The thesis deals with conflicts in school environment, specifically with teacher’s ways of dealing with the conflict situation with the student. At the beginning of the theoretical part we define the concept of classroom management, as it is the teacher’s way of management combined with students that forms the quality of mutual relations. Another area that we focus on is everyday conflicts. These have a crucial impact on the teacher’s and the student’s work, their relations and the atmosphere of the whole class. The last, extensive section of the theoretical part discusses in-depth the theories and research of teacher’s confrontation with conflicts, his or her response to such conflicts and conflict resolution, and also deals with descriptions of the factors that affect teacher responses in conflict situations.
The empirical part shows the responses of class teachers and after-school class teachers we acquired in a qualitative research with non-standardized semi-structured interviews. It also shows the situations that teachers perceive as conflict situations, and how they deal with them. We focused our attention on how they experience conflicts and how they respond to them. We also present the descriptions of particularly stressful conflicts. We have found that conflict situations between the teacher and the student mostly arise from disagreement (disregard of instructions, inappropriate behavior and violence). Often the conflict situations between students turn into a conflict with the teacher, who is trying to resolve the dispute. The most common response of teachers is to have a talk with the student. Teachers describe experiencing the conflict as a negative emotional experience. After the conflict had been resolved, the experience is recognized as an opportunity for learning and gaining new experience.
Teachers indicated that particularly stressful conflicts were the ones in which the student’s behavior expressed violence against other students, the teacher or both. The situation was characterized by negative emotions, feelings of helplessness and wondering about the appropriate way to act.
We wanted our findings to contribute to a better understanding of conflict perception, confrontation and resolution, and to encourage teachers to pay more attention to the topic and conflict resolution. We also wanted to draw attention to the utmost importance of regular conflict confrontation and resolution that enables better relations, and to the use of appropriate ways of conflict resolution.
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