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School Conflict Management:
Evaluating Your Conflict Resolution Education Program
A Guide for Educators and Evaluators
prepared for
the Ohio Department of Education
and the
Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management
October, 2001
By
© Copyright 2002 by the Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution & Conflict Management and the Ohio Department of Education.
Background on Ohio's School Conflict Management Initiative
Ohio’s School Conflict Management Initiative was established in
1994 as a joint partnership between the Ohio Department of Education (ODE)
and the Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management
(the Commission). The Initiative awards grants to elementary, middle,
and high schools across Ohio to implement conflict management programs.
The grant program includes training, resources, and funding. The primary
purpose of the Initiative is to assist schools in institutionalizing the
skills and concepts of conflict management as established and accepted
elements of the school culture. The ultimate objective is to enhance the
school climate by reducing barriers to teaching and learning and thereby
improve academic achievement.
Each school that receives a grant sends selected staff to a comprehensive
training workshop and receives follow-up technical support to assist with
program design, implementation, and evaluation. Staff-development skill-building
videos are also provided to each grantee. The grant program addresses
four levels of intervention: school culture, pedagogy, curricula, and
student conduct. As part of the grant program, selected elementary, middle
and high schools receive a four-volume set of Resource Guides that contain
age-appropriate, subject-appropriate lessons, activities, strategies,
and evaluation tools. The Resource Guides are the primary tool used by
schools to infuse conflict management skills into school culture and existing
classroom curricula. Student conduct and conflict management as a classroom
management strategy are other elements of the grant program and are both
addressed in the Resource Guides.
2002 RESOURCE GUIDES
The 2002 Resource Guides are divided into three sections. The first two-volume
section (a K-8 volume and a 7-12 volume) includes hundreds of age-appropriate
lessons organized by academic subject, grade level, and indexed, where
appropriate, by topics for Ohio proficiency test preparation. Lessons
also are cross-indexed according to the conflict concept each lesson addresses,
such as understanding conflict, feelings and emotions, anger management,
etc. The organizational structure of these volumes and the lesson format
are based on interviews and a focus group of teachers and conflict resolution
professionals.
The second section, the Administration Guide, is for building-level administrators
and/or individuals responsible for coordinating their building-level conflict
management programs. It covers topics related to structural change such
as building-level disciplinary procedures, mission statements, conflict
management as a classroom management tool, parent information, bullying
prevention, etc. The third section, the Evaluation Guide, focuses on methods
that can be used by school grantees to evaluate program effectiveness
and to assess program impact at the building level.
The 2002 revision of the Resource Guides was directed by staff of the
Commission and the School Conflict Management Initiative at ODE. Content
development of the first three volumes of the Resource Guides was provided
by Lorz Communications, Inc., with Robert Maher, of Federal Hocking Schools,
and Debbie Phillips, of Appalachian Peace and Justice Network. Debbie
Phillips compiled the Administration Guide, based in part on work by Penelope
Senyak, of OnTasc. The Evaluation Guide was compiled by Tricia Jones,
Ph.D., of Temple University, an Dan Kmitta, Ed.D., of the University of
Idaho.
This four-volume set of Resource Guides has been compiled with input from
hundreds of individuals and organizations who have authored and/or published
many of these materials elsewhere. These contributors have graciously
allowed their work to be adapted and/or reproduced in these volumes.
All readers and users of these Resource Guides are encouraged to evaluate
their effectiveness, and to submit recommendations for future improvement.
User feedback forms are provided for this purpose in the Conflict Management
for Teachers Section of the K-8 and 7-12 Resource Guides.
Overview
This manual is intended to help educators and/or evaluators conduct evaluations
of their conflict resolution education programs. Because much of the funding
from the Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management
and the Ohio Department of Education support school programs we have placed
the most attention on helping you evaluate those kinds of programs.
We have prepared the manual as a workbook so that it should be easy to
use. Throughout the beginning parts of the manual we have included some
worksheets to help you identify the program goals and evaluation goals
you want to emphasize. When we provide copies of questionnaires and interview
questions we have presented them so you can simply copy the forms from
the book and use them in your school.
As you begin to use this manual, please remember that any attempt you
make to evaluate your CRE program is a step in the right direction. You
may not initially be able to do the kind of comprehensive evaluation you
aspire to do, but you should be able to provide valuable information to
the most important questions.
This manual may not be duplicated, in whole or in part, without the written
permission of the Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution & Conflict
Management and the Ohio Department of Education. Depending on the use
of the duplicated materials, additional permission may need to be obtained
from the original author of the materials.
To obtain written permission:
Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution & Conflict Management
77 S. High St., 24th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215-6108
Telephone: 614-752-9595 and Fax: 614-752-9682
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