive (as opposed to destructive) way (Johnson & Johnson, 1995a).

Constructive Conflict in the Schools

Teaching all students in all schools how to manage conflicts constructively will helpensure that (a) the potential positive outcomes of student diversity are actualized,(b) classrooms and schools are safe and orderly places, (c) conflict is utilized forinstructional purposes, and (d) students are prepared to manage conflicts construc-tively in career, family, community, national and international settings. The truth isthat conflicts are an inevitable and pervasive part of school life. Conflicts are not theproblem in diverse classrooms, they are part of the solution. Schools should not be

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places where conflicts are suppressed, avoided, condemned and discouraged.Rather, schools should be conflict-positive organizations in which conflicts areencouraged and the procedures for constructively resolving them are promoted(Johnson & Johnson, 1995a). When they are managed constructively, conflicts canQohnson & Johnson, 1995a, 1996):

1. Increase achievement and long-term retention of academic material.2. Increase the use of higher-level cognitive and moral reasoning.3. Increase healthy cognitive and social development.4. Focus attention on problems and increase the energy dedicated to solving them.5. Clarify one's own and other' identity, commitments and values.6. Clarify how a person may need to change.7. Release anger, anxiety, insecurity and sadness that, if kept inside, makes individ-

uals mentally sick.8. Strengthen relationships by (a) increasing individuals' confidence that they can

resolve their disagreements, and (b) keeping the relationship clear of irritationsand resentments so that positive feelings can be experienced fully.

9. Be fun.

In order to make schools orderly and peaceful places in which the positive outcomesof conflict can be realized and high-quality education can take place, students mustbe taught the procedures for managing conflicts constructively. Students need togain enough expertise in using the procedure that they can regulate their own andtheir schoolmates' conflict behaviour. Doing so requires Qohnson & Johnson,1995a, b):

1. A cooperative learning environment.2. An understanding of what is and is not a conflict.3. Expertise in using the problem-solving negotiation procedure.4. Expertise in using the peer-mediation procedure.5. The implementation of the peer mediation program.6. Frequent follow-up lessons to refine and upgrade students' skills in using the

negotiation and mediation procedures.7. A spiral curriculum that teaches the negotiation and mediation procedures from

the first through twelfth grades in more and more complex and sophisticatedways.

Step One: Creating a cooperative context

If conflicts are to be managed constructively, they must occur in a cooperative, nota competitive context (in individualistic situations, people do not interact and,therefore, no conflict occurs) Qohnson & Johnson, 1989). It makes little sense toattempt to teach students to manage conflicts constructively if the school is struc-tured so that students are pitted against each other in competition for scarce rewards(like teacher attention and grades of "A") and students have to defeat each other toget what they want. In order for conflicts to be resolved constructively, a cooperative

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Teaching Students to Manage Intercultural Conflicts 157

environment must be established in which students are committed to achieving jointgoals (Deutsch, 1973; Johnson & Johnson, 1989). A cooperative context is mosteasily established by structuring the majority of learning situations cooperatively(Johnson & Johnson, 1989).

Step Two: Teaching students the nature and desirability of conflict

Many students have a negativity bias in which they tend to see conflicts as involvinganger, hostility and violence. They tend not to recognize that conflicts can result ininsight, learning, problem solving and laughter. Students are taught (a) what is andis not a conflict, (b) the criteria for determining whether a conflict is resolvedconstructively, and (c) the value of conflict. Through participating in conflictsimulations, students become more aware of how they act when involved in aconflict.

Step Three: Teaching all students the problem-solving negotiation pro-cedure

The heart of conflict-resolution training is teaching students how to negotiateconstructive resolutions to their conflicts. It is not enough to tell students to be niceor talk it out, or solve your problem. All students in all schools need to learn how toengage in problem-solving negotiations. There are two types of negotiations:

1. Distributive or "win-lose" (where one person benefits only if the opponentagrees to make a concession).

2. Integrative or problem solving (where disputants work together to create anagreement that benefits everyone involved).

In ongoing relationships, only a problem-solving approach to negotiations is con-structive. The steps in using problem solving negotiations are (Johnson & Johnson,1995a, b):

1. Describing what you want. "I want to use the book now." This includes usinggood communication skills and defining the conflict as a small and specificmutual problem.

