Teachers’ Perceptions on Management of Conflict in Primary Schools in Mberengwa District

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Introduction: Conflict is major social construct happening in most communities where people of divergent and different backgrounds finds themselves inhabiting a common environment. Schools formulate habitat with semi-seclusion from the rest of society and conflict arising needs to be managed. Also engaging is conflict resolution without taking sides in such environments where children interact with adults more frequently requires skills and training which aspects do not form part of teaching and learning curriculum. Peri-urban schools find themselves as rich ground for conflict due to their being neither urban or rural but tend to receive influence from both settlements. Conflict nature and conflict resolution may tend to take different forms from an aggregate of approaches seen or taken in urban and rural settings. Therefore, the study explored school teachers’ perceptions on conflict management in eight representative schools in Mberengwa District. Materials and Methods: The sample of the study comprised of eight school managers, thirty-two members of school disciplinary committee members and twenty-four junior classroom practitioners Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in the study. The qualitative research design followed focused group discussions and open-ended questions fielded during interviews to school heads and school disciplinary committee members who formed the management team of the schools. Quantitative data was obtained through closed ended questionnaires given to primary school teachers. The school teachers were selected using a stratified simple random sampling technique and purposive sampling were used to select both the school heads and the school disciplinary members. Results: The study revealed that poor communication(100%),unfairness (87.5%), shortage of resources(100%), role-conflicts(70.3%), poor governance (87.5%) and political afflictions (87.5%) were the root causes of conflict in primary schools when compares to other causes (P <0.05). Thirty disciplinary committee members (100%) and twenty-four teachers (92.2%) indicated that student-student, teacher-teacher and teacher-managers conflicts were common in peri-urban schools contrasted to other forms of conflict (P <0.05). Conflict resulted in strained relationships (100%), caused of disunity (100%), disrupted teaching and learning (88%), was time consuming (78%), lowered production (78%), caused stress and high blood pressure (100%) and diverted attention from crucial activities (75%). Heads of schools displayed a conflict avoidance as a conflict resolution strategy. Conflict management literature was in short supply in schools and schools rarely conducted conflict management meetings. Confrontation, collaboration and compromise were the most used conflict management strategies. Managed conflict had benefits of creating social change and allowed staff to engage more and needed to be included in curriculum development. Conclusion: Primary school head teachers need to conduct meetings on conflict management and procure literature on conflict management to resolve conflict appropriately. Members of disciplinary committee need to handle conflict fairly and to consult literature on conflict management so that they can handle conflicts progressively and as benefit to teaching and learning. Educational officers need to facilitate and ensure that conflicts are handled appropriately and progressively. Introduction of conflict management as a learning tool, study area or be taken as a cross-cutting component in the competency-based curriculum was necessary.