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11Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 11 (2012 5) 1570-1582
УДК 371.255
Conflicts and Negotiations -
Educational Content
and Conditions for the Development
Boris I. Khasan*
Institute of Psychology and Development Pedagogy
Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 04.11.2011, received in revised form 11.11.2011, accepted 23.11.2012
Conflict competence acts as one of the most important educational outcomes. Opportunities to form abilities to solve the conflicts that are need in education can be already implemented in developmental education at primary school age. However, generated background of the conflict competence will be the real age-related new formation, provided specially organized educational environment. Such environment includes practice of conflict settlement in education in the negotiation processes of all interested parties, including students. It is important to form this kind of negotiation institution, taking into account the real risks that have their own specifics in different subjects of educational relations.
Keywords: conflict, constructive negotiation processes, productive conflict settlement, educational interests, age-related new formation, conflict competence.
No one likes the taste of yeast in the dough - And yet it has risen only because of it.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
I. Correlation of conflict and subject competences
The question of the possibility to contribute to the establishment of conflict competence, in our opinion, can be responsibly raised already in the second half of primary school, when according to the concept of developmental education and during the implementation of appropriate educational technologies, we expect the first effects of educational self-sufficiency from students.
* Corresponding author E-mail address: khbi@ippd.ru
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
At the same time in the studies devoted to the establishment of conflict competence in school, there is a question about the correlation of the activity on the development of ability to productively settle the conflicts, and activity aimed at the proper training of school subjects. This is the question that has been raised by us in the context of the correlation of subject and meta-subject education. In this context, conflict competence acts as an effect of meta-subject education, but its formation, of course, requires the special material,
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that can be reasonably considered as the learning and subject material, but that is organized as a specially discontinuous, problematic material -task, problem. Our research aims in this respect are rather coordinated with the organization of educational tasks of the developmental education system. At the same time, we believe that it is possible to check the appearance of such an effect as conflict competence just on the basis of subject-indifferent material and thus to detect or not detect the ability to transfer skills and use it in the non-standardized situations.
Speaking about the competence, we understand it (according to J. Ravenna, 2002) as a personal effectiveness within the given limits of the activity. The necessary condition for the display and perhaps the appearance of competence is the personal significance of activity: "It is important for me to cope with the task, to succeed in activity, so I make every effort and show my competence". If it does not matter or it is not needed, competence is out of the question. That is, we just do not know whether it exists or not, because failure to achieve the given result can be explained not by the lack of skills, and the lack of motivation for the solution.
For education, it means that competence as the given, imposed with respect to age or academic year one, has to correspond to or be consistent with the claims of the child. That is, these claims - "I want to know, to be able, to overcome" - have become personal "I can" in education and only then can we talk about competence.
It should be emphasized that, according to Ravenna and other authors (see also (J. Christiansen, 1991, A.K. Markova, 1996) being competent and not knowing about it at the same time is not possible. That provision is the place for questions about the subject of study and ability formation. Is that thing that is formed
by teachers, and then measured and happily discovered, the competence (or at least ability) of the student or is it the reflected effect of activities of the composer and measurer?
For the formation of the research program and design of the usage of obtained results, we formulate several key points.
1. Thereby, for the formation of competence it is necessary for the child to notice, to detect own progress and fix these transitions from "I can't" to "I can".
In fact, these "I can" should be necessarily in demand not only in an artificial frame of the subject. This subject from the studying stage should become something that will be applied or work. And it must be discovered by the child as a working and applicable thing.
In our opinion, it is the normal logic of the subject education that is not self-sufficient, but serves the purposes of development. From the mastering of the subject as a subject for the mastering to detect it as a resource tool for working with another subject (see B.I. Khasan, 2003).
2. What is the conflict competence? It is the complex of abilities that allows to effectively settle conflicts. In this case it is important for us that when we say "allow", we do not mean the finality of actions, their completeness. For us, the most important thing is procedural characteristics of productive oriented action with contradiction and its conflicts. If you follow our definition of the conflict as a special organization of activities, as the form in which contradiction is retained in the process of settlement, so the conflict-competent person is the one who has mastered this form and distinguished it among others. And, most importantly, this person is able to detect the contradiction and knows the ways of its retention.
