Among others, Cohen (2005), Davies (2004) and Deutsch (2000) emphasised that conflicts are a normal part of life and thus also a normal part of school life. Teachers and other pedagogues will experience conflicts every day in their school and classroom realities. Deutsch (2000) elaborated the concept of conflict by dividing constructive and destructive conflicts. A conflict is in its essence neither constructive nor destructive though can become constructive or destructive depending on how we are able to handle it. Conflicts that can be handled or managed in such a way that the outcome of the conflict will be constructive will promote growth for individuals, groups and/or institutions. Destructive outcomes do not lead to growth. Destructive conflicts can result in the occurence of visible (physical) and invisible (non-verbal and verbal) violent situations, which do not support development and learning. Teachers in Sweden report that teasing, discrimination, and bullying exist as well as conscious and unconscious structural and cultural violence (Bliding, Holm & Hägglund, 2002; Friberg, Grünbaum, Lepp, Löfgren, & Malm, 2005; Osbeck, Holm & Wernersson, 2003). With the increase of families of foreign origin, the teachers are also facing disagreements, conflicts and actions of violence that are related to ethnical differences. The professional role of the teacher has been referred to as a new one (e.g., Colnerud & Granstöm, 2002). According to Hareide (2006) systems undergoing change are at very high risk to give space for violence to occur. The teaching profession calls for a competence enabling them to develop the authority to guide a collective group of children who have different needs, perspectives, goals and interests and provide them with the necessary knowledge for living in and creating a peaceful society. It is very unlikely that un-dealt conflicts disappear; it is more likely that they are given space to escalate, transform and resurface repeatedly. Knowledge about conflicts and conflict resolution exists and an increase of skills, attitudes and knowledge about conflicts has been evaluated valuable for managing conflicts constructively (Johnson & Johnson, 1996; Jones, 2004). During recent years an enormous number of conflict resolution education programs have been developed and in the jungle of programs there is no systematic way to choose. Sometimes elements of the different programs overlap but still programs are not alike. Not surprising, teachers and other pedagogues often raise the question “What conflict resolution program should I use when I want to handle conflicts in my classroom and in the school I am working?” This presentation contains theoretical reflections, developed through studying the literature, to argue in what way the conflict pyramid Cohen (2005) defined and used in his work can be used as a model for describing the relations between different conflict resolution education programs and activities included in the programs. Cohen visualises the ideal system of conflicts and conflict resolutions in school environments as a pyramid with four levels including prevention, handling conflicts constructively and how to deal with destructive conflicts. Although Cohen does not explicitly refer to the conflict pyramid as a theory, other underlined the usefulness of this conflict pyramid (Hareide, 2006) by suggesting that schools should use it.

The paper is based on a literature study in which evaluation studies of conflict resolution education programs are included as well as studies that used action research to develop their program.

The paper aims at developing a holistic theoretical framework to study what knowledge about conflict and conflict resolution is needed in the schools, how the relations between differents elements of conflict resolution look like and to be used in future empirical studies to implement change.