The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Most people are well aware of the general differences among preschoolers, elementary school-age children, and adolescents; however, not everyone has a solid understanding of the important cognitive, emotional, and physical capabilities that differentiate these groups. For example, nowhere else in an individual’s lifetime are there such tremendous growth spurts in all developmental areas as during early childhood, roughly from infancy to five years of age. During this time a child is learning gross and fine motor skills, self-regulation (e.g., toilet training), and acquiring language for communication and reasoning. From the ages of three to five, children also begin learning to form peer relationships, discriminate gender roles, and develop a sense of right and wrong.

  Following the discussion on early childhood, this chapter also briefly covers developmental issues and conflict management in middle childhood (ages six to twelve), adolescence (ages twelve or thirteen to approximately twenty-one), and adulthood. The discussion at each level focuses on how developmental differences can guide our approach to teaching children age-appropriate skills.

  In most sections, conflict resolution programs that may be used for the relevant age group, including peer mediation, are discussed. The final section assesses how well we are doing currently in our efforts to reach children and adults and suggests future directions in conflict resolution programs as well as improvements to be made in terms of curricula and systematic evaluation.

  STAGE THEORIES OF EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

  Prior to the 1970s, the study of development tended to end in adolescence when the individual is presumed to have substantially “developed” into the adult he or she will remain for the next fifty or sixty years, with some minor variation. Although there are several current theorists and researchers who see development as highly stable after the age of thirty (McCrae and Costa, 1990; Block, 1977), others now consider adulthood not as an end state but as a continuation of development occurring over the life span (Erikson, 1963; Kegan, 1994).

  The views on early childhood development presented in this chapter are dependent on a wide range of theory and research in the field. First, we must credit several pioneering developmental theorists (Piaget, Kohlberg, Selman, and Erikson) and mention some of the more important aspects of their classic stage theories concerning social cognition and emotional development. Although recent research suggests that children may know more than they tell us and that some stages may appear earlier or show more inconsistency than previously thought, there is still much that is useful in these theories.

  Preoperational Stage

  Conflict serves different purposes according to the level of early childhood development. Kohlberg called early childhood the stage of heteronomous morality, a time that Piaget referred to as the preoperational stage of development, or morality of constraint. (See tables 18.1 and 18.2.) Children in this stage are subject to externally imposed rules and adhere unquestioningly to these rules and the directives of powerful adults. Their motives and those of other children and adults are disregarded; only outcomes are important.

  Table 18.1 Piaget’s Social Cognitive Approach to Children’s Development

  Source: Adapted from Piaget and Inhelder (1969).

  Stage Description

  Sensorimotor (birth to age 2) Centration describes this stage. Children focus on the most salient aspect of an event. It is most evident in their egocentrism, seeing the world in terms of their own point of view.

  Preoperational (2 to 6) Children can now use symbols, words, and gestures to represent reality; objects no longer have to be present to be thought about. However, they have difficulty differentiating their perspective from another’s point of view and are unsure about causal relations.

  Emotions: Four-year-olds can usually distinguish between real and displayed feelings but are unable to provide justifications for their judgments.

  Concrete operational (6 to 12) Operational thought enables children to combine, separate, order, and transform objects. However, these operations must be carried out in the presence of the objects and events.

  Formal operational (12 to 19) Adolescents become capable of systematic thought. They are interested in abstract ideas and the process of thought itself.

  Note: One of the major critiques of Piaget is that researchers are finding evidence that children are actually more competent in a number of ways than Piaget thought. Neo-Piagetians retain Piaget’s theories of stage but criticize the postulation of an invariant sequence in stages. On the basis of information-processing theory and cognitive science perspectives, many developmentalists agree that cognition develops in varying domains over a period of time rather than in separate stages.

  Table 18.2 Comparison of Social Cognitive Approaches to Development

  Sources: Adapted from Kohlberg (1976), Damon (1980), and Selman (1980). Damon contests the idea of stages as an invariant sequence because children regress in level and show inconsistent levels of performance from one testing time to the next.

  Kohlberg: Moral Stages Damon: Justice in Dividing Resources Selman: Perspective Taking

  Level 1: Preconventional

  Early childhood (heteronomous morality) Stage 1 (end of early childhood to beginning of middle childhood) Level 0-A (4 and under) Egocentric impulsive level (0) (ages 3 to 6)a

  The morality of obedience: adherence to rules backed by punishment Justice is getting what one wishes: “I should go because I want to.” Negotiation through unreflective physical means (fight or flight); shared experience through unreflective imitation

  Level 0-B (ages 4 to 5) Justifications are based on external factors such as size and gender: “I should get more because I’m bigger.”