We believe, and it is the basic assumption, that this kind of ability has its own line of
development that can be built in accordance with age. This means that at each age stage there is a problem (imputation!) of the formation of conflict competence of the specified level.
3. Variants of the correlation of the formation dynamics of comflict competence with the subject education are rather not variants, but some scenarios of the correlation of aims and ways to achieve them:
- "Even if you tech something, it will grown by itself (If we teach well, good things will grow, if we teach bad, not very good things will grow") - it is the natural scenario;
- "It is necessary to teach specifically and separately, and it doesn't matter whether you teach during the others lessons or the same" - it is the subject scenario.
- Special organization of the subject education where there will be formation of connections between different lines (according to the type "aim - means to achieve", and in inverse ratio, when something that has been the aim yesterday is becoming the means to achieve a new goal today) - it is the meta-subject scenario.
If we understand the connection between actions transforming educational and subject material and actions, skills, defining conflict competencies - we will understand how to provide its establishment and achievement of new "I can" by the students.
4. In the model of the subject under study it is important to distinguish three layers in the logic of the competence formation.
• Educational and subject transformations (the layer of the science and subject logic and its didactic structure). This layer forms the skill of specific regulatory transformation and, thus, there is mastering of norms of organization and
transformations in the certain subject culture.
• Conflict (the layer of the activities organization during the detection of the gaps in own abilities to make transformation when they are needed, search and establishment of forms for conflict settlement).
• General state (the layer where there is an actual formation of connection between two other layers, due to the transition from the «It is needed» to «I want-but I can't» and then to «I can» with the securing of what I exactly can and how it has became possible and will be possible in the future).
Abilities are always discovered in the situation of overcoming, but they are fixed as abilities and then as personal competence when their application does not require special efforts and becomes the irreversible thing that is not possible to lose.
Thus, conflict competence, in our opinion, can not be regarded as an independent separate purpose and result of any special education process, and also not as the random effect (bonus) of subject education. It is developed together with the subject competence and is the condition for the effectiveness of the latter.
That is, if we really want to achieve sustained and portable effects of subject education and the same result of the behavior in conflict as meta-ability (one of the key competencies), it is important for us to look in educational technology for the connection of these lines in the ratio of «aim-material- means of transformation».
At the same time there is also the negative assumption that only due to complication and strengthening of the subject line it is impossible to increase effectiveness in the subject and even more in the parallel multiplication of these subject lines.
II. Experimental study
of the connection between the conflict and subject competences1
Thus, the components of conflict competence are the following:
1. Willingness to overcome difficulties
2. Ability to detect the contradiction that lies at the heart of the conflict
3. Proficiency in the ways of resolving various types of contradictions.
Reflection is the main means for conflict settlement allows you to transfer the situation of uncertainty in the form of the task, that is to form "circumstances" of the person in the construction - conflict which settlement will be the settlement of the conflict.
At the finish of primary school, according to the age-related goals and implementation of educational programs, students can reach such level of conflict competence that allows them to:
1. Effectively settle the conflicts of extracurricular subject in group work. (through the formulation of the problem and development of educational cooperation)
2. Distinguish and hold in the settlement two types of transformations: subject and organizational.
Thus, the problem and contribution of primary school age in the formation of conflict competence consist in the following: 1) appearance of the ability to distinguish subjects of transformation (that is the basic ability to effective conflict settlement and lies in the basis of distinguishing between the subject and the conflict material, then the interests and goals of the parties) and 2) detection of the interaction as a resource for settlement.
In our opinion, the condition for the formation of these abilities is the treatment of the school subject by the teacher as means of activity, not just as an object for the development and study.
This, in turn, is possible only with the special lesson organization of such children's interaction, when the school subject is only the reason for cooperation and its subsequent reflection. We have conducted an experiment and attempted to:
- Create the situation of uncertainty with the need to overcome it (the situation of personal significance for the participants)
- Discover the phenomena of distinguishing different types of material in the group work
- Compare according to these criteria students in classes where various pedagogical strategies have been implemented in the organization of educational cooperation.
The experimental procedure was constructed as follows.
