[MUSIC] "Understanding and dealing with conflict". We're going to look at understanding and dealing with conflict from 3 positions. Context, sources and the strategies. Now, you know how with teaching, at some stage, you're going to have to engage with conflict. Whether it's within your class, where you're going to have to facilitate conflict between two learners. Or a conflictual situation that you may have a different position than what your learners might have. You may have a conflictual situation with your peers, or the people that lead you and govern your school. Sometimes that conflict can be within. We discussed how our values, our beliefs and with the pollcies of the school there could be tensions. So, what are some of the tensions or the conflicts between yourself or within yourself that you have? Let's look at contexts to start. There may be places within your own context, that conflict can happen. As I've mentioned, in your class, also within your curriculum, the formal curriculum and your hidden curriculum: sometimes what you think the purposes are of your formal curriculum, and all the dynamics that are happening outside that curriculum. Let me give you an example. What you may be talking about in a life orientation class, around issues about diversity and inclusion, those issues might not be so real outside that class. You might go to the cafeteria, or to the playgrounds, you may see people fairly sitting in spaces around their own racial groups, their own cultural groups. That's outside your curriculum. So, whilst your curriculum positions a kind of formality that this would be a wonderful space, where we could look at diversity and value diversity, what's outside that curriculum might not be what is happening as how you teach that. Now, that in itself, could position itself around conflict. In terms of, you may have cultural conflict within the school or conflict between boys and girls, for instance. Now the other context, that feed into how we understand and engage with conflict. For instance, in some homes, conflict is something that we should avoid, we shouldn't speak about it. In some homes, conflict is something that is seen as positive, that we need to talk about this, we need to deal with the problem, and engage with it. And sometimes the conversations at home might be very loud, and may seem abrasive to somebody looking in. But that's how that home may deal with conflicts. In other homes, as much as we can afford it, we will let it be, but those things simmer and could explode at some moment. So, how do you deal with your conflict in your situation at home? And how does it influence how you deal with conflict within your classroom and within your school environment? Let's look at some of the sources outside our context. Let's look at television, let's look at the newspapers, when they tell us about conflicts. Many newspapers talk about wars and people dealing with conflict by having violent armed conflict. Look at sport on television. And you look at conflict being dealt with on a soccer field, where many of our learners watch their heroes playing soccer, and when somebody does something that is not liked, somebody throws a fist because it's one way of dealing with conflict. Those are the kind of models that many of our learners pick up, from the newspapers, from sport games, but also movies. Many of the movies are movies about dealing with conflict in very violent ways, very physical ways where solutions such as dialogue, conversation are not put as alternatives, or avenues for engaging with and dealing with conflict. So, what are the strategies that we can then develop? We develop, in many ways, what we see is what we do. What we learn from media and other sources is how we practice and deal with conflict within our own context. I want to draw our attention to discipline or punishment, because those are two positions that in many ways, some people conflate them and make them seem as similar, but they are distinct. In terms of discipline, it's the practice of influencing people to follow rules, or accepted codes of behavior. The self-controlled behavior resulting from such influence. Now, punishment on the other hand, is the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offence. What do you do in your school? Do you deal with discipline? Or punishment? And what are the ways in which those are real? Now, I want to draw your attention to breaking habits and research from a school in Ghana, where one of the learners says, "Master, if you do not punish us, we will not behave and we will not learn." Think about that. Do you agree with that statement? Do you agree that learners need to be punished for them to behave and to learn? Do you think it's the only way you can get learners to behave, and to learn? What are the ways you enable discipline in your classroom? Is it through punishment? Now, the nature of learning. Implicit in this statement is the view that learning can only happen if somebody's beaten and punished, that somebody will only behave if they are punished. Now, that's not necessarily true, or that's not correct altogether because as we've been talking in our previous sessions about how do we create an environment that's exciting, a learning environment that's exciting, that where learners are inspired to learn, where learners want to feel included and want to feel that they contribute, like in basketball, where there's a conversation where learners feel if they say something or they answer a particular question, there's going to be no retribution in a punitive way. You want to create an environment that's safe and compassionate, where all learners feel included. Now, think about that statement again: that we will only learn and behave, if we are punished. Now, changing behaviors, and I'm going to draw on this research that was done in Ghana. On the one hand, the misconception is that behavior and learning will take place if there is caning, if there is harassment, if there's intimidation, threatening, insulting. I want you to look at those five words that I have put on the left-hand side of the slide. If you were learning, what would happen if you were caned? Would you learn if you were caned, if you were harrassed? If you were intimidated and made to feel fearful? Or, look at the right hand side: if things were explained to you, whether it's the rules of the schools; if you're encouraged constantly that you can do this, that you can achieve the best if you put your mind to it; if you were rewarded; if issues were negotiated with you, and you were respected. With which one would you learn better? Now, think about your class. What do you do in your class? How would your learners learn better? What learning environment would be best, and the most conducive for learning to take place? Now, changing behaviors and continuing with that Ghana story, if we look at all those issues on the left hand side of the previous slide on caning, intimidation, all that does is bring about anxiety and fear. It brings about compliance, but in a superficial way, not in a genuine compliance. Learners were threatened, and a few humiliated, but it's all done superficially to show you that I'm learning and behaving, but I may not feel, or I may not enjoy, or aspire, or want to experiment, or to initiate new things in that class. And of course, our self-esteem cannot be the best, if we are humiliated, if we are threatened, and beaten. But change is possible. And we can see in the example from the school teacher in Ghana, of how the shift can happen from a very punitive approach to discipline, to one that's far more dialogic, one that's more explained and one that's more participatory. Now let's look at The 7 Deadly Sins of Discipline. And there are seven points there but I'm just going to pick up on just one for you. Think about humiliation, and think about when you are humiliated. What happens to the learning process, are you as eager to contribute? Are you as eager to learn and to be a part of? Are you wanting to contribute to a discussion? And I'm sure the answer is no. Learners feel exactly the same way. The 7 great virtues of discipline. I'm going to pick up on point 6, on the clarity of boundaries, and how critical that is. Now, the clarity of boundaries, rather than a set of rules, is useful because rules can be broken. But the clarity of boundaries is where learners or teachers say, what are the boundaries of this class in which teaching and learning will take place? So, one of the boundaries could be where teachers could contract with leaners and say to them, what are the boundaries that should inform how we manage this class? Well, one of the boundaries the learners can say is let's be punctual, or let's ensure that our homework is done, so that we can really contribute to exciting lessons, exciting discussions, that we go and do the research that is necessary. Now, when that's not done, teachers can always find them, but this is collectively what we've all decided to create a set of boundaries and how we can ensure that. So, rather than an approach of a punitive, "If you don't do this because I have said it", let's collectively set up a set of guidelines or carriage of boundaries that both teacher and the learners will be guided by it. So, it's a framework where collectively you contributed. Is that something that could work in your classroom? Now, roles and responsibilities. And in this, a head teacher from Ghana, where he talks about how, not only in the classroom but within the school of creating groups of prefects. Class representatives who can also contribute to holding their peers accountable. So, rather than seeing discipline and punishment as one directional, where adults discipline and punish, learners can also hold their peers as accountable and say to them, "You know what, I don't think those behaviors really are conducive to what we really want for the school". So, in that way, you've got the peers to hold their peers accountable, rather than teachers constantly being seen as, "You haven't done this, you need to do this", or in showing that rules and governance of the school is operational. So, remember the ring of Gyges, in that, if you had a ring that could make you invisible would you still behave in the same way as if you were visible to everyone? And the young student says, "I would like to think so, Master." [MUSIC]