  Middle childhood (instrumental morality) Stage 2 (ages 7 to 10 or 11) Level 1-A (ages 5 to 7) Unilateral one-way level (ages 5 to 9)

  Justice is seen as an exchange system: you give as much as others give you. Justice is always strict equality: everyone gets the same. Negotiations through oneway commands or orders or through automatic obedience

  Level 1-B (ages 6 to 9) A notion of reciprocity develops: people should be paid back in kind for doing good or bad things. Shared experience through expressive enthusiasm without concern for reciprocity.

  Level II: Conventional

  Stage 3 (10 or 11 to beginning of adolescence) Social-relational morality Level 2-A (ages 8 to 10) Reciprocal reflective level (ages 7 to 12)

  Children believe that shared feelings and agreements are more important than selfinterest. Moral relativity—learning how different persons can have different yet equally valid claims for justice. Negotiation through cooperation using persuasion or deference; shared experience through mutual reflection on similar perceptions and experiences.

  Adolescence Stage 4 Law and order Level 2-B (ages 10 and up) Mutual third-person level (3) (beginning in adolescence)

  Laws govern what is right. Choices take account of two or more people’s (as well as situational) demands. There is feeling that all persons should be given their due (does not necessarily mean equality in treatment). Negotiation through strategies integrating needs of self and other: shared experience through empathic reflective process.

  Level III: Principled

  Stages 5 and 6 (Adolescence to adulthood) Principled, postconventional understanding Societal perspective taking level (4) (late adolescence to adulthood) Individuals are capable of taking a generalized perspective of morality.

  aRecent research suggests that preschoolers may know more than they can tell us, and so this level may need revision.

  Egocentric Orientation

  As can be seen in table 18.3, Kegan (1994), a neo-Piagetian constructive-developmentalist, frames different development periods in terms of the individual’s struggle to make meaning of life and refers to these different stages as orders of consciousness. In total, Kegan theorized five stages, or “orders of consciousness,” that combined cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and intrapersonal development throughout the life span. The first o
rder of consciousness encompasses children under the ages of seven or eight whose cognitive capabilities allow a socially egocentric construction of the world. In practical terms, this means that they believe others share their viewpoints and experience the same moment-to-moment relationship to personal desires, preferences, and abilities. At this age, children are unable to delay gratification for any length of time, and they are unable to remember failed efforts from the past. Self-esteem is largely kept intact because their abilities are reconstituted continually from one moment to the next.

  Table 18.3 Kegan’s Cognitive Orders of Consciousness

  Source: Adapted from Kegan (1994).

  Orders of Consciousness Appropriate Audience Cognitive Operation

  First order: Socially egocentric Early childhood: Roughly two to six years Fantasy

  Second order: Durable categories Middle childhood: Grades 1–3 (a stretch), grades 4–6 (elaborating an emerging capacity) Data

  Third order: Crosscategorical structures Adolescents: Middle school students (a stretch), high school students (elaborating an emerging capacity) Inference

  Fourth order: Complex systems Adults: Any higher education setting (a stretch for many) Formulation

  Fifth order: Transsystem structures Any higher education setting (a stretch for most); graduate programs and practicing within the field itself (a stretch for many) Reflection on formulation

  Egocentric, Impulsive Stage

  Selman (1980) refers to the “egocentric, impulsive stage” of development as representing the primitive foundation of social perspective taking (see table 18.2). According to this view, young children may recognize that other children display different preferences, but they lack the capacity to distinguish between their own perception of an event or person and that of another child. Neither do they see a cause-and-effect relationship between thinking and behaving. This often leads to confusion over cause-and-effect relationships, such as whether punishment following misbehavior is the effect of misbehavior or its cause. Without guidance, children are likely to feel that they did something wrong because they are punished but fail to understand precisely what they did wrong.

  Post-Piagetian Theories

  Comparatively recent modifications of Piaget’s theory include the work of De Vries and Zan (1994) and Elias and others (1997), the latter group seeing development in terms of social-emotional competence domains. There has also been a biosocial-behavioral shift in thinking about development, in that the idea of set stages has come to be modified to a view of development allowing the characteristics of various stages to coexist (Fischer, Bullock, Rotenberg, and Raya, 1993). These postclassic theorists, including Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner, add significantly to knowledge about the fundamental elements of school readiness and conflict management: personality and individuality, emotional control, role taking, empathy, perspective taking, moral reasoning, problem solving, and the interconnection between social-emotional learning and academic achievement.

  Neuroscientific Contributions

  Over the past two decades in particular, neuroscientific researchers have made significant progress in mapping how a child’s mind develops and learning takes place (Jensen, 1998, 2003; Knudsen, Heckman, Cameron, and Shonkoff, 2006; Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000; Sousa, 2001; Shore, 1997). Social experience in the first few years of life has a powerful influence on the development of brain structure and neurochemistry, which in turn structures cognitive and social skills. Nurture is a critical force in development: children get smarter as they interact with their environment and stimulation from important others promotes essential brain activity. Skill development and brain maturation are hierarchical processes: higher-level function depends on lower-level functions, and the capacity for change in skill development and neural circuitry is highest earliest in life and decreases over time.

