A school district in Spring Valley, New York, has made its move to site-based decision making. The district sent 175 administrators, teachers, parents, and community members to a two-day training session to learn how to effectively work at building consensus as team members. (MLF)

Describes a social problem-solving process to resolve interpersonal conflicts between young children. Gives techniques for teaching the process, advises on getting started in the classroom, and identifies situations for using the process. Suggests that classroom climates improve as incidences of aggression and victimization decrease and positive…

Discusses some of the difficulties faced by presidents of tribal colleges, including underfunding and political infighting. Emphasizes the need for presidents to have a fast learning curve, be a good mediator, use participatory management techniques, and maintain personal integrity. States that tribal colleges play a major role in developing…

This article presents an alternative approach for reducing violence in schools: the development of evidence-based tools that can be used in existing networks to structure systemic changes. The PEACE POWER strategy emphasizes four practices: recognize contributions and successes, act with respect, share power to build community, and make peace.…

Teacher strategies to prevent or deal with conflict with parents or students include practicing assertive communication, validating feelings of others, recognizing barriers to effective communication, developing trust in relationships, and practicing collaborative problem-solving strategies. If educators have the tools to manage conflict, they can…

The research literature is just beginning to uncover factors involved in sustaining constructivist learning environments, such as Project-Based Learning (PBL). Our case study investigates teacher responses to the challenges of constructivist environments, since teachers can play strong roles in supporting or undermining even the best…

The study was designed to explore qualitatively developmental differences in disagreement negotiation and resolution skills between adolescent and young adult romantic partners. Twenty adolescent and 20 young adult couples participated in the study. The Knox inventory was used to measure the level of disagreement between partners on ten domains…

This article presents the results of an evaluation conducted by two middle school counselors, in collaboration with university researchers, to assess the effectiveness of a classroom intervention designed to impact academic achievement. The intervention utilized was a standardized conflict resolution curriculum, which then was linked to…

This article presents the results of an ethnographic case study of an Israeli Arab middle school whose staff and students are Arab Israelis from the Moslem, Druze, and Christian population sectors. Against the Israeli backdrop of multiculturalism, political tensions, and terrorism, this school has created a multi-faceted curriculum for teaching…

The links among marital relations and children's representations were examined. Forty-seven children between the ages of 5 and 8 completed the Family Stories Task (FAST) to obtain their narrative representations of family relations and performed a variation of a puppet procedure (Mize & Ladd, 1988) to assess children's dispositions towards peer…

Access services is not unique in its need for effective personnel management. A review of the literature indicates that there are many publications on or relating to library personnel administration; however, relatively few of them are dedicated to the narrow topic of access services. As such, this review encompasses literature that is general to…

The influence of social relationships, positive interdependence, and teacher structure on the quality of partner reading interactions was examined. Partner reading, a scripted cooperative learning strategy, is often used in classrooms to promote the development of fluent and automatic reading skills. Forty-three pairs of second grade children were…

Conflict is a very real part of relationships that occur on global, national, and local scales, as well as in daily interpersonal relationships. This article details the relevance of peace studies for children in the primary grades, both in terms of current events and in classroom applications. Suggestions are presented for addressing this topic…

Youth violence is widely recognized as a critical social issue in the United States, and many approaches to prevention have been developed in recent years. Emerging research suggests that only approaches that are deeply embedded in cultural, community, and organizational contexts are likely to be powerful enough to have a meaningful collective…

This article explores how districts negotiate the conflict that emerges as they attempt to de-legitimize inequity by prompting institutional and organizational-level changes that create equitable access and outcomes for all children. To this end, this article highlights the contentious nature of this pursuit as well as the intended and unintended…