Within the school-wide campaign "Remember your class", the supervising teacher introduces to the class adults who will shoot the picture shot about their classroom. In order to do this, they will choose a team of four people who will be the screenwriters and presenters. In order to select the best team there will be the game, and the winners will be the smartest students who are able to work together. Rules of the game are the following:
Presenter thinks of a word that denotes an object in this classroom. Task for the teams is to guess the word. They should guess this word according to the rules. The team asks the presenter questions that can only be answered "yes" or "no." The teams play by turn. The first team has 15 attempts, that is, they can ask just 15 questions. If during this time they can't guess the word, then the move is going to the next team. They have 13 questions in total. If they also can't recognize the word, then the move is going to the third team and this team has just 11 questions. The winner is the team that guess the word. This team gets 1 point. There are three rounds in total,
the order of play is changing in every round. The winner will be the team with the greatest number of points. There are notes on the board about the number of questions.
The whole procedure is recorded on video, the groups include observers who are recording the minutes of discussion.
After the first round, students were given the time to discuss progress of the game in teams, there were no any specific objectives for this discussion.
This game was carried out in three 4th academic year classes in the middle of the school year. In total, the experiment was attended by 36 people. The classes were distinguished by the system of education and system of pedagogical activities for the organization of educational cooperation.
The first group was represented by the class with the traditional system of education and the teacher did not set any tasks of mastering the skills of cooperation (hereinafter referred to as TE - traditional education).
The second group was the class of developmental education, where the teacher actively used the group and pair forms of work, but only as a form of work that contribute to effective mastering of subject material. The cooperation did not act as the separate subject of the activity of the teacher and class (hereinafter referred to as DE - developmental education).
The third group was the students of class, where within the developmental education the teacher intentionally and systematically used the educational co-operation and implemented an entire program for the transfer of the skills of cooperation to the students. The cooperation itself was discussed in the educational process as an independent subject (hereinafter referred to as DE+ - developmental education +).
In the experimental situation we were interested in the following:
1. Do the students in these classes differ in the selection of settlement strategies?
2. Is it possible to identify differences in the forms of cooperation and ways of its organization?
3. Do the students at the end of primary school mark subject material and cooperation about it as the different subjects of activity?
The analysis of questions to the presenter allowed identifying questions of strategic search and chaotic search. We labeled the question as strategic, if the answer to it would determine the future actions of the team (if the answer is "yes", then we'll ask about ...; and if the answer is "no", then ...). The next question within the strategy is always connected with the previous one. Chaotic search is reflected in the questions that are the enumeration of subjects without system and special intention to clarify any property or get certain information. Typically, this type of search is accompanied by an active examination of the class, "search with the eyes". Participants try to guess the word, and often the answer "no" does not carry any information other than "we have not guessed".
We should also mention such questions that have pseudo-reflexive character. By the form the question refers to the group of subjects and finds out its indicator, but by the content it refers to the concrete subject. For example, the group asks the question "Is it for shooting?" referring to the video camera, or "Is it used for writing on the blackboard?" referring to the chalk, etc. We have to mention that any prohibitions or restrictions on the naming of the subject in the instruction were not introduced. Only in one case, such questions have been the result of an erroneous understanding of instructions by one of the respondents. The cases of pseudo-reflexive statements are recorded in all classes, and in some groups they were even dominant. For us, this phenomenon means the
attempt of external compliance with the "correct" way of acting, without the reflexive attitude toward it. Intuitively feeling how to do it "right", the students act almost like this, but do not implement the method of strategic search. We fix stereotyped activity upon the pattern of reflexive operations that are not mastered as a method.
The percentage of different types of statements said by fourth-graders is presented in the table.
The following analysis results refer to the dynamics of the search methods throughout the game. It will be recalled that the game procedure consisted of three rounds. It was important for us to compare the methods of solution used in different rounds. In order to do this, we compared the percentage of statements of strategic search in all grades from first to the third round.
The results of the comparison are presented in the graph (Table 1).