  It is the interplay between neural activity and learning that builds personality. Negative patterns can be interrupted during the brain’s high-activity stage in early childhood, and patterns promoting the child’s emotional, social, and cognitive well-being can be “automatized” by learning and frequent practice. Neuroscientific research shows that

  The first forty-eight months of a child’s life are more important to brain development than previously thought. In fact, much of the brain’s infrastructure is in place by age four. By this age, children have already mapped out, through repetition, significant aspects of their cognitive and behavioral repertoire.

  Early experience at home and school critically influences the ability to learn and the capacity to regulate emotion.

  Across all ethnic groups, the human brain benefits significantly from good experience and teaching, particularly during the first four years.

  Children learn in the context of important relationships. Caregiving and stimulation help children develop the capacity for empathy, perspective taking, emotional regulation, behavioral control, problem solving, and optimal cognitive functioning.

  Although emotion in Western cultures has often been considered irrational in relation to cognition, neuroscientists now believe that emotions provide information in much the same way logic does. Emotions also direct attention and create meaning using their own memory pathways.

  Having an egocentric orientation toward social perspective taking, children at this age view a conflict situation as being an event where one cannot do what one wants because of how the other person is behaving. Conflict resolution thus consists of fight (“Hit her!”) or flight (“Go play with another toy or do something else”). According to the theorists in table 18.2, there is little full-scale perspective taking in early childhood. However, incipient perspective taking is readily apparent in the child’s empathic response to others, and a number of theorists believe young children are more capable of perspective taking than classic stage theories allowed. As evidence, they point to the fact that children are often seen comforting friends who are upset or mirroring the emotion of others around them.

  THE FUNCTION OF CONFLICT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

  Role of Conflict

  From the viewpoint of conflict resolution, the three-to-five age range and its cognitive growth and social development are incredibly important periods where children learn and are highly accessible to being taught constructive versus destructive ways of thinking and behaving. Naturally occurring conflict is an opportunity for children to develop social, emotional, intellectual, and moral skills by working through the challenges they face in developmental tasks. If they master the challenges constructively during this period and are supported in their efforts, they are able to lay a solid foundation for the further expansion of their capabilities at later developmental stages. If children’s development takes a more negative route and they do not pass the key emotional milestones of early childhood appropriately, they are at risk of retaining such negative traits as impulsivity, immature emotional functioning, behavioral problems, and even a propensity to violence.

  When this happens, these basic skills of early childhood will have to be relearned at a later date, if at all—relearning represents a more difficult path. Perhaps here is the place to remind parents and other adults that the goal is not always to “change my child’s behavior so that she is more agreeable,” but to recognize the full importance of the role that oppositional, conflict-provoking behavior has in development. The increasing assertiveness, or autonomy, of the child during the second and third years is to be desired rather than socialized into compliance with parental demands. What may need to be changed is how the child’s behavior is viewed and, in particular, how the parent addresses it.

  Emotion.

  The emotional maturation of the young child is, arguably, the most important task of early childhood. Emotion influences most of our behavior. A threatening situation (a hostile look from a classmate) may trigger intense emotion, which creates action that occurs without thinking. This is why preschoolers need to be taught emotional management strategies (e.g., stop before res
ponding and think about what you will do) repetitively, so they can become automatic responses.

  The development of social-emotional competence begins with acquiring the communication skills involved in clearly expressing one’s own emotions as well as in effective listening and attending to the other’s verbal and nonverbal emotional expression. To be emotionally competent, children need to develop awareness of both their own emotional states and those of others. Adults need to create constructive conflict experiences to assist children, especially in early childhood.

  Involving emotions in learning begins with getting and maintaining the attention of the preschooler. One way to do this is to structure strong, frequent contrasts in activity. Sustaining continuous high-level attention for more than ten minutes is difficult even for adults. Knowledge of children’s capacity for concentration must guide an expectation for sustaining attention in early childhood. A rough guideline is to involve preschoolers in four to six minutes of direct instruction (external instruction) at any one time (Jensen, 1998). Following brief external instruction, children need time to create meaning, which is accomplished through internal, largely unconscious processes that occur while the child is playing or engaged in an apparently mindless activity. Last but far from least, time is required for the learning to “take.” Activities and practice sessions should be repeated with the children in a variety of situations and over many weeks for enduring internalization of these lessons. Parental support and assistance in conducting at-home practice sessions is an integral component of this process.

  Since stress is deleterious to learning, teachers and parents must strive to reduce stress for children. The outcome of stress is the activation of defense mechanisms, which may be useful for surviving a physical danger but interfere with learning. Stressors range from a rude classmate to a tense parent overreacting to the child’s behavior or a teacher who, perhaps unwittingly, embarrasses a student in front of peers.