Democratic Pedagogy Facilitating Pro-social Conflict Resolution in an Israeli Kindergarten Class

Early childhood interpersonal conflicts are an integral part of social life and having many advantages for individual and group development and social cohesion. Since involvement in conflict can lead to negative results... [ view full abstract ]

Early childhood interpersonal conflicts are an integral part of social life and having many advantages for individual and group development and social cohesion. Since involvement in conflict can lead to negative results deriving from an escalation of the conflict to a stage of violence, it is important to establish competence that enables constructive conflict resolution. Many intervention programs worldwide predict that without training, children tend to manage their conflicts destructively .Although these intervention programs help children learn to resolve conflicts through negotiation they do not take into account the unique culture of the educational setting, thus harming the sustainability of the programs. Nevertheless, a gap in knowledge was identified, regarding the educational approach, as an intervention to support the development of children’s social-emotional competence to enable them to resolve interpersonal conflicts using pro-social strategies.

This presentation reports the findings of a study that explored the democratic pedagogy as a context that support resolution of interpersonal conflicts between 3-4 year old children in an Israeli kindergarten class. The findings allowed the emergence of a model evidencing that both direct and indirect intervention strategies were used to support the conflict resolution among the children. Teachers responded in a range of ways to children's request for direct intervention, and most especially used a clarification-mediation conversation. Indirectly, they promoted democratic pedagogy with children through participation, listening and dialogue. The findings reveal the children's development in their conflict resolution, which indicate a significant advancement in their pro-social negotiation abilities. Additionally, the findings show a significant increase in the children's spontaneous intervention as peer observers of the conflict and a decrease in their request of teacher intervention. The research suggests that over time, no extra-curricular intervention is needed within a supportive and democratic educational approach.                 

Keywords: conflict resolution; democratic pedagogy; early childhood, intervention, participation, dialogue