Conflict Resolution Education - National Criminal Justice Reference ...

International Center for
Cooperation and Conflict
Resolution
The International Center for Cooperation and Conflict
Resolution (ICCCR) at Columbia University
initiated a conflict resolution project at an alternative
high school (AHS) in New York City. 3 The
goal of the project was to determine the effects of
cooperative learning and conflict resolution training
on AHS students.
This AHS was established in 1971 as part of a network
of alternative high schools in New York City.
It has approximately 180 students and 14 teachers,
including a site coordinator, at each of its 4 campuses.
Anyone under the age of 19 living anywhere
in New York City may apply to any campus of the
school. Students may be admitted to the AHS in
several ways. Students who have already dropped
out or are at risk of dropping out of another school
may apply voluntarily, while others are referred by
high school counselors or the court system.
Applicants have a broad range of academic skills
and poor attendance records. The demographic portrait
of the AHS student population at the beginning
of the project was striking. The racial composition
was 56.9 percent African American, 40.5 percent
Hispanic, 2.2 percent white, 0.4 percent Asian,
and 0.1 percent Native American; 5.1 percent of the
students had limited proficiency in English. There
were equal numbers of female and male students,
and the average age was 17 years. One-third of the
female students were teen parents. The majority of
the students came from disadvantaged households,
and increasing numbers came from families with
risk factors such as drug abuse and homelessness.
The achievement rate was well below that of other
New York City high schools: the average number
of previously acquired high school credits was 20,
and dropouts had been out of school for periods
ranging from 6 months to 7 years.
Training Components
Initial training of the administrators, coordinators,
teachers, and paraprofessionals took place in August
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1988; almost all who were eligible participated in the
training. The training usually involves afterschool
training workshops with the trainer on campus for
individual staff development.
ICCCR used the training model for cooperative
learning developed by David Johnson and Roger
Johnson of the Cooperative Learning Center at
the University of Minnesota. Five key elements are
involved in cooperative learning. 4 The most important
is positive interdependence, meaning that students
must perceive that it is to their advantage if
other students learn well and to their disadvantage if
others do poorly. This can be achieved through mutual
goals (goal interdependence), division of labor
(task interdependence), and joint rewards (reward
interdependence).
In addition, cooperative learning requires face-toface
interaction among students in which they express
their positive interdependence. This method
also requires individual accountability; that is, each
member of the cooperative learning situation is responsible
to the others for mastering the material,
analyzing the group’s performance, and making
suggestions for improving cooperation.
ICCCR’s conflict resolution training draws upon
several sources: Deutsch’s theoretical model, which
articulates a number of basic principles of conflict
resolution training; 5 Raider’s training model, which
has been widely used by conflict resolution training
managers and teachers; 6 Prothrow-Stith’s curriculum
on violence prevention; 7 and the Community
Board Program’s curriculums for conflict resolution
and mediation. 8 Conflict resolution training is implemented
in a variety of ways, depending on the
context in which it is to be employed—orientation
sessions for new students, family groups, or vocational
classes, for example. Role-playing, group
activities, and discussion groups are used to apply
negotiation skills to the students’ lives in home,
school, and work settings.
Impact of the ICCCR Conflict Resolution
Project
ICCCR results indicate that the positive effects
on students trained in conflict resolution and