2. Describing how you feel. "I'm frustrated." Disputants must understand how theyfeel and communicate it openly and clearly.

3. Describing the reasons for your wants and feelings. "You have been using thebook for the past hour. If I don't get to use the book soon my report will not bedone on time. It's frustrating to have to wait so long." This includes expressingcooperative intentions, listening carefully, separating interests from positions,and differentiating before trying to integrate the two sets of interests.

4. Taking the other's perspective and summarizing your understanding of what theother person wants, how the other person feels, and the reasons underlying both."My understanding of you is... ." This includes understanding the perspective of

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158 D. W. Johnson & R. T. Johnson

the opposing disputant and being able to see the problem from both perspectivessimultaneously.

5. Inventing three optional plans to resolve the conflict that maximize jointbenefits."Plan A is ... , Plan B is ... , Plan C is... ." This includes inventingcreative options to solve the problem.

6. Choosing one and formalizing the agreement with a hand shake."Let's agree onPlan B!"

A wise agreement is fair to all disputants and is based on principles. It maximizesjoint benefits and strengthens disputants' ability to work together cooperatively andresolve conflicts constructively in the future. It specifies how each disputant shouldact in the future and how the agreement will be reviewed and renegotiated if it doesnot work.

Students need to practice this procedure over and over again until it becomes anautomatic habit pattern.

Step Four: Teaching all students to mediate schoolmates' conflicts

All students are taught the procedures and skills they need to mediate theirclassmates' conflicts of interests (Johnson & Johnson, 1995a). A mediator is aneutral person who helps two or more people resolve their conflict, usually bynegotiating an integrative agreement. Mediation is usually contrasted with arbi-tration. Arbitration is the submission of a dispute to a disinterested third party (suchas a teacher or principal) who makes a final and binding judgment as to how theconflict will be resolved. Mediation consists of four steps (Johnson & Johnson,1995a):

1. Ending hostilities: Break up hostile encounters and cool off students.2. Ensuring disputants are committed to the mediation process: To ensure that

disputants are committed to the mediation process and are ready to negotiate ingood faith, the mediator introduces him- or herself, introduces the process ofmediation, the role of the mediator, and the ground rules that must be followed.

3. Helping disputants successfully negotiate with each other: The disputants arecarefully taken through the negotiation sequence of (a) jointly defining theconflict by both persons stating what they want and how they feel, (b) exchangingreasons, (c) reversing perspectives so that each person is able to present trieother's position and feelings to the other's satisfaction, (d) inventing at least threeoptions for mutual benefit, and (e) reaching a wise agreement and shaking hands.

4. Formalizing the agreement: The agreement is solidified into a contract. Dis-putants must agree to abide by their final decision and in many ways themediator becomes "the keeper of the contract".

Step Five: Implementing the peacemaker program

Once students understand how to negotiate and mediate, the teacher implementsthe peacemaker program. Each day the teacher selects two class members to serve

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Teaching Students to Manage Intercultural Conflicts 159

as official mediators. Any conflicts students cannot resolve themselves are referred tothe mediators. The mediators wear official T-shirts, patrol the playground andlunchroom, and are available to mediate any conflicts that occur in the classroom orschool. The role of mediator is rotated so that all students in the class or school serveas mediators an equal amount of time. Initially, students mediate in pairs. Thisensures that shy or non-verbal students get the same amount of experience as moreextroverted and verbally fluent students. Mediating classmates' conflicts is perhapsthe most effective way of teaching students the need for the skilful use of each stepof the negotiation procedure.

If peer mediation fails, the teacher mediates the conflict. If teacher mediationfails, the teacher arbitrates by deciding who is right and who is wrong. If thatfails, the principal mediates the conflict. If that fails, the principal arbitrates.Teaching all students negotiation and mediation procedures and skills and imple-menting a peer mediation program results in a schoolwide discipline programfocused on empowering students to regulate and control their own and theirclassmates actions. Teachers and administrators are then freed to spend more oftheir energies on instruction.

