The present study proposed an application of the Rahim’ Model of Conflict Management, and aimed to explore the styles of handling interpersonal conflicts with students adopted by teachers from five European countries (Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Austria), identifying specific patterns and evaluating potential differences according to teachers' Gender, Age, Working Seniority and Country of belonging. Overall, 589 secondary school teachers completed a questionnaire consisting of Socio-demographic characteristics and the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II, Form B). Non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis was employed to derive patterns of conflict management, identifying four patterns labelled as Multi-strategic and Engaged, Multi-strategic and Solution-Oriented, Control-Oriented and Avoidant, and Mediating. Significant differences between countries were found in the numbers of teachers grouped across the four patterns. Findings identified stable and meaningful patterns for evaluating teachers' styles of management of interpersonal conflicts with students and for promoting teachers’ effectiveness in conflict management in the European school context.
In recent years, the growing changes of the modern educational context induced to emphasise the role of teachers and educators and the competences they are expected to possess in integrating knowledge with relational and technical skills (
Indeed, teachers are constantly required to adapt their practices and to handle complexity, and classroom management represents one of their major responsibility not only in terms of planning, teaching new programmes, and organising the learning environment, but also in terms of managing relational aspects of the educational duties (
In particular, nowadays, conflict resolution management represents one of the main challenges for teachers since conflicts with students from the new generation have become increasingly complex, and deriving not only from misunderstandings and disapproving behaviours during class, but also from perceived differences in worldviews, ideologies, cultures, and objectives (
Therefore, a growing body of research explored teacher-students conflictual interactions (
Nevertheless, research also highlighted that the conflict has to be considered not only a source of pressure in teaching profession but also a significant opportunity for development and enhancement of skills, critical reflection, and growth at personal, interpersonal and group level (
Therefore, considering the significance of developing and enhancing teachers’ skills and competencies to successfully deal with potential conflictual situations that may emerge with students in the contemporary educational context, a deep and broad investigation of teachers’ way of handling conflicts is needed, also taking into account that there is still a lack of research conducted in the European Countries in this direction (
In the field of organizational behaviour and management, a large body of research focused on conflict management (
The Rahim’ Model of Conflict Management styles for interpersonal conflicts (
On the basis of different combinations of these two dimensions, five styles of handling interpersonal conflict have been distinguished: Integrating, Obliging, Dominating, Avoiding, and Compromising.
Integrating style indicates high concern both for self and for others and is characterised by a collaboration between the parties involved into the conflict with the aim to reach a mutual and acceptable solution through openness, exchange of information, examination and exploration of differences for arriving at a constructive solution that overwhelms personal and limited visions of the problem. This style is considered as a “Win-Win” strategy of conflict management, due to the emphasis given to the interest in optimizing rather than sacrificing for the other party.
Obliging style indicates a low concern for self and a high concern for others and is characterised by the recourse to a non-confronting behaviour aiming to minimise differences between the parties involved into the conflict by emphasising commonalities and sacrificing personal concern to safeguard the relationship.
Dominating style indicates high concern for self and low concern for others and is considered a “Win-Lose” strategy and a demonstration of authority or expression of a forcing behaviour aiming to win or defend one’s position often ignoring others’ needs and perspective.
Avoiding style indicates low concern both for self and for others, reflects an attitude to refuse to acknowledge and to openly face conflict and is often characterised by withdrawal, buck-passing, sidestepping situations.
Finally, Compromising style indicates intermediate concern for self and for others. This style involves splitting the difference, exchanging concession, or seeking a quick, middle ground position, whereby both parties involved in the conflict accept to give up something to reach mutually acceptable decisions.
In order to assess the amount of perceived organizational conflict at individual, group, and intergroup levels and the strategies adopted for handling conflicts, Rahim proposed two measurement tools, the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory I and II (ROCI- I & ROCI-II;
In particular, the ROCI-II measures the styles of handling interpersonal conflict adopted by an organizational member to deal with his/her supervisor(s) (Form A), with subordinates (Form B), and with peers (Form C) (
The application of the Rahim’ Model is of particular relevance within the school context. Indeed, teachers are constantly involved into negotiation processes, and their responses to potential conflicts with students are constantly influenced by the specific feature of teachers’ role as accountable for classroom management and by the different declinations of the dimensions of concern for self and concern for others within teacher-student interactions (i.e., Superior-Subordinates relationships). From this perspective, research highlighted that teachers may use different strategies to efficiently handle conflicts with students (
The adoption of a specific style may also depend on the perceived role of the teacher as regulator and leader of the classroom environment, which may significantly influence its choices basing on its necessity to simultaneously achieve learning objectives and to assure a satisfactory group climate in the classroom.