It is evident from the graph that only in the DE+ class dynamics of strategic statements is positive. With almost equal results in the first round that represents for us the spontaneous activity of children, in the third round there are significant differences. These quantitative indicators have forced us to turn to the analysis of phenomenal data. It was found that the first round has the nature of the tentative one, when there is an understanding of the problem conditions and performance of the tests of spontaneous actions (chaotic search). The pause before the second round helps to make difficulty and suggest methods of effective activity. In the second round
they are implemented. Effective implementation is related to the distribution of functions in the group (organization of cooperation), and the discussion of the solution strategy throughout the entire round (subject transformation). In this case, in the third round the strategy has become dominant and the percentage of chaotic statements is significantly reduced.
If the orientation in the problem conditions in the first round was not successful and the discussion of methods had formal character, after increase of the percentage of strategic statements in the second round, in the third one, it would be again reduced to the initial level. The reason for this we see in the failure of the implementation of agreements in the team. For us, it is an indicator that students know "how it should be done", they try, but do not hold it in their own activities. We dare say that in the presence of the teacher and his organizing work, this strategies would have found its continuation. Thus, students in the class of DE may find difficulties and make attempts to form it, but they are not able to keep the reflective position in the group cooperation.
We have also found significant differences in the forms of cooperation in different classes. And again in the first round, almost all groups demonstrated the direct cooperation "individual members - presenter" and the group does not work like organization. Then, after the redetermination of conditions and development of the method of solution in the DE classes there is appearance other forms. In the first of them there is domination of cooperation "individual
Table 1. Ratio of the respondents' statements by the method of search
Type of statements Class: TE DE DE+
Strategic search, % 3.5 6 14
Chaotic search,% 58 56 43
Pseudo-reflection,% 34 45 24
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members - leader - presenter" and this form is maintained until the end of the game. Thus, there is some sort of organization of work and questions are not asked in chaotic way. That is, according to the formal signs, the group is structured and the method of action is developed. However, this method is not consistent with the content of the subject transformation (although the group is organized, this organization does not serve the task of the development of search method).
In the DE+ class this stage is practically not observed; after the individual actions in the first round in the group there is discussion of the settlement strategy that then determines the form of cooperation. Then the group as a whole discusses and makes the decision about which question should be asked.
It allows us to conclude that the distinction between two types of material (cooperation and subject transformation) in this experiment is the key factor to effectiveness. And we see the phenomena of this distinction in the activity of respondents from the DE+ class. It means that at the end of primary school it is possible to distinguish the retention of two layers of educational cooperation by students. And it does not require the organization of special subjects or meta-subjects - the appropriate level of competence is the effect of full implementation of educational activities.
With the special organization of "discontinuity" of the subject by the teacher, positioning it as the means for other activities, students at the end of primary school are the most effective in overcoming the situation of uncertainty and group settlement of the conflict.
In order to make the received educational result as the basis of the age-related new form, it requires such social context where constructive procedural characteristics of the cooperation are demanded in the obvious for the character way. We consider the retention of the conflict as
constructive when it is formed as the negotiation process. In turn, the productive outcome of such process is an agreement that has been reached during the negotiations and that satisfies the interests of the negotiating parties, and therefore will be implemented by them voluntarily and without coercion. (Khasan, 2003)
It is extremely important, in our opinion that this context by itself should be presented in the form of a general-purpose institution, i.e. including all the positions that are interested in education and not being designed by adults exclusively for the children.
This circumstance opens up the problem of needed and possible agreements with a relatively high social status.
III. Conflicts and negotiations in the educational relations
Efficiently solvable conflicts imply a clear representation of the interests of the involved parties and matching of the subject and material of the conflict. If the reality of relations is framed not in such a way, we deal with the so-called "conflict monster" when one party wants one thing, the other one wants another thing. Such actions can be called crossing actions, but they can hardly be discussed as the cooperation that according to the classical theory of conflict is an attribute of the conflict (Christiansen, 1991, p. 49), and least of all they can match the characteristic of consistency. And, despite the fact that their actions really interfere with each other, because they are simultaneously deployed in a limited space and are in a real interdependence, this type of cooperation can't be productive. Usually there is escalation of the tension followed by attempts to increase the effort from all sides. It is followed by mutual negative qualification, threats, etc.
For the professional work with such a situation it is necessary to identify the real interests of the parties, determine the essence of
their inconsistent or consistent character, and try to align interests.
