Conflict is an omnipresent aspect of education. From yelling to name-calling, dirty looks to the cold shoulder, teachers regularly encounter a variety of conflict attitudes, behaviors, and contradictions under a multiplicity of circumstances. In 2010, the Swedish Ministry of Education attempted to address the lack of formal teacher preparation to handle school-based conflicts constructively by amending the Higher Education Ordinance to require that all student teachers receive conflict handling training (SFS 2010:541). However, the legislation did not specify the content of this training, sparking disputes over the characteristics of school-based conflict and how student teachers can be prepared to employ conflicts as learning opportunities. The proposed study seeks to address these issues by investigating the qualitatively distinct ways in which eleven students training to become secondary school teachers conceptualize school-based conflict before and after their mandatory training. Data will be gathered and analyzed via a learner-centered phenomenographic protocol and may be used by teacher educators to (re)design pre-service conflict handling courses to better address and develop student teachers’ understanding of school-based conflict.

Research Question 1: How do student teachers conceptualize school-based conflict and conflict handling?

Research Question 2: How do student teachers characterize school-based conflict in relationship to learning?

What, then, is the significance of this research? Specifically, why explore teacher education in Sweden? Why focus on student teachers? How can this research be used in the European context? The location of this study is significant because Sweden is one of the first countries in which all student teachers are required to complete mandatory conflict handling training before graduation. Many countries provide student teachers with some sort of conflict handling training but this is generally done locally, as an in-service tutorial. Needless to say, growing concerns about conflict prevention and management are likely to lead other European countries to follow Sweden’s lead in the near future.

Student teachers are an interesting research population because they are the direct recipients of the mandatory conflict handling training. As a result, any investigation of pre-service conflict handling courses should take their perspectives into account. Moreover, this group is in a significant process of transition between attending schools as students and working in schools as pedagogical leaders. This transition is fraught with intellectual and social obstacles and opportunities that can, potentially, provide a wealth of data.    

Althoough this research will take place in Sweden it is applicable in Europe at large for two reasons. First, many countries in Europe require teachers to instruct students on both democratic values and subject courses such as mathematics and science. As a result, this research will address the possiblities of preparing student teachers in any location to effectively address this double mission. Second, the aim of the study is to investigate how student teachers, as a social group, conceptualize conflict. While the conceptualizations of research participants will be influenced by their country of origin, the study will focus on the qualtiatively distinct conflict conceptualizations held by student teachers, in general, rather than Swedish student teachers, in particular.

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