In this direction, a study conducted by
In the same direction, a study conducted by
From this perspective, indeed, also research on conflict management suggested a broader approach that further insights into the Rahim’ Model, defining the negotiation process as resulting by the configuration of different styles rather than by the recourse to single and independent styles. In this direction, Rahim (
Taking into account the increasing complexity of the negotiation process within teacher-student conflictual interactions, the need for teachers to efficiently managing conflictual situations with students, and the recent research direction on conflict management, the present study aimed to apply the Rahim’ Model to explore teachers’ styles of handling interpersonal conflicts within teacher-student interactions and to identify specific patterns. Moreover, considering that research on conflict management also identified other dimensions that may play a significant role in influencing individuals’ negotiation process, such as gender (
National online surveys were organized in five European countries (i.e., Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and Austria) as part of the ACCORD Project (Attain Cultural Integration through COnflict Resolution skill Development;
A questionnaire consisting of open and closed-ended questions to collect Socio-demographic characteristics (Gender; Age; Working Seniority; Country of belonging) and the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II, Form B;
The Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II;
In accordance with the aims of the present study, all the analyses were carried out using the statistical software SPSS (Version 21).
Preliminarily, a number of Descriptive Analyses of all study variables were conducted and Pearson’s Correlations between the five conflict management styles were carried out.
Therefore, Cluster Analysis using a non-hierarchical k-means clustering procedure was applied to identify patterns of conflict management styles grouping teachers from the five countries, starting by establishing an initial partition, later calculating the means (centroid) of the clusters and determining the Euclidean distances to all the centroids in the clusters. The cases have been assigned to the nearest cluster, reducing the pooled within-group variance, and this procedure has been repeated until a solution was reached in which the clusters were stable (
Afterwards, a MANOVA and Tukey’s HSD post hoc test were used in order to validate the clusters solution, with the cluster membership as an independent variable and the five styles of handling conflict as dependent variables (
Finally, frequencies and percentages of subjects distributed across the emerged Conflict Management Patterns were calculated by Gender, Age, Working Seniority, and Country of belonging (Crosstabulations, Chi-square Analyses).
Characteristics of study participants are displayed in
Characteristics | ||
---|---|---|
Gender | < .001 | |
Male | 173 (29.4%) | |
Female | 416 (70.6%) | |
Age in years | < .001 | |
Under 35 | 154 (26.1%) | |
36-45 | 144 (24.5%) | |
Over45 | 291 (49.4%) | |
Working Seniority in years | < .001 | |
Under 5 | 130 (22.1%) | |
5-10 | 121 (20.5%) | |
Over 11 | 338 (57.4%) | |
Country | < .001 | |
Austria | 109 (18.5%) | |
Belgium | 116 (19.7%) | |
Germany | 42 (7.1%) | |
Spain | 213 (36.2%) | |
Italy | 109 (18.5%) |
aDifferences were determined by Chi-square test.