Special feature of the educational relations, quite clearly presented in a great number of psychological and educational literature was rather clearly schematized by L.S. Vygotskiy (Vygotskiy, 1996, p.373-391), and then was almost painted by G.P. Shchedrovitskiy as a process of the cultural transmission where there is cooperation of special cultural positions, and their activity is mediated by the social situation of development and by the usage of special (corresponding to the cultural material) methods of transformation (Shchedrovitskiy, 1993, p. 3842). Just the development and appropriation of the cultural transformation methods forms the semantic characteristics of educational relations. And it is this understanding of the educational relations that gives us reason to consider them as developing and as a condition of the development of the collective or individual subject participating in them. In turn, it means that along with the clear characteristics that define the cultural forms of subjects under study and mean of their transformation, we "see" in these relationships rather high uncertainty in the field of individual and collective achievements.
Does it mean that educational relations are conflict, have a high degree of uncertainty and, therefore, are always risky to the extent of their dynamic?
The nature of the risks to the parties that are participants of the educational relations is determined by their interests and expectations, as well as their contributions to the educational process.
For what the parties - members of educational relations count on? What risks are they trying to minimize during the implementation of their own interests?
Conducting our research, we focused on two institutions that were members of educational
relations. It is the Institute for Education and Institute for Family. It was important for us to apply to the direct participants with such kind of analysis, although of course we understand that the main and common subject of such relations is the Institute of State. This member stands behind the Institute of Education, but the latter, of course, over the last few hundred years, has acquired its own specific interests that do not always coincide with the interests of the state.
We have conducted dozens of focus groups with representatives of educational institutions and families. It was important to find out what interests in education activity may be claimed by these groups and how they are specified, as well as ideas about their own contributions to education.
The question about the risks has arisen in connection with the need to analyze the seriousness, reality and the status of interests in education, their place among the other interests of the respective institutions. The fact is that the declarations about the importance of education, its priorities have become a commonplace in various discussions and seriously have had journalism features that are far away from the real situation. It is possible to check sufficient seriousness of relations in the particular area, in our opinion, if you understand what contributions and under what guarantees people are willing to make, or in other words, to what extent they are willing to risk than in order to achieve their goals.
That is, the conscious willingness to take risk is the measure of the seriousness of interests.
For one of the more clearly represented positions interest is formed lapidary and supposedly pragmatic. In fact, the household, in accordance with the exact expression of Evgeny F. Saburov, sends the child to school, setting oneself free and giving the responsibility to another party, with hopes for a good result in the distant future. At the same time attempts to control
the flow of the process in the desired direction are made on the basis of own memories and impressions, as well as relying on the inconsistent standards. The latter is very important because in fact it is an appeal to some "social contract", the content of which is interpreted by the parties rather arbitrarily, but in full confidence that there are generally accepted, well-known and obvious norms. In strong formulations, it looks like this: "We have given you our children, you owe us, so do it".
IV. Conflicts of adults - the context of maturation conflicts
When such concentrated and shaped interests are represented to the parties - participants of education, their contradictory character becomes apparent, since in these representations there is no any agreement on the common field of activity and its results, but the interdependence and mutual claims and expectations are clearly visible.
For us as people specializing in the field of conflict analysis and conflict settlement, such a "picture" means that in principle such concordance is possible, if it is showed and structured, and the ground of the party interests are consecutively opened and formed, and the possibilities to satisfy them are discussed. In reality, nothing happens. More specifically, attempts that are, in our opinion, poorly and randomly organized are made at the level of conversations about education policy, and mostly in journalistic terms.
If we talk about the psychological projections of these relations in the field of education, we will see at once hopes, expectations, requirements, and distrust, suspicion, resentment. And we are constantly confronted with this "picture" in the descriptions of relations between the parties regarding education. And course of this conference clearly shows it, because hardly anyone speaks on his behalf about his way of understanding of the situation, about his intentions, and what exactly
he wants to address to the partners or opponents. Basically, there are still domination of some of the common fixations and appeals. At best, the representatives of the parties insist that their interests should be taken into account (please, note - taken into account, but not coordinated). At the same time, even these interests are poorly articulated and not thorough enough.