Step Six: Continuing lessons to refine and upgrade students' skills

At least twice a week, additional lessons are needed to refine and upgrade studentsskills in using the negotiation and mediation procedures. Gaining real expertisein resolving conflicts constructively takes years and years and training and practice.A few hours of training is clearly not sufficient, so students should be given furthertraining or practice in negotiating and mediating. One of the most natural waysto integrate negotiation and mediation training into the fabric of school life isto integrate it into academic lessons. All literature, history and science involvesconflict. Almost any lesson in these subject areas can be modified to includerole-playing situations in which the negotiation and/or mediation procedures areused. In our recent research, for example, we have focused on integrating thepeacemaker training into English literature units involving the studying of a novel.Each of the major conflicts in the novel was used to teach the negotiation and/ormediation procedures and all students participated in role playing how to use theprocedures to resolve the conflicts in the novel constructively. With some training,it is not difficult for teachers to integrate the peacemaker program into academicunits.

Step Seven: Repeating the above steps each year from the first through thetwelve grades

Teaching Students to be Peacemakers (Johnson & Johnson, 1995a, b) is a 12-year spiralprogram that is retaught each year in a more sophisticated and complex way. It takesyears and years to become competent in resolving conflicts. Any thought that a fewhours of training is enough to train students in a high level of competence inmanaging their conflicts constructively is terribly misguided.

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Implementation of the Peacemaker Program

We began the Teaching Students to be Peacemakers Program in the 1960s. It originatedfrom:

1. Our research on integrative negotiations (Johnson, 1967), perspective taking inconflict situations Qohnson, 1967, 1971a), conflict resolution in the school(Johnson, 1970, 1971b; Johnson et al, 1976), communication in conflict situa-tions Qohnson, 1974), and constructive conflict (Johnson, 1970; Johnson &Johnson, 1979).

2. Our development of social interdependence theory (Deutsch, 1973; Johnson,1970; Johnson & Johnson, 1989).

3. Our training of thousands of elementary, secondary and college students, facultyand administrators in how to manage conflicts constructively (Johnson, 1970,Johnson & Johnson, 1997; Johnson & Johnson, 1995a, b, c). We have establisheda network of school districts using the Peacemaker Program throughout NorthAmerica, Europe and several other countries in Asia, Central and SouthAmerica, the Middle East, and Africa. Besides regular students, teachers andadministrators, we have taught delinquents, runaways, drug-abusers and marriedcouples in therapy how to manage their conflicts more constructively.

Through the interaction between theory, research and practice, our PeacemakerProgram has grown and developed and field-tested in a wide variety of schooldistricts, countries and cultures.

Research on Peacemaker Program

We have conducted over fourteen studies on the effectiveness of the TeachingStudents to be Peacemakers Program (Johnson & Johnson, 1995d, 1996; Johnson,et al., 1995). The studies focused on peer mediation programs in elementary, middleschool and high school settings. The programs were evaluated over a period ofseveral months to a year. The schools were in urban and suburban school districts.Students varied from lower to upper-middle class and were from diverse ethnic andcultural backgrounds. Mediators were drawn from a wide variety of ethnic back-grounds. The studies were carefully controlled field-experimental studies with highinternal and external validity.

Before training, most students were found to be involved in conflicts daily. Theconflicts reported (in terms of frequency) were put-downs and teasing, playgroundconflicts, access or possession conflicts, physical aggression and fights, academicwork conflicts, and turn-taking.

Before training, students (a) referred the majority of their conflicts to the teacher,(b) used destructive strategies that tended to escalate the conflict rather than resolveit, and (c) lacked knowledge of how to negotiate. If they did not bring the conflictto the teacher, students typically used destructive strategies (such as repeating theirrequest and trying to force the other person to give in) that would escalate theconflict and increase the likelihood that the teacher would have to intervene.

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Students seem to lack all knowledge of how to engage in problem-solving, integra-tive negotiations.

After the peacemaker training, the student-student conflicts that occurred were, byand large, managed by the students themselves without the involvement of adults.Students knew the negotiation and mediation procedures, retained their knowledgethroughout the school year and into the following year, were able to apply theprocedures to their and other people's conflicts, transferred the procedures tonon-classroom settings such as the playground and lunchroom, transferred theprocedures to non-school settings such as the home, used the procedures similarlyin family and school settings, and (when given the option) engaged in problem-solving rather than win-lose negotiations. The number of discipline problems theteacher had to deal with decreased by about 60 per cent and referrals to the principaldropped about 95 per cent. In addition, students developed more positive attitudestoward conflict and adults in the school and parents perceived the peacemakerprogram to be constructive and helpful.