Descriptive statistics (Mean scores and standard deviations) and Pearson’s Correlations between the five Conflict Management styles (Integrating, Avoiding, Obliging, Dominating, Compromising) are provided in
Conflict Management Strategies | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Integrating | 4.12 | 0.56 | 1 | ||||
2. Obliging | 3.38 | 0.51 | .42** | 1 | |||
3. Dominating | 2.52 | 0.71 | -.28** | -.02 | 1 | ||
4. Avoiding | 2.80 | 0.74 | -.02 | .12** | .15** | 1 | |
5. Compromising | 3.66 | 0.61 | .49** | .38** | -.10* | .10* | 1 |
Findings from non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis suggested that a four-cluster solution was the most appropriate for the data, revealing four stable and meaningful patterns of conflict management adopted by teachers. In addition, results from MANOVA and Tukey’s HSD post hoc test confirmed the cluster solution, revealing that the four subgroups differed significantly on all conflict management styles, Wilk’s λ = .13,
The first pattern (
The second pattern (
The third pattern (
Finally, the fourth pattern (
Patterns | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Integrating | Obliging | Dominating | Avoiding | Compromising | ||
1. Multi-strategic and Engaged | 136 (23.1) | 3.98 (± 0.45) | 3.16 (± 0.41) | 2.65 (± 0.58) | 2.08 (± 0.39) | 3.35 (± 0.54) |
2. Multi-strategic and Solution-Oriented | 143 (24.2) | 4.38 (± 0.38) | 3.73 (± 0.43) | 2.78 (± 0.64) | 3.49 (± 0.59) | 4.05 (± 0.43) |
3. Control-Oriented and Avoidant | 153 (26.0) | 3.61 (± 0.46) | 3.06 (± 0.39) | 2.85 (± 0.60) | 3.15 (± 0.42) | 3.26 (± 0.48) |
4. Mediating | 157 (26.7) | 4.50 (± 0.42) | 3.58 (± 0.47) | 1.85 (± 0.48) | 2.45 (± 0.55) | 3.97 (± 0.54) |
In particular, teachers from Austria (
Individual Characteristics | Multi-Strategic and Engaged | Multi-Strategic and Solution-Oriented | Control-Oriented and Avoidant | Mediating | Total | χ2 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
136 (23.1) | 143 (24.2) | 153 (26.0) | 157 (26.7) | 589 (100) | - | - | - | |
Gender | 5.099 | 3 | .165 | |||||
Male | 33 (19.1) | 46 (26.6) | 53 (30.6) | 41 (23.7) | 173 (29.4) | |||
Female | 103 (24.8) | 97 (23.3) | 100 (24.0) | 116 (27.9) | 416 (70.6) | |||
Age in Years | 3.806 | 6 | .703 | |||||
Under 35 | 35 (22.7) | 40 (26.0) | 40 (26.0) | 39 (25.3) | 154 (26.1) | |||
36-45 | 37 (25.7) | 33 (22.9) | 42 (29.2) | 32 (22.2) | 144 (24.5) | |||
Over 45 | 64 (22.0) | 70 (24.0) | 71 (24.4) | 86 (29.6) | 291 (49.4) | |||
Working Seniority in Years | 4.308 | 6 | .635 | |||||
Under 5 | 31 (25.6) | 25 (20.7) | 36 (29.7) | 29 (24.0) | 121 (20.5) | |||
5-10 | 72 (21.3) | 83 (24.6) | 86 (25.4) | 97 (28.7) | 338 (57.4) | |||
Over 11 | 33 (25.4) | 35 (27.0) | 31 (23.8) | 31 (23.8) | 130 (22.1) | |||
Country | 33.476 | 12 | < .001 | |||||
Austria | 37 (33.9) | 22 (20.2) | 18 (16.5) | 32 (29.4) | 109 (18.5) | |||
Belgium | 31 (26.7) | 18 (15.5) | 39 (33.6) | 28 (24.0) | 116 (19.7) | |||
Germany | 10 (23.8) | 16 (38.1) | 11 (26.2) | 5 (11.9) | 42 (7.1) | |||
Spain | 45 (21.1) | 53 (24.9) | 54 (25.4) | 61 (28.6) | 213 (36.2) | |||
Italy | 13 (12.0) | 34 (31.2) | 31 (28.4) | 31 (28.4) | 109 (18.5) |
The present study aimed to test the hypothesis of the presence of different combinations of styles of handling conflicts adopted by teachers from five European Countries within teacher-student interactions and to identify specific patterns of conflict management, also exploring potential differences according to Gender, Age, Working Seniority and Country of belonging.
Firstly, the results of correlations and cluster analyses provided empirical evidence to support the proposition of investigating teachers’ behaviours in conflictual situations with students as configurations of different styles (
Indeed, it emerged significant correlations among several pairs of conflict management styles adopted by teachers. In particular, Integrating style revealed significant positive correlations with Compromising and Obliging styles and significant negative correlations with Dominating style, indicating that, during a conflict episode with students, teachers may search integrating solutions and adopt in the same time compromising strategies (i.e., reasoning and discussing issues and problems with the student and/or with the whole class) and/or obliging strategies (i.e., accommodating and/or deliberately ignoring minor disruptions or infringements). Conversely, the recourse to dominating strategies (i.e., verbal reprimand; imposition of time-out/time-in; request of school suspension) appeared incompatible with the search of integrating solutions of the conflict.