Psychological characteristic of such kind of established relations, of course, leads us to conclusion about their inefficiency, because the simultaneous ambivalence of "trust-distrust" seems rather strange. We will emphasize once again that both parties considered by us are forced to "trust" each other (another variant is simply not given), and both suspect each other of at least partial compliance, and procedural characteristics (correctness of actions) and, even more in the field of the results.
For all that, as it is shown by our analysis, it is not just tolerable situation, but even comfortable.
Why is it comfortable for education? Today the question about the responsibility of educational institutions for the poor results is raised, and every time the tension in this regard is strengthened, and there are conversations that the contributions are growing, but the quality is falling and frustration is growing. History shows that society has never been satisfied with modern institutions of education and symmetrically there have never been education systems that would have been pleased with the attitude of the society and the state towards them. This provision allows the institutions of education to actually explain their own inefficiency, without making the radical self-transformation.
Why is it comfortable for the institution of the family? In fact, there are the same reasons, because it allows discussing the ineffectiveness of education and as a derivative of it, many social misfortunes not as a consequence of own actions, but as imperfections and errors of the other
party. In other words, this situation keeps its own irresponsibility.
So we fix the stable mutual dissatisfaction at all levels, and at the same time we say that we must negotiate. So what is the condition when our parties will be facing each other?
And this is that social "soup" in which it is necessary to "cook" the conflict competence!
Education as an institution is certainly responsible for the results, responsible for the fact that it does not meet the requirements and expectations. But the peculiarities of the mutual dissatisfaction can be explained theoretically by the fact that the parties seriously disagree on the identification definition of each other. One party considers itself as realizing the mission, and requires recognition and support, while the other party assigns her the status of service provider, while declaring the recognition of the mission.
Apparently, the description of educational relations within the service agreement that is well-known in the law is the normal, but not comprehensive "picture" of these relations. Moreover, we believe and propose to consider suck kind of relations as required, but complementary, not basic one. That is, the situation is literally such that today a much more complex content "hides" in the form of service relations.
From our point of view, any attempts to build education relations, constituted exclusively by such ideas, are in fact hopeless, because from the beginning they are considered not as civil but as interpersonal. Everybody understands, especially people who act like a customer, that the attempt of a civilized settlement or arising disagreements (conflicts) endangers that person who is actually of such "agreements", who is naturally included in the educational process. In other words, relations include such people, whose behavior in most direct and essential way affects the conditions and the results of the educational process. It's not just the material of transformation, in respect of
which the parties can contract an agreement, it is the participant whose behavior is influenced in one way or another by both sides. Moreover, it is important, that during the discussion of the educational process, we do not always see its boundaries with reasonable certainty and therefore we can hardly identify the content, conditions and results of the actions of one of the parties participating in the cooperation. It turns out that the one who acts, relatively speaking, as the customer has rather obvious and certain contribution to education - the child, and expects to receive some educational result (?). We do not discuss other types of contributions. Another party is also making a contribution with the help of own financial, technological or other resources, but the level of their certainty is much lower than the first party has. The question about risks arises precisely in those cases when the parties are dissatisfied with the course or process or its results. Moreover, typically such a conversation (topic) is already has the grounds in such cases, when at least one party is not satisfied. In our case, we see the situation of mutual dissatisfaction.
And how the risks are distributed?
It turns out that, in accordance with the contributions, everybody risks everything that have been contributed. But there is one significant feature in the risk of that party that stands, relatively speaking, as "the producer of educational services". The fact is that, since the contributions of this party are poorly personified in contrast to the contributions of another party, its main risk is connected with its failure to satisfy the interest that is pursued by activity. Then it turns out that the party runs the risk of low status (or it's better to say it will not get high status). But in fact this party has already had this status, regardless of how the activities will be carried out, and what results it will bring. Society and state with their current relations takes its responsibility, deliberately fixing the low status
with the well-known attributes. But the other side bears full responsibility. It runs the risk of all his contributions, moreover, all the costs (not received knowledge, time, material costs, health and others) are practically irreversible and irretrievable, and at best are only compensated. The peculiarity of the risks of this party is that the detection of possible losses is significantly postponed in time from the reality of the educational process, and all the time there is some hope that it is possible to fix something, and only at the end we fix the result that nothing can be changed. The statement said by M.M. Zhvanetskiy describes this situation very well: "Life is a one-way street". Probably, it would be wise not to dramatize the situation so hard. Of course, the discovery of some deficiencies of education, as it is showed by practice, can be filled or compensated. But it requires additional and significant expenditure of resources of those people who actually need this kind of filling. This is a real responsibility and such additional expenditures actually show who and what runs risk of in the situation of uncertainty in the educational relations.
