CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Conflict management in a education sector, the management of conflict in education sector using peaceful, non-violent methods has been around for a long time. In nearly all African societies there is a preference for the peaceful settlement of dispute along the line prescribed frowned at. In a few instance where it may be tolerated, the community rather than the individual has to be sanctioning authority, the sanctioning following due process. In all civilized parts of the world, there is growing resort to the peaceful settlement of dispute in an organization. The image of violence presented by the media is not as such a true reflection of the dominant method of settling conflict in an organizations. There is an enormous amount of dispute taking place at various levels and in many organizations communities, groups and international levels.
A wider range of non-violent method of managing conflict avails to the conflict transformation world. These methods are available at the individual, family, group, community and international levels.
Conflict management is the process of reducing the negative and destructive capacity of conflict through a number of measures and by working with through the parties involved in that conflict. This term is some times used synonymously with “conflict regulation”. It covers the entire area of handling conflict pristinely at different stages, including those efforts made to prevent conflict by being practice. It encompasses conflict limitation, containment and litigation. In the words of (John Barton), this may include “conflict prevention” (Barton 1990) a term he used to connote containment of conflict through steps introduced to promote conditions in which collaborative and valued relationships control the behavior of conflict parties. The term “conflict management” is perhaps an administration and admission of the reality that conflict is in evitable but that not all conflicts can always be resolved. Therefore what practitioners can do is to manage and regulate them.
Conflict resolution is seen by Miller (2003:8) as a variety of approaches aimed at terminating conflict from management or transformation through the constructive solving of problems, distinct from management of conflict. Miall etal (2005;21)indicated that by resolution, it is expected that the deep rooted sources of conflict are addressed and resolved and behavior is no longer violent, nor are attitudes hostile any longer while the structure of the conflict has been changed. Mitchel and bank (1996) use conflict resolution to refer to:
An outcome in which the issue in an existing conflict are satisfactorily dealt with through a solution that is mutually acceptable to the parties, self-sustaining in the run and productive of a new, positive relationship between parties that were previously hostile adversaries and Any process or procedure by which such an outcome is achieved.
Conflict transformation has been introduced by John Paul leaderach of the Eastern Mennonite school of peace building. It is assumed that this goes beyond conflict resolution to build longer standing relationships and the conditions that created the conflict, the process of change in perceptions and attitudes of parties, their relationships and perceptions.
Miall etal (2001). Conflict transformation entails the coming into being of new situations involving conflict issues, perceptions relationships and communication pattern (Jeong, 2000).
According to John ledorah (1995) sees conflict transformation as change. It can be descriptively in the change created by social conflict, and prescriptive in the deliberate intervention by third parties to create change. Conflict transformation takes place at different levels and has a number of dimensions. At the personal level, it involves emotional, perceptual and spiritual aspects of change desired for the individual. It also affects relationship touching on communication between parties that needs to change to positively affect poorly functioning communication. Change also needs to affect structures that generate conflict through deprivation, exclusion and other forms of injustice. It also seeks to understand cultural patterns and values.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:
The challenge for conflict management theory is to study real problems in the world rather them just deal with cases. In the issues in practice section a number of topics that confront theoretical and practitioners on all levels of activity are introduced and analyzed in view of the theoretical approaches. Most of these issues are answers to problems that span across the entire field of conflict management, or cross cutting agendas that have to be dealt with in order for the theoretical approaches to truly tackle the reality of conflicts. It involves evaluating the effectiveness of conflict management as well as its readiness to deal with new problems and new issues, such as terrorism.