In the same direction, also the Compromising style was significantly positively correlated with Integrating and Obliging styles and negatively correlated with Dominating style. Nonetheless, data highlighted that Compromising style was also positively correlated with Avoiding style (i.e., delaying discussion and confrontation concerning individual and relational difficulties emerged), suggesting that also the recourse to avoiding strategies may help, in some situations, to find a compromise. Conversely, the negative correlation between compromising and dominating strategies further indicates the relative incompatibility between these two styles of conflict management.
Finally, Avoiding style revealed significant positive correlations, on the one hand, with Obliging style, and, on the one other hand, with Dominating style, suggesting the possibility for teachers to recur to disengaged (i.e., Avoiding and Obliging styles) or authoritarian (i.e., Avoiding and Dominating) strategies for by-passing conflicts and misbehaviours within student-teacher interactions.
Hence, these preliminary results supported the possibility to investigate different configurations of styles of conflict management to identify specific teachers’ patterns of handling conflicts with students. Furthermore, the consideration that teachers tend to use Conflict Management Patterns rather than using independently different styles allow also to put further emphasis on the idea that successfully handling conflicts is strongly situation-specific (
From this perspective, findings from cluster analyses revealed a four-pattern solution as the most suitable portrait, identifying four stable and meaningful patterns of handling conflicts with students that were substantially shared by teachers from the five different European Countries considered. The first pattern was labelled as Multi-strategic and Engaged and included teachers that, depending on the situation, displayed to be able to adopt different conflict management strategies except for the avoiding. Therefore, teachers grouped within the first pattern showed the tendency to be engaged with constancy in regulating and negotiating within the interactions with their students, and to be willing to find an effective way to solve the conflicts by reasoning and discussing with students, and, where it proves necessary, to adopt authoritative or accommodating strategies. Nonetheless, teachers characterized by this pattern profile also display difficulties in retreating from conflictual situations, always trying to face and solve them outright.
The second pattern was labelled as Multi-strategic and Solution-Oriented. It grouped teachers that showed to adopt all management strategies and that, consequently, were potentially able to efficiently handle a wide range of conflicts by searching for moment-to-moment solutions depending on the situation.
The third pattern was labelled as Control-Oriented and Avoidant and included teachers who mainly face the conflict by adopting both dominating and avoiding strategies, i.e., clearly defining and demonstrating their role and their authority, and directing the ways to handle the conflict taking predominantly into account concerns for self. Indeed, teachers within this pattern were also found to be less willing to adopt integrating, compromising and obliging strategies, often preferring to avoid the open confrontation with the student to protect themselves from the emergency or the escalation of conflictual situations.
Finally, the fourth pattern was labelled as Mediating, and it grouped teachers that reduced the recourse to dominating and avoiding strategies, and mainly adopted integrating, compromising and obliging strategies, reasoning with students and involving them in discussions aiming to promote negotiation processes.
Therefore, overall, these findings could be considered as useful to promote and support teachers in effectively and successfully dealing with conflicts by providing them with knowledge on the area of conflict management and by developing targeted feedback on teachers’ configuration of styles they primarily adopt for handling conflicts that may arise with students. In this perspective, it is necessary to further underline that there are no “right” or “correct” ways to manage conflicts and that each pattern may be adequate to efficiently handle conflictual interactions, but it may also hide some weakness that exposes teachers to potential risks (
From this perspective, as regards teachers mainly adopting Multi-strategic and Engaged pattern of conflict management, on the one hand, they show to be able to recur to a wide range of strategies and to be always engaged, and these strategies should be considered as significant resources for a teacher to possess for achieving relational and educational goals. However, on the one other hand, they may also be at higher risk for work-related stress, due to their tendency to never avoid to openly and directly handle a conflict, spending, in some situations, an excessive amount of personal resources.
Conversely, as regards teachers adopting Control-Oriented and Avoidant pattern, their tendency to recur to more directing and authoritarian strategies in some cases could help quickly avoiding disruptions and, therefore, maintaining learning objectives. Nevertheless, they are also mainly induced to disengagement or imposing behaviours, and, consequently, they are exposed to risks to exacerbate conflicts, to increase students’ dissatisfaction and difficulties, and, potentially, to contribute creating a hostile class climate.