If it is not easy just to fix the situation, but also to qualify it, it seems important to draw attention once again to the fact that those relations that have developed in education, are analyzed every time not as a joint activity of all interested parties in the overall result with the distribution and balanced variant of responsibility both at micro -and macro levels. The conversation almost every time is psychologically pointless: separately about the interests of parents, separately about the state's interests, separately about some social interest. And somehow it has turned out that the interest of people maturing in this space is almost not represented. They are, at best, participate in simulations, which decorative nature is already understand in the secondary school, especially if it has become possible in the primary school to establish the grounds for conflict competence.
Such kind of qualification proposes the answer about what to do: to align interests, rather than oppose them, that is to negotiate. But when we are talking about contracts, we also, in turn, run the risk of actualization of the almost ready stereotypes, and thus of the loss of the real subject of discussion. We can be answered immediately from the both parties that the contracts have already concluded, that schools have concluded agreements with the parents about the conditions of education, about the size and the frequency of parental contributions to the educational activity of educational institutions and the conditions and peculiarities of the expenditure of such contributions, about the accountability, etc. And there is such a practice indeed, though it has a weak resemblance to the civilized one. The only thing is that majority of the contracts of this kind are the contracts of accession, that is, you do not discuss anything. You are offered to sign that you agree with the certain and already established terms and conditions. If you do not like such a contract, so do not sign it, and therefore do not enter into this relations and take your child to another school. The same kind of "contracts" are becoming widespread in the high school. In this situation the party if the students themselves.
The fact is that psychologically (it is not less important for us than legally) such a contract releases the parties from personal personified liability. It is automatically attributed by the very contract form, but it is not necessarily assigned by the participants. It turns out that this kind of contract does not insure the participants against the risks that we have been discussing here. Figuratively speaking: "Well, it doesn't matter that the patient has died, we have treated him right". It occurs because this version of the contract does not imply participation of the parties in the process of formation and execution of the agreement, i.e. it does not imply any joint activity.
We see the future in education contracts exactly about the joint activity. Such a contract should appear as the result of the negotiation process. It will certainly be the long and difficult process, for sure, especially at the beginning of attempts to practice such negotiations, it will be quite cost-based process of approval. But in this negotiation process the parties will be forced to form their own interests, to formulate clear and verifiable objectives, to fix
1 This part of work is conducted in cooperation with T.I. Y
the dynamics of their achievements, to estimate the conditions and contributions, to imagine the real responsibility of participants. This practice exactly will allow, in our opinion, to establish the educational relations in a truly civilized manner. Apparently, this perspective has another aspect - the negotiation processes in education are the real and sufficiently mass practice of civil relations, but it's a topic for another discussion.
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Конфликты и переговоры -содержание и условия образования для развития
Б.И. Хасан
Институт психологии и педагогики развития, Сибирский федеральный университет Россия 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
Конфликтная компетентность выступает как один из важнейших образовательных результатов. Возможности формирования способностей к удержанию конфликтов, с необходимостью возникающих в обучении, могут быть реализованы в развивающем обучении уже в младшем школьном возрасте. Однако сформированные предпосылки конфликтной компетентности станут реальным возрастным новообразованием при условии специально организованных образовательных условий. К таким относится практика разрешения конфликтов в образовании в переговорных процессах всех заинтересованных сторон, включая учащихся. Такого рода институт переговоров важно выстраивать с учетом реальных рисков, которые у различных субъектов образовательных отношений имеют свою специфику.
Ключевые слова: конфликт, конструктивные переговорные процессы, продуктивное разрешение конфликтов, образовательные интересы, возрастные новообразования, конфликтная компетентность.
