Ohio and Pennsylvania's
Conflict Resolution Education in Teacher Education Project
Ohio and Pennsylvania's
Conflict Resolution Education in Teacher Education Project
By Tricia S. Jones, Ph.D., Project Director, Temple University
The Conflict Resolution Education in Teacher Education (CRETE) project has received funding from the George Gund Foundation ($128,000) and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education of the US Department of Education ($504,000) to develop pre-service conflict resolution education in teacher education programs.
CRETE, a collaboration between Temple University, Cleveland State University, Kent State University, and the Ohio Commission for Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management, will educate pre-service teachers in conflict education and social and emotional learning to help them create constructive learning environments, increase teacher satisfaction and improve teacher retention in urban education environments. The CRETE project addresses two crises in urban education - teacher attrition and unsafe, conflict-ridden learning environments; serious problems at national and local levels. Teacher attrition and low teacher satisfaction is related to lack of adequate pre-service preparation in classroom management and student conflict and behavior management.
Conflict Resolution Education (CRE) has proven effective in reducing negative student behavior and improving classroom climate. CRE enhances students' social and emotional competencies and provides them critical skills for cooperatively managing conflicts with peers and adults. Over the past ten years the efficacy of these programs has been strongly demonstrated leading to a ripeness for inclusion in the pre-service canon.
Although CRE and SEL programs have been used with marked success for two decades, CRETE is the first pre-service teacher preparation program in CRE. Thus, CRETE provides a valuable and unique innovation for teacher education. The CRETE project will (1) work with higher education faculty involved in pre-service teacher preparation to infuse CRE into their ongoing coursework, (2) develop and deliver a curriculum for educating teacher candidates outside the higher education course delivery system (in external mini-seminar training modules), (3) provide teacher mentors, trained in CRE, to work with teacher candidates and new teachers to facilitate new teachers' ability to apply these skills and knowledge in their classrooms, (4) evaluate the impact of both curricula and training processes on teacher success in classroom management, establishing positive classroom climate, increasing teacher satisfaction and teacher retention; and (5) prepare hard copy and web-based protocols, curricular materials, and evaluation materials for dissemination to other Colleges of Education in the United States.
Higher education faculty at CSU and Temple will be trained to integrate CRE into ongoing teacher preparation coursework each project year. 60-70 teacher candidates will receive external CRE training per institution each project year. Students (those in faculty classes v. those in external training) will be mentored and tracked over two years and compared with a control group of students from each institution in terms of teacher satisfaction, teacher retention, and classroom climate. Formative evaluation will enable revision of protocols and curricula for national dissemination in both web-site platforms and hard copy versions.
For more detailed information regarding the goals, principles of implementation, activities, and timeline of the CRETE project, please download the following: CRETE Summary (PDF)
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