Furthermore, as regards teachers adopting Mediating pattern, the prevalent recourse to integrating, compromising and obliging styles revealed their high concern for the students’ needs and perspective. The recourse to this pattern should be considered as a significant resource for a teacher to achieve a satisfactory and stimulating class climate as they are always engaged in the educational relationship, encouraging challenging students to be involved in negotiation processes.
Finally, as regards teachers adopting Multi-strategic and Solution-Oriented pattern, their ability to recur to all the strategies depending on the situation can also be considered as a relevant resource to achieve optimal conflict management within the class. Nevertheless, the efficacy of this pattern depends on the development among teachers of adequate competencies to assess the situation, to identify the more adequate management style, and to implement the relational abilities for adopting this style. Consequently, this pattern induces to emphasise the importance of specific training to enhance teachers’ abilities to perceive and evaluate students’ needs as well as teachers’ relational competences.
In this perspective, the main interest of the present study was to identify common patterns of conflict management among different teachers, i.e., varying for gender, age, length of working experience and country of belonging.
Nonetheless, the study also aimed to explore potential differences across the four emerged patterns according to individual characteristics of teachers (i.e., Gender, Age, Working Seniority, and Country of belonging) in order to gain further indications on teachers’ predominant trends. Accordingly, the analysis of frequencies and percentages showed that patterns were adopted independently from gender, age and length of teaching experience, while it emerged specificities related to Country of belonging.
Nevertheless, in line with the Rahim’s perspective, the observed differences should be interpreted by considering teachers’ individual differences, the specific conflicting situations, and any potential specificity related to the national and European educational contexts. Indeed, these results could favour the reflection upon the possibility to develop more tailored interventions within European school context according to the pattern-specific needs, risks and resources.
For example, whilst teachers from Spain were significantly represented across the four pattern profiles, teachers from Germany and Italy seem to display a similar trend, revealing a higher tendency to use multiple strategies and to be solution-oriented; while, as opposed to teachers from Belgium, Austrian teachers showed to be less willing to adopt control-oriented and avoidant strategies.
Accordingly, interventions in these contexts should aim to promote greater balance in the ways they may handle conflicts with students by increasing the recourse to a wider set of conflict management strategies (by carefully assessing the specific conflicting situation), as well as the possibilities to also adopt directing/authoritarian strategies (when appropriate) in order to reduce the risk of exhaustion and burnout.
Furthermore, these results may raise the interest in exploring those individual and situational factors influencing these trends, deepening with teachers the different ways in which conflict management patterns can be concretely applied to the specific situations they may encounter in their work contexts.
Nevertheless, beyond the observed specificities, the present study provided four meaningful patterns useful to yield insight into the shared configuration of strategies for managing conflicts with students adopted by teachers from the five European Countries participating in the study, so maintaining the perspective of a common horizon while also observing potential differences in trends.
Despite the strengths of the present study, some limitations need to be underlined. Firstly, this research used a cross-sectional design, while longitudinal studies should be more adequate to determine the stability of identified patterns over time. Secondly, all the measurement tools were self-report, increasing the risk of social desirability bias. Thirdly, our findings identified four meaningful patterns of teacher’s conflict management styles, rising the interest to examine both individual and personality factors, as well as situational characteristics, such as types of students’ problematic behaviours and class climate, that may play a role in influencing the patterns of conflict management elicited in teachers. Moreover, further studies should be addressed to investigate individual and situational variables influencing the effectiveness of the adoption of each of the four patterns emerged in the resolution of conflictual interactions with students. Finally, findings revealing country specificities in conflict management pattern profiles suggested to further explore the role of cultural differences in the negotiation process adopting larger samples from other European countries.
Indeed, although the interest in providing country specificities in conflict management pattern profiles, that could be useful to rise and enhance awareness on the styles adopted by teachers in the European school context, findings from the present study should be interpreted with caution, considering the necessity to adopt larger samples from different countries to further explore and understand the effects of cultural differences on the model of conflict management strategies (
In conclusion, the study provided empirical evidence for the identification of meaningful patterns of conflict management within teacher-student interactions, yielding useful tools to customise interventions aiming to promote teachers’ awareness on management strategies they adopt and to enhance their efficacy in regulating challenging interactions with students.
This research has been supported by EACEA, project ACCORD (580362-EPP-1-2016-1-IT-EPPKA3-IPI-SCO-IN) from the Erasmus+.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The authors have no support to report.
This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.