We have conducted four studies integrating the conflict resolution and peermediation training into academic units in literature and social studies. The resultsindicate that not only did the students master the negotiation and mediationprocedures and retained their knowledge of the procedures into the next academicyear, but they achieved significantly higher on the academic material than didstudents who studied the academic material full time without learning the nego-tiation and mediation procedures.

Structuring Academic Controversies

In addition to implementing the Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers Program,faculty may use intellectual, academic conflicts as an inherent part of the instruc-tional program to increase student achievement, higher-level reasoning, motivationto learn, and conflict skills (Johnson & Johnson, 1979, 1989, 1995c). Academiccontroversy exists when one student's ideas, information, conclusions, theories andopinions are incompatible with those of another, and the two seek to reach anagreement. Structuring academic controversy into learning situations results instudents learning that conflicts are potentially constructive and even enjoyable. Theprocedure for structuring academic controversies is to have students (a) preparescholarly positions on an academic issue, (b) advocate them, (c) refute the opposingpositions while rebutting criticisms of their position, (d) view the issue from bothperspectives, and (e) come to a consensus about their "best reasoned judgment"based on a synthesis of the two positions. Over the past 25 years, we have developeda theory of controversy, tested it by conducting over 20 experimental and field-experimental studies, developed a series of curriculum units on energy and environ-mental issues structured for academic controversies, and trained teachers to useacademic controversies in schools and colleges throughout the United States,Canada and a number of other countries. The skills learned in controversy supportand reinforce the skills used in negotiation and mediation.

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162 D. W. Johnson & R. T. Johnson

A Life-Long Advantage

A number of recent research studies have found that executives in high-levelpositions spend much of their time dealing with conflicts, and the more skillful theyare at doing so the more successful their careers. Because conflicts occur continually,and because so many people are so unskilled in managing conflicts, teachingstudents how to resolve conflicts constructively is one of the best investmentsschools can make. Once learned, conflict skills go with students to every situationand every relationship. Students do not have to manage every conflict constructively,but the ability to do so should be in their repertoire. Knowing how to resolveconflicts with skill and grace will give students "a developmental advantage" andincrease their future academic and career success, improve the quality of relation-ships with friends, colleagues and family, and generally enhance their life-longhappiness.

Summary and Conclusions

The frequency of conflicts is not the problem facing schools. In many cases, schoolsare too conflict-avoidant and need to increase the frequency with which conflictsoccur among students and between students and faculty. Conflict has many positiveoutcomes that can never occur unless conflict is encouraged. The problem facingschools is not how to reduce the occurrence of conflicts, but rather how to increasethe occurrence of conflicts while ensuring that they will be managed in constructiveand healthy ways. The major barrier to doing so is students' lack of effectiveconflict-resolution procedures. Students do have procedures for managing conflicts,but often the procedures are not constructive and not shared among all classmates.The multiple procedures for managing conflicts within classrooms create somechaos in how conflicts are managed. This is especially true when students are fromdifferent cultural, ethnic, social class and language backgrounds. Life in schools getseasier when all students (and staff members) use the same set of negotiation andmediation procedures in managing conflicts.

When students are taught how to negotiate and are given opportunities to mediatetheir classmates conflicts, they are given procedures and competencies to (a)regulate their behavior through self-monitoring, (b) judge what is appropriate giventhe situation and the perspective of the other person, and (c) modify how theybehave accordingly. Students then have the opportunity to resolve their disputethemselves, in mutually satisfactory ways, without having to engage the attention ofa teacher. This empowers the students and reduces the demands on teachers andadministrators, who can devote less time to establishing and maintaining controlover students and more time on instruction.

Address for correspondence: David W. Johnson & Roger T. Johnson, University ofMinnesota, 60 Peik Hall, 159 Pillsbury Drive; Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. USA.E-mail: < Johnson@maroon. tc. umn. edu >

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